Two cool events at Machine Project in Los Angeles

The wonderful art gallery/tech workshop called Machine Project in Los Angeles’ Echo Park has two great events this weekend:

SEEING ANEW: A LECTURE BY TREVOR OAKES + RYAN OAKES

Co-hosted by The Institute For Figuring and Machine Project

7pm Sunday June 24, 2007

FREE

It is hard to believe there is anything new to be discovered about perspective drawing. But in 2004 twin artists Trevor and Ryan Oakes made a startling discovery about how to render perspectival images on the inner surface on a sphere. Their discovery is all the more intriguing in the light of recent controversy surrounding David Hockney’s thesis about the use of spherical lenses in the making of perspective drawings in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.

In their first public talk the Oakes will discuss their perspectival research and will demonstrate their unique spherical rendering technique. The lecture will include a historical account of other optical tools used to depict three-dimensional space – including the concave mirror-lens, the camera obscura, and the camera lucida – by way of introduction to their own method, which explores the interplay between the visual cortex and the human retina using pen and “concave paper.”

The Institute For Figuring is a Los Angeles-based organization dedicated to the poetic and aesthetic dimensions of science and mathematics.

Link

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Build a Blubber Bot Robotic Blimp – Instructor Jed Berk

Saturday June 30th, 2007

10am – 4pm (w/ a break for lunch)

One-day workshop w/ materials included. $185

Enrollment is limited to 7 people.

Blubber Bots are DIY robotic species that navigate autonomously and intelligently. Blubber Bots float, dance, seek and sing. They are light-seeking helium-filled balloons that graze the landscape in search of light and cell-phone signals. If you make a call and wave your phone near a Blubber Bot, it will go into a flocking dance or sing you a special tune. They bellow sounds similar to a whale’s song and serenade you with melodies. When not being played with, they rest for awhile, awakening periodically and seeking attention.

Join us at Machine Project to build your very own Blubber Bot with inventor Jed Berk. Link