I hope everybody had a safe and happy New Year celebration, and is enjoying the first week of 2008!
I’ve spent the past week here at Tammy’s apartment in the Mission. The experience has been different from the usual visit, because much of the beginning of it involved moving/cleaning. But overall it’s been really enjoyable. Seeing some of my other friends has also been an added bonus.
Out of the many things we’ve done, a couple have stood out. Haight/Ashberry was interesting and certainly charming, but damn, did I ever feel totally un-hip after attempting to shop there. It’s my own damn fault for refusing to spend $100 on some allover print hoodie and neon pink sunglasses. Which way is the GAP? There’s an Amoeba Music there too, which was huge and awesome.
JapanTown was excellent as usual. I’d say it’s even better than LA’s Little Tokyo. Much bigger and cleaner with more stores. The inside of the mall areas reminded me alot of the winding hallways of many of Tokyo’s larger subway stations (ramen shops, etc.). Okay, Art stuff:
Amisha gave me a VIP tour of The Exploratorium, which was really fun, but somewhat stressful at the same time. The space is really large and was packed to the rafters with screaming children on field trips. I felt bad wanting to shove them out of the way to play with the exhibits because they’re sort of the primary audience. . . But the exhibits were very cool. How could they not be? One great thing about the space is that the woodshop where some of the exhibits are made features very prominently as part of the museum, with clear walls to observe how things get made.
The Olafur Eliasson show at SFMOMA was as great as everybody told me it was. I don’t really intend to write a detailed review of the show, but suffice it to say that it was simply delightful. His work is always really impressive, fun and experiential. One highlight, was a room full of models, tests and experiments made of various cheap/raw materials. It was a bit like peaking into his studio. Seeing this sort of process work featured as a major part of the exhibition was great because it emphasized the importance of testing, iteration and failure, in my opinion. It was a good reminder to myself never forget how important process is. Then, there was an ice sculpture/car piece that I didn’t quite understand. I mean to say, I read the description and understand the political significance of doing it…But admittedly, it seems a bit “bloated” when compared to the other pieces which as you can imagine, are very simple, elegant and beautiful.
I got to meet Craig Baldwin, which was an unexpected surprise. One of my classmates and former student of his, took me to his studio/exhibition space (ATA) on Valencia to meet him. Having watched his films in college, I was nerding out a little bit and didn’t talk much. But I didn’t really need to because Baldwin was already quite excitable and talkative. He went into detail about the new film he’s working on (all about Scientology myths and scandals, and much much more!) and showed us around his crazy, messy studio space (which made perfect sense to him), including his massive, massive film archive, which is modestly crammed into a room in his basement. AMAZING. He’ll be lecturing at D|MA this fall as part of our grad “curated” lecture series. I’ll report on that when it comes!
That’s all that comes to mind for now. Now i’ll just blurt out some other great stuff; mostly places i’ve eaten. “Mission Pie” makes great…pie. We had a lovely breakfast there on New Years Day. Dogeared Books, Needles and Pens (DIY goods) and Aquarius Records on Valencia are all awesome establishments. David showed me an awesome alley full of wall paintings (Clarion Alley) that I would never have found on my own. Philz Coffee is my new favorite place to get coffee. I bought a pound of one of their many delicious handmade blends to take back to LA. Oh, and don’t ride on the rails. Dangerous!
San Francisco is a great city; You can get around without a car, people are interesting, Mexican food is amazing, and so on and so on. And now my girlfriend and best friends live here! What more could a guy ask for?
I’ll add pictures after I upload them.
This update will cover several unrelated things because, as you can see, i’m already beginning to slip in terms of update-consistency.
Most recently, I took a mini-road trip to San Fransisco. The opportunity presented itself in the form of a ride. I got dropped of in San Jose, where my friend Nate lives, and we ventured there Saturday morning, stopping for a small tour of the Stanford campus on the way. In the end, I only spent about 24 hours in San Fran, but it was still really fun and I got to hang out with two of my best friends from college and their friends/significant others. I mostly hung around the Mission area and played catchup while getting exposed to a bit of local flavor.
The Mission district — an area of town that is quickly getting more popular — contains a ton of really interesting antique stores and specialty shops. It’s also full of beautiful murals. Most importantly though, it contains Philz Coffee, which made my weekend. Plus Dolores park is there, and there are enough beautiful hipsters around to feed a small country. I’ve got to say, it was a real breath of fresh air to visit a city where people actually walk around. Don’t take pedestrians for granted: They have a way of making a neighborhood feel loved that is often missing in LA.
On the way home, my friend and I found the most remote In-N-Out Burger in the world. It felt a bit like perching on the edge of the earth and eating your last meal. And that meal is a double-double, animal style (no spread).
In other news:
+ I bought a Nintendo DS. I’ve never owned a video game system in my entire life until now. Why did I make the jump? Most likely because a) I’m so impressed with Nintendo’s embrace of gesture based interfaces as the new direction of gameplay and b) It’s cheaper than a Wii. Plus, you can get wireless on it, and if you buy this guy you can load mp3’s, videos, home-made applications, (etc) onto your DS. I think that’s pretty rad.
+ I got a work study position in my department as a Masters Student Assistant to the Head of our dep’t, who is now Casey Reas. I’ll start when school begins, later next week.
+ LA Greekfest? Slightly unimpressive. There wasn’t too much to do for a couple of 20something males. And while the food was, in fact, delicious, something about having to pay to get in, only to pay again for food tasted a bit sour. It was great to hear to some Greek being spoken, however. And, I scored some Greek coffee, which I was out of and looking for!
That’s all for now kids. For interesting website links, check my del.icio.us and for more San Fran photos, check my flickr (on the left menu).
Sorry I didn’t get a chance to write from Siggraph. The installation went smoothly, but I always felt bad sitting at the computer while other people were working!
First things first: I didn’t make it to the zoo. I know, I know; No need to twist the knife, people. But SD is so close to LA, I’m sure I’ll see panda’s soon enough.
A few words on Siggraph: It seems to be one of those events that is worthwhile to show in, at least once if you get a chance. The collection was unapologetically odd, however. There were a couple big names, some even CMU and UCLA related. But then there was also a TON of painfully mediocre digitally manipulated photography. I mean, c’mon people! Aren’t we over this yet? I got that feeling about some of the media art projects too, but mostly from the projects in the “Emerging Technologies” section. Oh, I also got a peek at Microsof Surface, which is basically a giant iPhone on its side by the look of it. I think the most interesting feature of Surface will be its ability to interface with physical hardware. To me though, this is a clear sign that its initial marketing will be almost exclusively to hotel lobbies, phone stores and things like that. For example, imagine going into a phone store, placing your phone onto the surface and, using some interface, dragging ringtones or package options into the circle drawn around your phone or something like that. Or putting your mp3 player (made my Microsoft, duh) on it and dragging mp3’s from your library onto the area where the player. Then they go wirelessly into it. What annoyed me about the presentation of it though was how they talked about gestural interfaces as though nothing like it had ever been conceived, completely omitting any mention of all the other research being done by interaction designers in the field of multi-touch and gestural interfaces. Jeff Han, comes to mind.
Events will continue there all week, but I only planned on going for the installation. I am kinda disappointed about missing a few things, notably the (slightly out of place) Siggraph fashion show, the animation theater will all the 3D animation shorts, and a performance by DMA alum, Takeshi. Some cool work I saw there included Ingo Gunther’s WORLDPROCESSOR project, Mark Shepard’s Tactical Sound Garden, Shawn Lawson’s Wu Wei.
San Diego is a lot smaller than I thought. There seem to be some interesting pockets and the weather was nice, but overall I don’t think i’d ever want to live there. I spent most of my time around the southern end of the city, by the convention center and the “gaslamp district” which is full of overpriced restaurants that cater to the convention center’s company credit-card type crowd. The padres were playing at the nearby stadium so that area was also full of bros. Also bike-taxi’s are HUGE there! As an unexpected and pleasant surprise, though, I also got to see my friend Ali again, who was volunteering there.
To sum up — Siggraph: Kinda cool/kinda weird. San Diego: Meh…
Oh, and don’t ever, ever, ever drive a rental car to Tijuana…ever… (ever). There’s a story there, but i’m too embarrassed to tell it!
