hustler of culture

Brooklyn - Paranoid Machines Lecture (04.04.09)

Paranoid Machines Brooklyn edition

Paranoid Machines lecture by Jason Brown
At Cabinet, 300 Nevins St, Brooklyn, NY
Sat, April 4, 7pm – 9pm

Please join Machine Project’s Jason Brown for an epic presentation examining contemporary gnostic mythologies of technology and paranoia, focusing on Vannevar Bush as a self-embodied allegorical emblem of information perversity. Bush’s famed “memex” and the modern UFOs are both hypothetical machines—devices which use association and performativity to spin information out of noise. In modern techno-myths, this process is often represented as an alchemical self-destruction resulting in god-like power. Not coincidentally, all these issues are illustrated with disturbing density and prescience in the 1981 Disney film “Tron.”

Call for Submissions: Mini-Golf Course Design Contest

Big City Forum

March 3, 2009 - 5:12 p.m. - Echo Park, CA

I'm a member of Los Angeles do-good organization, Big City Forum, a "project designed to push forth a creative cities agenda." For the second gathering, we met at the Echo Park Film Center to meet and greet other members and to converse with LA-based architects, Stephanie Smith of Ecoshack, and Jenna Didier and Oliver Hess of Materials & Applications.  It was a pleasure for me to meet Stephanie offline and to catch up with Jenna after a near decade lapse of correspondence. The architects walked us through their life's work and shared their experiences of building and creating in the City of Angels. After the insightful presentations, the floor was open to everyone and the community shared their two cents. Discussions of how we could help one another moving forward seemed really sincere and exciting!

I'm proud to be a part of a community so invested in Los Angeles. And I'm grateful to Leonardo for the opportunity. Thanks, all!

Eye Spy 2008

(almost) a photo a day by hustler of culture and silviothemilvio.

RELATED: Eye Spy 2007, Eye Spy 2006

'The Twitter Film' by CSK

the twitter film (racing north, chased by tweets, chasing tweets) from svanes on Vimeo.

Christian shot his road trip from Los Angeles to San Francisco on May 30, 2008. He recently finished his short film about a time lapse journey by car. Christian meant for the clip to move time forward on three levels, "the actual travel that is recorded on film that can be measured in distance and time, while the twitter postings provide an additional register of the day’s progression." Two of my tweets are used in the film, "check your IM chat log PUNK ASS. May 23rd. 6:56 p.m. APOLOGIES good for the next 24 hours," and "according to GOOGLE MAPS, there are 7 car accidents waiting for me on my commute home. looks like i'm taking surface streets from BURBANK!" It's a fun clip, I hope you enjoy it as much as I did!

Entertainment Gathering 2008 Recap

Entertainment Gathering 2008 was incredibly inspirational and moving. I was at times, welling up witnessing what was on stage. But mostly, I was in awe of the human spirit and all the exciting projects and things people were up to. The company was top notch! So many creatives. So much talent. So nice people! I am grateful to have seen and heard what had transpired over a few days in Monterey, California and I look forward to attending the event again in the near future. Thanks EG 2008 for all the story-worthy memories.

Bjork on Televisions

It's reassuring to know that real life pixie Bjork has been true blue after all these years. Wow, what a special lady. I wish she were my friend so I could ask her serious questions about nature and technology. Look at her tights! I think they're currently available at American Apparel and this video's gotta be at least 20 years old! Look at the young whiz explain televisions! Bjork says the innards look like "a little model of a city." And closes the show with such genius: "You shouldn't let poets lie to you." Well, I'll say! [Thanks Evan]

Save the Videogame

Richard Lemarchand from gamecity on Vimeo.

There's no question, videogames have influenced my life. I fondly remember spending many hours with friends and family hovering over the Atari 2600, Atari 5200, and the Commodore 64 growing up. Many allowances and after school hours were spent at the arcade. I often took ideas from the computer to the real world -- completing virtual adventures, outside. I married a game developer over 10 years ago and we've since hosted hundreds of game nights together. We have nearly every major game console launched in the past 30 years gathering dust in our garage. I was once a games journalist. Our cat's name is Atari. Videogame royalties bought our home. We have been hosting an annual post E3 barbecue for the past six years. Some of our best buddies, like Richard (above) we met through the interactive entertainment industry. Without games I'd be without a lot.

Tell people about the National Videogame Archive and register to help save the videogame today. Please spread the word. Thanks!

LA - The Election Night Celebration (11.04.08)

John Fogerty at The Fulfillment Fund Annual Stars 2008 Benefit Gala

October 13, 2008 - 9:24 p.m. - Beverly Hills, CA

LA - The Love Sessions With DJ ?uestlove (09.26.08)

Holla Hustlers! Put on your dancing shoes. ?uestlove's camp wants you to attend The Love Sessions this Friday at the Roxy! In addition, come and show your support for Obama. The only way to guarantee entrance to the party is to buy your ticket now. Otherwise, leave a comment and enter to win a pair of tickets to the show. Two lucky winners will be picked at random on Thursday, September 25, 2008 at 6:00 pm PST. Good luck, everybody!

Car Wash Rainbow

September 20, 2008 - 4:37 p.m. - Santa Monica, CA

Not Too Con-CERN'ed

Earlier today, scientists at the world's leading laboratory for particle physics, the European Organization for Nuclear Research aka CERN turned on the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) for the first time. The LHC fired a beam of protons inside a 17-mile long tunnel underneath Europe beginning the search to unlock the secrets of the universe.

Today's accomplishment couldn't have been less sexy. Don't get me wrong, it's all very exciting. But it didn't seem to reach the fervor of say, Michael Phelps' mission to break world records and make Olympic history. And nothing to me seems more Olympic than what happened earlier today. Nah, mean?!

How our science-backed Curious George potential for ending the world (the LHC can potentially create tiny black holes that could suck in the planet) passed without so much fanfare is a little surprising to me. Sure a bunch of my pals twittered about it. A few doomsday statements were made. Funny ha-ha LHC joke sites were passed around. But for the most part, I don't think too many people seemed to care that much about whether or not we were going to wake up today. I mean, we were only turning on the biggest machine in the world today. Are we that jaded? Is it because we can still remember the Y2K event horizon that never happened? Or do we just not really care? Not too many people in the world seemed too interested. I mean they were kind of interested, but just not as interested as in at least another dozen topics.

I think we should give the world's largest atom smasher some high fives for kicking off without killing us off. I know I'm looking forward to learning more about how the universe started. That way, when the shit hits the fan and everything turns all Terminator/Total Recall on us, I can forever celebrate the brilliant minds and the science behind today and be like, "Yo, I was there at the beginning of _______!" Get up and clap your hands people, today was momentous.

RELATED: CERN Revisited

Playful Spaces by Bruno Taylor

Little Thinkers/Tinkerers

Me jumping on the far left with my siblings and classmates at a Science Fair.

I recently got into an argument with a friend-of-a-friend a couple of weeks ago because she announced to our barbecue group that she was going to leash her child when her infant daughter was old enough to walk. The mom had received a baby backpack as a gift from very adoring and paranoid family. You know, the backpack leash? Yeah... that. Anyway, this new mother was adamant that it was a good idea, especially in "today's world". After a civil but heated short discussion, I felt without having my own child to use as an example, there was no use arguing with a woman who lives with that kind of fear. I was angry inside. But I let it go. Or at least I tried. But then I realized, I couldn't.

I'm all about kids running around, experimenting, and getting hurt and learning from it. Maybe, a reality check or a small dose of survival of the fittest? Enough coddling. Enough of this arrested development, already. We all need a little trauma to help us grow as people! Since my debate with the leash-advocate, I've asked nearly all my friends with spawn if they let their kids play outside, alone or with friends in a yard or on the streets. All of my peers said, yes. Which admittedly, made me feel better.

I grew up in Arlington, Virginia with a forest as my back yard. I spent a lot of time with my neighbors and siblings running through the woods and digging waterfalls on the hills. We endlessly explored the creek that ran behind our yard and rode our bikes around town like the posse in E.T. We learned to play outdoors and got into some good clean fun/trouble. Along with the one hour of Physical Education and one hour of recess I received at school, my parents expected us kids to go outside and play from the minute we arrived home, up until dinner time. That's about six hours of physical exercise daily before we sat down to eat (you can now stop wondering why kids today are overweight/obese). And we did all this exploring and dreaming before we even started our homework.

Birthday Beach Picnic 2008

August 16, 2008 - 4:24 p.m. - Santa Monica, CA

We celebrated my 36th birthday (August 14th) by the beach with several dozen of our closest friends! Happy Birthday to me! Thanks everybody for coming out.

FrieNDA Lunch at DreamWorks

July 11 2008 - 12:12 p.m. - Glendale, CA

Ori hosted a bunch of us for a DreamWorks' campus lunch and tour. The complex is beautiful, complete with waterfalls, a pond with koi and duck and it gives off a vibe of a fairly relaxed environment. There were busy ping pong games and overly crowded lunch tables filled with really smiley people. My second visit was even more fun because I got to share it with others. DWA's pretty, pretty cool... it must be the free yogurt machine! Thanks again, Ori!

SD - The Land Of Plenty and Surfaid International Fundraiser (06.26.08)

Happy Ten To Us!

On June 21, 1998 Silvio and I got married in a backyard wedding. Our invitations, sent only a few weeks earlier stated casual attire required. Surprisingly, lots of people turned up on such short notice. Keeping up with our non traditional ways, we actually got married in a bathtub in our Aunt Lori and Uncle Mike's house by our Aunt Sharon and Uncle Edward so that our guests wouldn't have to sit through the vows. After our 10 minute secret ceremony we came out to the backyard where everyone was relaxing and announced that we were married. We asked the closest people to us at that time to celebrate the longest day in Santa Monica with us. And it was a joyous day.

Fast forward 10 years. What an amazing journey. The years just zipped on by. I'm thrilled to have hit this milestone. It's something kind of incredible. Here's to the next decade and whatever adventures come our way!

Made in Scandinavia* Hosted by Lara and Theresa

June 20, 2008 - 6:38 p.m. - Mar Vista, CA

Lara and Theresa went on hols in Scandinavia. It was more like a modern design mission. They came back with lots of photos and loot. To share their experience, they showcased what they'd seen with a slideshow and snacks. Take a peek below: