machine project

FungiFest 2010 at Machine Project

2009-09-30T19:06:14Z

From January 15th – 24th Machine Project will be consumed by fungi and molds. There will be workshops on wild mushroom collecting, a screening of mushroom-themed Japanese horror films, mushroom flavored frozen yogurt, a foray in the woods to collect specimens, slime mold racing, mushroom growing and cooking classes and much much more. Everyone who wants to get involved is encouraged to bring in specimens throughout the week, whether you find them growing in your yard, behind your toilet or in the woods. Our resident mushroom and mold expert, Bob Cummings of Santa Barbara City College, will be on hand to drop knowledge and guide us in identification. We also plan to create a book, cataloguing the various mushrooms we find throughout the week.

So mark your calendars and prepare to be fungified.

Music Improvisation Workshop

2009-10-20T22:49:58Z

4 Sundays in January 2010
1/10, 1/17, 1/24, 1/31 from 1-3pm

Opening performance Friday January 8th, 2010 at 8pm

Led by Rory Cowal, Sara Roberts and Isaac Schankler

For this series of workshops, musicians of all levels and musical backgrounds are invited to participate. Together, we will explore all of the ways we can interact through music and the extraordinary sonic worlds that arise as a result. As a full ensemble and in different small ensemble combinations, we will find strategies for successfully cooperating as a group while still asserting our individuality and expressing our personal voices. We will use improvisation as a tool to better understand structure and form in a performance. We will also hone our compositional skills; while improvising, we must ask ourselves, “what does this work need and how will my contribution add to the character and evolution of the piece?” The fruits of our efforts will be spontaneous and extraordinary works of art. Tapping into our collective imagination and creativity, we will invent fantastic textures of timbre, melody, harmony, and color.

We will explore these ideas further with John Zorn’s Cobra, a popular and continually evolving improvisational game piece. In Cobra, players respond to a variety of gestures and cards that provide countless possibilities for musical interaction. However, players wishing to strike out on their own can become “guerrillas” and set their own agenda, making for an often unpredictable but always compelling spectacle. The workshops will culminate in a performance that incorporates all aspects of these improvisational strategies.

Free!

Our Annual Holiday Fry-B-Q! Now with extra Freeze-B-Q!

2009-09-23T21:15:12Z

Saturday, December 12th, 2009

This year’s Fry-B-Q is also a Freeze-B-Q, and additionally is members-only! To get in to the all-you-can-fry all-you-can-freeze spectacular, please become a Machine Project Member here.

Pinatas

2009-09-30T23:49:04Z

with Sarah Bay Williams

Thursday, December 10th, 2009
8pm

Please join Sarah Bay Williams as she presents a talk about the short history, process, materials, resources, human nature, and meanings behind piñata-making. With live demonstration of a piñata in use (and full of candy).

THE BLACKEST FLUX

2009-10-21T19:11:50Z

Duration: 15 minutes
Date: Sunday, December 6, 2009
Time: 8pm, 8:30pm, 9pm — three shows, please RSVP using the links below.
Place: Basement

Please join us for a sound performance in total darkness by artist Yutaka Makino.

Please arrive on time (not too early). Performances will start promptly at their scheduled times.

The sound performance will be relatively loud and the darkness will be quite black, so this performance is not recommended for those who experience ligyrophobia, achluophobia or claustrophobia.

RSVP HERE:
-> First Performance, 8pm sharp
-> Second Performance, 8:30pm sharp
-> Third Performance, 9pm sharp

A Machine Project Field Guide to LACMA: Book Release

2009-10-29T00:54:22Z

Saturday, December 5th, 2009

We’ve been hard at work on a catalog for the show we did at LACMA last year, and it’ll finally be done this winter!

Please join us on December 5th at LACMA for the book release party for A Machine Project Field Guide to LACMA.

Further details to follow. Pre-sale for this book now available via our online store, here:

-> www.machineproject.com/shop/lacmabook

And you can download a PDF preview of the book using this link:

-> Lo-res PDF version

For info on what exactly it was we did at LACMA last year, go here: www.machineproject.com/lacma

Walking Tables and Wrestling Foals (at New York MoMA, not at Machine)

2009-10-06T00:40:44Z

For any Machine Project fans in New York, here’s a repost of a Machine Project/Doug Repetto event happening at MoMA:

Walking Tables and Wrestling Foals: A Hands-on Workshop and Musical Performance

Friday, December 4, 2009, 2:00 p.m. –8:00 p.m.

more info here: http://www.moma.org/visit/calendar/events/7642

Join Machine Project for a day of woodworking, mechanical mayhem, and cute baby horses. Participants collaborate with artist Douglas Repetto in manufacturing a herd of “foals”—simple walking tables handmade from scrap wood and basic mechanical parts. The foal-building workshop is a humorous take on issues central to the Bauhaus movement, including the relationships between form and function and between craft and mass production. At the end of the afternoon the foals are let loose in MoMA’s Education and Research Building. Musicians from the experimental chamber ensemble WetInk provide musical accompaniment with improvisations informed by the movements and intersections of the foals. Foal pandemonium or peaceful frolic? There’s only one way to find out! Workshop participants and audience members may adopt a foal. Take-home foal-building plans are available.

Workshop: 2:00–6:00 P.M.
Performance: 7:00–8:00 P.M.

This program is free and participation is on a drop-in first-come, first-served basis. All materials are provided. Open to ages 15 and up.

In conjunction with the exhibition Bauhaus 1919–1933: Workshops for Modernity.

Tranimal Drag Make-up Workshop

2009-10-28T19:58:37Z

Monday, November 30th, 2009
7:00PM – 9:00PM

Workshop Admission:
$8.00 for materials (first come first served, the night of the event)
Bring some clothes to sacrifice!

In conjunction with Ultra Fabulous Beyond Drag at the Downtown Independent Theatre, Saskia Wilson-Brown and Austin Young are bringing us a Tranimal drag workshop, where Fade-Dra and Squeaky Blonde will teach the assembled how to apply tranimal drag make-up. Definitely not your typical make-up workshop. Conan O’Brien’s head costumer Scott Cronick will be in attendance, teaching quick costume tricks… and a tucking workshop. Before and after portraits by Austin Young.

For more information on Ultra Fabulous Beyond Drag, click here.

The Dolphinarium; or, How Far Down Does the Blowhole Go

2009-10-20T20:21:01Z

Saturday, November 21st, 2009
8pm

A lecture by David Eng on the subject of dolphins.

Mignonette Game Kit: Soldering Workshop

2009-10-29T21:37:15Z

Saturday, November 21st, 2009
12pm – 3pm

Taught by Rolf van Widenfelt, SF Bay Area engineer and co-designer of the Mignonette Game.

——Registration——
All Machine Project Members receive a discount on classes — click here to become a member!

Members – $55. Price includes kit with all required parts.

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Non-members – $70. Price includes kit with all required parts.

Save $15 on this class today by becoming a Machine Project member! Membership starts at $5/month.

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In this workshop, each participant will assemble their own Mignonette Game kit, and learn to solder in the process.

The Mignonette kit is a perfect introduction to soldering and electronics, with challenges for intermediate skill levels too.

Mignonette (pronounced MIN-nya-net) is a handheld game that has a 5×7 pixel bicolor LED display, 4 input buttons, a speaker, and uses an AVR microcontroller as its “brain”. It is fully programmable and is based on freely downloadable development tools. First introduced at the Maker Faire, hundreds of Mignonette kits have been assembled at various events and conferences since.

The kit comes preloaded with Munch, a Pacman-like game with multiple levels. At the end of the workshop, we will demonstrate how other games can be loaded into the Mignonette’s “brain”. Time permitting, there will be a brief introduction to the process of creating your own games.

Come join us and build your own game console!

Appropriate for ages 9 and up – kid and adult friendly.

Refund policy:
Please note, all class fees include a non-refundable enrollment deposit of $25 that will be deducted from your refund if you sign up for, then drop, a class. So, for example, if you sign up for Machine Sewing 101 and pay the $155 class fee, but then remember that you have trapeze school final exams that conflict with the Sewing class and shouldn’t have signed up after all, we will refund you $130 of your tuition payment.