Max Vs. The Internet

Rafael Mizrahi and Tal Chalozin from GarageGeeks have built a robot that plays Guitar Hero II.

They call it Guitar Heronoid. It is awesome.

So to clarify:

Two dudes built
a robot which plays
a videogame based on
covers of pop songs.

We're pretty deep into the house that Jack built.

Via WMMNA. Guitar Heronoid on Flickr

Yesterday I climbed aboard a bus along with (a few under) 50 people and spent 7 hours riding around Los Angeles visiting hot spots ("galleries" doesn't seem appropriate) in the local art scene. This was Distributed Realities, the fourth TransFormations event series, sponsored by the Visions and Voices initiative. Dear god if I have to covert another overlong subtitle hierarchy into a half-grammatical sentence I may very well lose it. Anyway, here is the event's page.

Before boarding the bus I ran into Anthony Ko and Jonathan Zabel, and that's about it. I was a little surprised by the light turnout on the part of other IMD kids (you dudes better have gotten really cruel with your kindness yesterday). There was a pretty strong faculty and staff turnout, and Jen Stein also ruthlessly mocked my t-shirt. Laundry day is a bad day to go exploring.

Also, Anthony took a lot of pictures. You may be wondering why so many are titled "Look at the Bus." There is an exceptionally good reason for this, but more on that later.

After milling around a bit, we climbed aboard and set off for our first destination, Fringe Exhibitions. Along the way, Professor Hoberman read excerpts from a-book-whose-title-I-wish-I-could-remember-in-order-to-link-to-something-about-it. Which was an excellent idea, save for the fact that the bus' PA system kept cutting out or doing its best impression of a dental drill.

Things learned on this leg of the journey:
Bunker Hill used to be really depressing, until the city stepped in and used eminent domain to make it even more depressing.

Chinatown is the 3rd of the Los Angeles Chinatowns, and this one was made with the magic of Hollywood.

Arriving at Fringe Exhibitions, we were treated to coffee and pastries (full disclosure, the promise of free food is what sealed the deal on this trip for those basal, gustatory parts of my curiosity). Their current exhibits were nice, but didn't thrill me (I will own to my barbaric sensibilities). I wish I remembered the names of the people who ran Fringe, they were exceptionally gracious in inviting us into their space and showing Anthony and me photos from their previous hosting of an exhibit by Survival Research Labs. SRL is internet famous in my head for some reason, and our host was kind enough to explain just how they had gotten gouts of plasma to spray around in one photo. I'm looking forward to seeing more SRL stuff in their space, and they spoke excitedly about building two of the tallest Tesla coils on record and setting up a huge lightning machine. I had no idea Chinatown hosted a new media art gallery, much less one with few qualms about setting up lightning machines.

Things learned at this location:
Surprise, Part I! There are art galleries everywhere.
Surprise, Part II! Some of them will invite people to cover your alley way with arc plasma, and then take pictures.

After leaving Fringe, we walked all of ten steps around the corner to the Telic Arts Exchange. Somewhere in Anthony's photos you can see me sticking my head into their main exhibit (Ki Chul Kim's "Sound Looking - Rain") in an effort to hear just exactly how it worked. However, the highlight of the trip to Telic had to be the "wishing well" set up in the back of the space. Made from a number of cardboard triangles, the center well was a series of LEDs and mirrors that seemed to stretch down until it faded from sight. On cardboard triangle had a coin slot and instructions for donating, so Ko, Zabel, and I started chucking coins in. And the damn thing spoke. Every time we dropped a coin in, the well mumbled a randomly selected phrase in a randomly selected (generated?) machine voice. We were unsure if it was speaking its wishes, our wishes, acting like an oracle, or just mumbling gibberish. But the effect was awesomely hypnotic. We almost cleaned out our pockets dropping coins into that thing just to hear what it was saying. Two dollars in assorted nickles, quarters, and pennies later, good judgment reasserted itself, and we vowed to build a similar machine to collect money around campus, damn the legality of it all, this thing was magic. Additionally, I learned about a "web surfing club" called the Nasty Nets. I guess a Web Surfing Club is like a motorcycle gang, but nobody has a tan. At first I was delighted with their artistic conceit, but (and I hate to say this because I still really like the idea), it seems irrelevant to a generation which has grown up sharing links and blogging. Also, I am terrible with names, but many thanks to our hosts at Telic (I hope the baby is a healthy one).

Things learned at this location:
See "Surprise!" part I, above.
If you build a slot machine and then put a big sign above it that says "YOU CANNOT WIN" people will still put money into it, just to get a little feedback.

We then began our trip Machine Project, which is also semi-internet famous (I've seen the projects they exhibit pop up here and there). Our bus driver took a wrong turn, and we got another reading from the-book-whose-title-it-is-becoming-increasingly-embarrassing-to-have-forgotten.

Lesson learned from this leg of the trip:
Get a legit bus driver.
So that's where the Foursquare Church came from.

Machine Project had a much less elegant donation collection system (a pneumatic cyclone that sucked up dollar bills-- loud, inefficient, no capacity for coins, and too fast to be entertaining), but was by far and away the most "fun" of all the places we visited yesterday. Mark Allen, the executive director of the space (man, again, I am totally winging it on the name here, please nobody punch me) gave a nice talk about all the projects they use the space for while a sewing class happened in the basement under our feet. They also host a dorkbot chapter(?). Aside from housing a unicorn skeleton, classes, and the occasional exhibit, it seems to me that Machine Project is largely about getting people together to do cool things and make stuff, so I'll have to visit again sometime soon. Lunch was excellent. No really, it was the best/most complete meal I had last week.

Things learned at this location:
The cops will never bust you for improper disposal of unicorn remains.
Seriously, visit machine project. SRSLY.
Sometimes dollar bills escape the cyclonic action of your machine, and get sucked into the vacuum you are using to generate suction.

Departing Machine Project, we got back on the bus for the long haul to Culver City and our final two destinations. However, it was a long haul. Professor Hoberman threw on a Blur + Sharpen DVD. The tiny screens on the bus were not conducive to watching text-heavy experimental films, and my attention wandered to the city passing by outside the window. Which is when Ko first mentioned that a lot of people had been looking at the bus. He was right. A lot of people had been looking at the bus. Quickly, we figured out a points scheme for taking pictures of bus-lookers with Ko's digital camera. A solitary bus voyeur is worth 50 points. Twins are worth 200 points, and triplets are worth a whopping 450 points. The problem is, some people are embarrassed to catch themselves looking at the bus, and will look away quickly when they realize what they are doing. The challenge is photographing them in the moment before they feel ashamed of looking at the bus. Slowly, as the minutes dripped by, our patience wore down, and we began to will people to look at the bus. Silent will gave way to whisper, then chant. "Look at the bus" became our rallying cry, and, as the Blur + Sharpen DVD started to repeat, our one bulwark against clawing madness.

Eventually (roughly 850 points later) we arrived at The Center for Land Use Interpretation. CLUI has a bathroom with that rough powder soap, the kind you usually find in state parks. It took the day's notes right off the palm of my hand (I need to become one of those moleskine jerks). CLUI's projects are interesting, and because of one of them (Feedback Loop), I've been staring at the pavement wherever I walk for the past day. Aside from having a bookstore with expensive photo books, and a database consisting of file cabinets (so old school it drives a bus with gothic arch windows), CLUI is remarkably free of a particular ideology or agenda. I thought it was refreshing that people were earnestly interested in their environment, but a fellow tourist insisted on asking if there was an underlying ideology to their work. For five minutes. With very little variation. Delightful.

Things learned at this location:
Granular soap is bad-ass.
So that's what an induction loop looks like from the surface!
There is such a thing as a driving park, and it took 50 years to build?
Oh hey, a book about the desert costs $46!

Next door to CLUI is The Museum of Jurassic Technology, a place famous in its own right. The MJT is one of those places one hears a lot of hype about and, if one is like me, never gets off their ass to go visit. The fact that this was to be the last stop of the day was what sealed the deal on this tour for me. The MJT has too much stuff in it to talk about. Seriously. I need to return when I have more than an hour to digest what was happening in that space. The MJT's mix of carefully forged apocrypha, ephemera, kipple, and out-right P.T. Barnum style huxterism is ridiculously endearing. The fact that it has the occasional fact thrown in makes it all the more maddeningly delightful. Also, Latin nerds, you will wreck your brain trying to figure out some stuff here, and that is always a plus. There was a tea-room with tea from a samovar and a lady in dreadlocks who said "let me help you with that" rather than "you're doing that wrong, let me do it for you," and the woman directing the museum was a first class raconteur who could tell a fable with a straight face. I like her style, and wish she wasn't on the long list of people I met whose names I've forgotten already.

Things learned at this location:
You can't have a fake exhibit about dice with out seeding it in reality: mention what a talus is, and next time I'll believe anything you say about celluloid.
The whole wunderkamer vibe is nice, but if could not hit my head on the ceiling/see where I am going, I will totally be much happier wandering around your maze.
Sometimes your exhibit is broken. Sometimes it's on purpose. If I can't tell the difference, you've probably suckered me into thinking it is awesome.
I don't know how to make tea with a samovar.

On the trip back, we played Look at The Bus. I think Professor Bleecker wanted to murder us for it. 1,200 Points.

Things learned on this leg of the trip:
Our power to compel people to look at the bus faded, until we realized that people in cars should count too.

All in all: Highest recommendation.

For me, this trip was about learning more about learning that these places existed than what was actually in them (that property being rather mutable in most cases). I would do it again in a heartbeat, and despite any fashionable irony or cynicism, I had a blast. I found my mind refreshed, so despite burning a day prior to finals on a field trip, I know I got more out of this than I had hoped.

Also, mea culpa on the numerous typos/GRAMMARZ issues that riddle this thing which you've just slogged through. I'll fix 'em later (never).