inner nerd

The Maker Faire is like an engineer’s craft show on acid. There’s dudes riding around in go-carts that look like cupcakes, sixty-year-olds playing Jules Verne in the Steam Punk pavilion and lots of fire. This first video features Mark Galt’s intoxicating “Quadruped” kinetic sculpture at the Bay Area Maker Faire in May 2010.

SCHEMATIC: More videos and photos from Maker Faire 2010…

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This video is remarkably awesome.

This track treads a fine line between funky disco and satin-smooth pillow talk. This particular cut is actually experimental composer/saxophonist Peter Gordon’s lovely re-arrangement of Battisti Lucio’s early Italo track, Ancora Tu, with some lover’s chat provided by pioneering NY-based designer/artist Colette.

SCHEMATIC: Battisti Lucio’s Ancora Tu video and photos of Colette’s work…

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This video was an integral part of my nerdlinghood. Visually rich to the nth degree: Besides the sweet sidecar motorcycle and lunatic scientists, you have the superhot lab assistant, Ms. Sakamoto, who doubles as a cello. Classic nerd track. BTW, Dolby has been the Musical Director of the TED conferences since 2001.

SCHEMATICS: Album artwork and other gems from Dolby… Read the rest of this entry »

For you design nerds, this classic posting on Core 77 chronicles the cartooned adventures of Lunchbreath and Fueledbycoffee at the International Housewares Show in chi-town. Great for a laugh.

There aren’t too many young, contemporary bands that could fool me into thinking their work was good enough to be recorded 30 years ago. Medio Mutante (translation Average Mutant) is one of them. This naughty triad of vintage audio and video synthesizer maestros is putting out really thick analogue music. BTW, they’re using a Fairlight CVI video synth for the visuals. Nerd Approved!

SCHEMATIC: Cover art, release info, more vids and where to buy… Read the rest of this entry »

An 11-minute face-melting video edit of Kraftwerk’s 23-minute opus. The real cybernetic acid trip is the five-minute breakdown that beings around 3:06. Animation by Roger Mainwood and John Halas in 1979. The video was posted in two parts, so load the rest of the post to view the second half…

SCHEMATIC: Video part two, Mainwood interview and high res vinyl rip…

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Written, produced, filmed, directed and narrated by Charles and Ray Eames in 1957, The Information Machine: Creative Man and the Data Processor was the first film The Eames Office made for IBM. It was commissioned by IBM’s then consultant director of design Eliot Noyes for screening at the IBM pavilion at the 1958 Brussels World Fair.

IBM Pavilion - Brussels World Fair (1958)

Noyes, an accomplished architect and designer in his own right, had been instrumental in promoting Eames’ earliest furniture work while serving as curator of MoMA’s industrial design collection from 1939 – 1946. In fact, Charles Eames and Eero Saarinen won the MoMA Organic Design Competition in 1940, sparking the meteoric rise of their careers.

MoMA - Organic Design in Home Furnishings (1941)

The Information Machine is a 10-minute (mostly) animated film detailing the need for and use of computers as decision making tools. Consistent with all of Eames’ work, The Information Machine presents its subject in a deeply humanistic light, leaving the viewer with the impression that computers are a natural product of human ingenuity and ultimately useful in society. It is, therefore, a wonderfully effective piece of corporate communication that promotes the computer as an accessible piece of technology that empowers man to make better decisions. Apple anyone?

Still 1: The Information Machine (1958)

This was the first of many projects that The Eames Office completed for IBM in a symbiotic relationship that spanned more than 20 years and greatly advanced the popularization of science, math, design and computing in the United States.