Year: 2011

Art is Wrong: How your Brain Tells you Beautiful Lies

| Matthew Borgatti

Speaking is intensely exciting. I love sharing, teaching, and lining up all of my thoughts into something concise and convincing. Something about ordering a swarm of swirling tenuous ideas into a coherent presentation makes them more vivid and solid.

I’ve been looking for more opportunities to speak and on my hunt for possible events to pursue I stumbled across the Extreme Futurist Festival put on by Michael Anissimov and Rachel Haywire. It seemed like an interesting gathering of tech enthusiasts, new media junkies, teachers, singularity proselytizers, and a huge varied random smattering of people I thought it would be fun to talk with. Plus Alex Peake was going to be there, and it was impossible to refuse an opportunity to catch up on what he’s been up to.

Continue reading →

I am Amanda Fucking Palmer

| Matthew Borgatti

I went to the Gemini and Scorpio Masquerade Macabre this year, which is an event stuffed with artists, arealists, musicians, and the kind of people who make life worth living. I had a lovely chance encounter with Eva Galperin, saw a few dozen intense costumes, helped Danielle Hills of Gilding Primal Instinct wrangle her display, and hobnobbed with the creators of Baritarian Boy.

Since it was scheduled to be such a fancy gala I thought it was time to dress up as something wonderful. I used to go all out for Halloween costumes, but have ended up spending more time on other folks’ costumes than my own lately. Well, I couldn’t think of anything more wonderful than Amanda Palmer, so voila. I’ve got to thank Numi for providing the wig, makeup, and most of the wardrobe for this one. I mostly picked out clothing and kvetched as my eyebrows were being painted on.

Continue reading →

STAR-TIDES and Geeks With Out Bounds

| Matthew Borgatti

A few weeks ago I traveled down to a conference put on by the DOD called STAR-TIDES with Willow Bl00 on behalf of Geeks With Out Bounds. Ostensibly the purpose of the conference is to mesh NGO’s with government based relief organizations and share information and designs under a more open source and open access ethic. You can read more about the event on their about page, though their language a little dense. There were a few distinct groups that attended, and I think they each came out with a different picture on the purpose of the event.

The conference ended up having three broad categories of participants: vendors hoping to catch government buyers for their tech (many of them showing products that had direct military applications with plausible uses for relief), government agencies getting a handle on the field of NGO open source tech, and hackers. As you might be able to gather I was incredibly enamored by the hackers that showed up.

Continue reading →

The Anywhere Organ at Maker Faire

| Matthew Borgatti

Howdy, y’all. Come out and see the Anywhere Organ in action at this year’s World Maker Faire. I’m going to be setting up a keyboard for people to play with, a laptop to run some sweet MIDI tunes, and there might even be some special musical guests. I’ve also got a Kickstarter going to raise funds for a bigger, better, more amazing version. Check it out at http://kck.st/anywhereorgan

You can see a sweet video of the organ in action after the jump. 

Continue reading →