Upcoming classes
WORKSHOP : Gastrochromatography
Tuesday, January 15th from 7 to 9pm
This workshop will teach you to separate various components in food, not biochemically (like your stomach), or mechanically/pretentiously (like molecular gatronomists), but chemically, using the basic principles of thin-layer chromatography. We will primarily investigate and compare pigments from a variety of healthful and junk foods, with the opportunity for some artistic forays using these food-derived hues. There will also be discussion of the other major ingredients, their properties, their molecular behavior, and ways to detect these non-colored components. Participants are invited, though not required to bring a colorful food to experiment with.
$15 for members / $20 for non-members. Click here for further details & registration info.
WORKSHOP : Sound Synthesis Class
Tuesday 1/22, Thursday 1/24, Tuesday 1/29, Thursday 1/31 : 7 – 10pm
The electronic synthesis of audio signals is a wonderful combination of mathematics (harmonic analysis and linear differential equations) and electrical engineering (analog and digital signal processing). This class will present the theoretical fundamentals of sound synthesis with a view towards applications in music and sound design. We will use the open source software platform SuperCollider as a toolkit for the class. Requirements: A laptop with a working installation of SuperCollider, headphones, and a love of sound. No prior mathematical or programming experience is required.
$225 for members / $250 for non-members. Click here for further details & registration info.
WORKSHOP : Field Recording Workshop
Saturday, January 26th : Noon – 2:30pm, Sunday, January 27th : 2 – 6pm + concert of class recordings on Friday, February 1st : 8pm
Given the increase of field recordings as compositional material, this workshop is an investigation into the historical, technical, and aesthetic aspects of field recording as a means of documentation and as a musical practice. The first session will cover the various possibilities and something of a history of the genre through listening examples and discussion. The second session will cover the technical means for making field recordings including information on microphones, field recorders, and techniques for improving your sound. You’ll then use a field recorder to create a recording of your own to be played back in the concert of works on Friday, February 1st.
$45 for members / $60 for non-members. Click here for further details & registration.
posted: Thu, 10 Jan 2013 |
MACHINE PROJECT’S 2012 TO DO LIST
Ask you to become a member or donate.
Get a poetry audience handcuffed and blindfolded
Invite babies to make experimental music
Venture down a transdimensional hallway
Edit together our favorite videos for a DVD
Use the Getty Center as an instrument
Slingshot the front widow back 30 ft into gallery
Manifest 200 projects with artists
Offer the butter aerobics classes
Negotiate first successful Kickstarter campaign for ham
Enthuse on dark matter
Yodel in Bulgarian
Negotiate performances in 30 San Francisco homes
Organize a clothing optional movie screening
Walk around outdoors reading poetry
love,
Machine
Please note Machine Project will be closed from December 20th through the holidays and reopen on January 13th for our annual rummage sale!
posted: Mon, 17 Dec 2012 |
Holiday Workshop Gift Certificates
Looking for the perfect gift for someone in your life who wants to learn how to read minds OR solder a synthesizer OR make bitters OR build a primitive lie detector? Are you uncertain which of the four topics best suit their personal idiosyncrasies? As part of our year end membership drive we are offering a special Choose Your Own Workshop Gift Certificate, or CYOWGC for short.
You can purchase a CYOWGC and the recipient will be free to choose ONE of the following workshops taking place in February:
- Mind Reading Workshop: artist intuitive duo Krystal Krunch will lead participants in developing their psychic abilities.
- Musical Soldering Workshop: participants will learn to solder by building a primitive, but totally rad hand-held synthesizer to take home.
- Lie Detector Workshop: a hands on electronics workshop where participants will build a primitive lie detector in the form of a galvanic skin response meter.
- DIY Tonic & Bitters Class: cocktail enthusiasts will go home with their own batch of aromatic bitters, made in the pre-prohibition style, with their own two hands.
Gift certificates are $40 for members / $50 for non-members and can be purchased at the bottom of our donation page: http://machineproject.com/join
posted: Mon, 17 Dec 2012 |
Machine This Week: December 14th – 16th
EVENT : The Winchester Mystery House
Friday, December 14th at 8pm
Colin Dickey will tell tales of the Winchester Mystery House, the sprawling 161-room Victorian monstrosity in San Jose, CA, long considered the “world’s most haunted house.” Colin will discuss Sarah Winchester’s life and times, the Winchester repeating rifle, the rise of spiritualism in the 19th century, and why just about everything you know about her is wrong.
EVENT : Dodie Bellamy and Kevin Killian
Saturday, December 15th at 8pm
Join us for a reading of poetry and prose by Bay Area writers Dodie Bellamy and Kevin Killian. Dodie will be reading a piece on activism, poetry, and Tommy James & the Shondells. Kevin will be reading from a new novel Spreadeagle (Publication Studio) and some Christmas-type things.
EVENT : Dorkbot SoCal
Sunday, December 16th from 1 – 3pm
Dorkbot SoCal is a monthly meeting of artists (sound/image/movement/whatever), designers, engineers, students and other interested parties from the Los Angeles / Southern California area who are involved in the creation of electronic art (in the broadest sense of the term.) This round of presenters include Michael Kontopoulos, Joy Padiyar & Aaron Rasmussen.
EVENT : No Nutritional Value: Introduction to Modern Food
Sunday, December 16th at 8pm
In the effort to promote proper nutrition, Fontbron Academy is proud to present “No Nutritional Value: Introduction to Modern Food a free lecture designed to elucidate the student in the correct ways of healthy eating, safe dieting, and table manners. In the interest of providing students the best education possible, all relevant information has been gleaned from the annals of art history. Artists discussed will include: Janine Antoni, Sophie Calle, Paul Cotton, Karen Finlay, Allan Kaprow, Paul McCarthy, Adrian Piper, Carolee Schneemann, Jana Sterbak, Rirkrit Tiravanija, Zhu Yu, and many others.
posted: Mon, 10 Dec 2012 |
Machine This Week: December 7th – 9th
EVENT : Jen Hofer and Dolores Dorantes
Friday, December 7th at 8pm
Poet Dolores Dorantes will be visiting Machine Project to read from her most recent book Estilo. At her request, all audience members will be blindfolded and gently handcuffed. Each poem will be followed by Jen Hofer’s translations. After this potentially intense experience audience members will be unblindfolded, uncuffed and then served freshly-baked pie. The second half of the event will consist of an informal reading and talk with Jen, who will speak about the intertwinings of translation with the making of her own poems and will read from her work.
WORKSHOP : Lots Of Knots Workshop
Sunday, November 9th from 3 – 5pm
One one side of the gallery, Ben Dean will teach the basics of terminology, types of knots, and how to tie the important ones. He’ll also talk about how to decide which knot is right for which job, and how to combine your knots to create adjustable harnesses or create mechanical advantage. On the other side of the gallery, David Eng will be hosting 10 minute “Lacansultations” in which he will desperately attempt to explain French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan’s use of knot theory as a topological model illustrating the psychic structure of the subject. There will probably be many repetitions of the phrase “Actually, it’s a lot more complicated than that.” There will probably be many repetitions of the phrase “Actually, it’s a lot more complicated than that.”
Registration info forthcoming.
posted: Mon, 03 Dec 2012 |
Aerobic Butter and Anaerobic Bread
Aerobic Butter and Anaerobic Bread from machine project on Vimeo.
On October 28th 2012, artist Michael O’Malley taught amateur breadmakers the art of baking on the grill outside the Machine Project gallery. Inside, Pop Soda’s Jimmy Fusil conducted an aerobics class/buttermaking workshop, shaking jars of fresh cream until it magically transformed into butter! Pop Soda’s Mike Wait churned fitness tunes and jock jams, including the single “Eat Your Fat,” recorded expressly for the event.
Camera: Emily Lacy, Patrick Rees
Editor: Patrick Rees
posted: Sun, 02 Dec 2012 |
tags: aerobics, bread, butter, Jimmy Fusil, michael o'malley, Mike Wait, Pop Soda
Machine This Week: November 29th
EVENT : Dark Matter 3
Thursday, November 29th at 8pm
SPECULATIVE presents a screening on Dark Matter, a schizophrenic mix of video art and other experiments. This evening will offer glimpses of Dark Matter through the anonymous materials, inexplicable behaviors and intangible networks found in the work of an eclectic selection of artists. This is the third in a series of events exploring Dark Matter organized by the artist collective SPECULATIVE. Curated by Michael Kontopoulos, Christopher O’Leary & Zach Blas.
posted: Tue, 27 Nov 2012 |
Machine This Week: November 16 – 18th
EVENT : A Poetry Reading by CAConrad
Friday, November 16th at 8pm
Machine Project’s poet-in-residence for the week is CAConrad, who will be reading from his latest collection of (Soma)tic Poetry entitled A BEAUTIFUL MARSUPIAL AFTERNOON. (Soma)tic Poetics are instructional exercises meant to provoke an inspired interaction with the world, or, in CAConrad’s own words: “Experiences that are unorthodox steps in the writing process which can shift the poet’s perception of the quotidian, if only for a series of moments.”
EVENT : FLOWERS DREAMING THE ELEVATION ALLEGIANCE: A (Soma)tic Poetry Workshop
Saturday, November 17th from 12 – 3pm
CAConrad will lead an interactive workshop about (Soma)tic Poetics. “With our poems and creative core, we must RETURN THIS WORLD to its seismic levels of wildness. The aim of (Soma)tic poetry and poetics is the realization of two basic ideas: (1) Everything around us has a creative viability with the potential to spur new modes of thought and imaginative output. (2) The most vital ingredient to bringing sustainable, humane changes to our world is creativity. This can be enacted on a daily basis.”
Register here: http://machineproject.com/archive/classwork/2012/11/17/flowers-dreaming-the-elevation-allegiance-a-somatic-poetry-workshop
EVENT : Climate Variations
Sunday, November 18th at 8pm
An evening of works which utilize extreme temperature differences as a means of sound production by Liam Mooney and Todd Lerew. The Quartz Cantabile is a new musical instrument that applies a method known to thermoacousticians for converting heat into sound. The resultant tones are loud and pure—perhaps the purest that can be achieved acoustically. In Dry Ice and Brass Chimes, performers use small chunks of solid (and very cold) carbon dioxide to gently touch suspended brass chimes. The relative warmth of the chimes transforms some of the carbon dioxide from solid to gas, and it escapes into the surrounding air. As it does this, it puts pressure on the chimes, setting them into motion and creating sound.
posted: Mon, 12 Nov 2012 |
tags: CAConrad, fire, ice, Liam Mooney, music, poetry, Todd Lerew
Machine This Week: November 9th – 11th
Mechanical engineer Mark Glusker and Museum Exhibit Developer Maria Mortati will be in residence all weekend to provide a series of lectures, interactive performances and workshops oriented around vintage calculating machines.
EVENT : The Lost Calculator
Friday, November 9th at 8pm
In 1840 Thomas Fowler, an inventor and a self-taught engineer, built a calculating machine made entirely out of wood. Neither the machine nor drawings survived. Mechanical engineer Mark Glusker, working with a team of historians in England, built a reconstruction to prove that it worked. Fowler was a contemporary of Charles Babbage, one of the pioneers of early computers. While Babbage used a decimal system, Fowler used a base 3 calculation. Mark Glusker will provide a lecture about the machine, base 3 calculation and Thomas Fowler.
EVENT : The Great Calculation
Saturday, November 10th at 8pm
Calculators are silent, ubiquitous, boring, and utterly reliable- to the point where you don’t even question the answers that you get. In the early 1960’s they were big, heavy, noisy, smelly objects. They had unique interfaces and needed constant maintenance for reliability. Calculation was a visceral process that shook the entire table. Mark Glusker will talk about his collection of mechanical calculating machines and what makes them so compelling: from their mechanical complexity to the unique interfaces, and industrial design. After the talk there will be an orchestrated calculation performed simultaneously by 6 mechanical calculators and members of the audience plus a very special secret musical guest!
EVENT : Machine Drawing & Dissection Workshop
Sunday, November 11th from noon to 3pm
This dual-track workshop approaches calculating machines from a technological and experiential point of view. We will disassemble several 1960’s era mechanical calculating machines and explore what makes them work. We will also talk about other forms of calculation without transistors. While continuing to look under the hood of the machines, we will have a simultaneous workshop where participants can make miniature gesture drawings of the motors in action, and create large-scale compositions of their tiny gears, cams, and springs. Machine dissection will be led by Mark Glusker and machine drawing by Maria Mortati.
Register for this class at the following link:
http://machineproject.com/archive/classwork/2012/11/11/machine-drawing-dissection-workshop
posted: Mon, 05 Nov 2012 |
Machine This Week: November 2nd
EVENT : Dark Matter 2
Friday, November 2nd at 8pm
Our exploration of Dark Matter will continue this week, with nine artists, researchers, writers and ethnographers approaching the theme of dark matter in nine eclectic, short-form talks. Modeled after the Pecha Kucha presentation style, each presenter will show 20 slides for 20 seconds each, totaling six minutes. The slides progress on a timer, forcing each speaker to keep up!
posted: Tue, 30 Oct 2012 |