A large-scale Charles Gatewood photography show, featuring 40 years of his provocative underground and erotic photos, opens this Friday, February 3rd at The Center For Sex And Culture in San Francisco.

Charles has this to say about his show:

I will show highlights from my career as “family photographer of America’s erotic underground.” The show will include 45 silver prints, several large silkscreen images, and recent collage work.

Admission is free. There will be light refreshments, erotic readings and a ritual performance.

Flash in Tonyland, an artists’ collective featuring Anthony Campanale, Flash Hopkins, Dana Albany, Tom Kennedy and Phil Mitchell, will be debuting their creation “Fossil:Fueled” at the Reconsidered Materials exhibit, which opens this Friday, February 3rd at San Francisco’s Exploratorium.

Fossil: Fueled is a “resurrected” Pterodactyl constructed, with all the attendant implications, completely of discarded automobile parts. The work comments on fossil fuels as an invention certain to go the way of the dinosaurs from which it was made: destined to disappear, leaving only the residual traces of fossilized bones, but this time strewing the landscape with outmoded automotive parts.

More photos of “Fossil: Fueled” here and here.

UPDATE: Tony has just informed me that “According to Flash, whatever that’s worth, Dr. Hal will orate a dedication expounding on the beast as only Dr. Hal can.”

“Dick ‘N Dubya: A Republican Outreach Cabaret”, a hilarious parody of our current administration, featuring Amos Glick (Dubya) and Ed Holmes (Dick), takes place at The Marsh in San Francisco, Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays in February, starting this Thursday, February 2nd. Here’s more info.

Dubya (Amos Glick) and Dick (Ed Holmes) fresh from an extremely successful run at The Marsh Berkeley, during which they exerted their considerable talents to convert everyone in the audience into a card-carrying member of the Republican Party, are ready to try their luck in San Francisco. The show is full of singing (yes, Dubya sings), dancing (yes, Dick dances), speeches (Dubya, much to Dick’s consternation, has decided to write his own) and a raucous press conference where the audience asks the questions. It is rumored that Barbara Bush is so encouraged by her son’s derring-do that she is flying out to assist him.

“Floating Submerged” has just been released, featuring 32 delicious postcards by Attaboy. It is available through publisher Last Gasp and directly from Attaboy’s Yumfactory.

Thirty-two full-color, removable, oversized postcards, perforated for your pleasure. Attaboy’s maniacal undersea creatures and otherworldly vermin are together here for the first time. This postcard set features fans’ favorite images seen the world over, along with characters from Atta’s Vinyl Toy and Plush line, including the Axtrx and Gooberry! A great gift to send anyone for their next goo-filled visual vacation.

One of the postcards features the amazing squid illustration that Attaboy did for the Laughing Squid 8 ½ Year Anniversary Show. We are quite honored to be included in this wonderful postcard collection.

Speaking of Survival Research Labs, SRL founder and director Mark Pauline will be giving a talk this Wednesday, February 1st at UC Berkeley’s Kroeber Hall. Mark’s talk is part of the Art, Technology and Culture Colloquium Series on “Exploiting the Momentum of Self Righteousness”, in conjunction with UC Berkeley’s Center for New Media (CNM).

Long before there was Burning Man, there was Survival Research Laboratories, the legendary San Francisco-based performance art group founded by Mark Pauline in 1978. SRL, whose tagline is the not-exaggerated “Producing the most dangerous shows on Earth,” stages mechanical spectacles of sociopolitical satire in which high-tech weapons and robots menace each other amid noise, flames, and much destruction. The group calls itself an “organization of creative technicians dedicated to re-directing the techniques, tools, and tenets of industry, science, and the military away from their typical manifestations in practicality, product or warfare.”

MAKE Magazine has just announced their Maker Faire, their “Meet the Makers” event, which will take place April 22-23 at the San Mateo Fairgrounds. Registration is now open and they are looking for people with interesting projects to participate in the event.

Join the creators of MAKE magazine, the MythBusters, and thousands of tech DIY enthusiasts, crafters, educators, tinkerers, hobbyists, science clubs, students, and authors at MAKE’s first ever Maker Faire. All kinds of people who make amazing things in garages, basements, and backyards. Inspiration, Know-How, and Spirited Mischief-Making: Weird Science, Ultimate Garage, Robotics, Digital Entertainment/Gaming,Green Tech & Electronics Recycling, Ultimate Workshop MAKE: Remix Video Film Festival and more.

Liz Hickok’s amazing installation “San Francisco in Jell-O” will be featured one night only at this Friday’s opening reception for Reconsidered Materials.

Here a whole bunch of photos I shot yesterday at the SRL shop during the after party for the recent SRL show in Los Angeles. In honor of the Chinese New Year, the crew was shooting off a bunch of the fireworks that they picked up in Los Angeles Chinatown when they were there for the show. Even little Jake Pauline, heir to the SRL empire, made an appearance.

Photos from the SRL LA Show After Party

Yesterday I went over to the Survival Research Labs Shop in San Francisco for the SRL LA Show After Party and showed up a little early to take some photos of the outside and inside of this legendary location. The shop, were they create the robots and machines for their amazing shows, has been in this location since 1982, but soon it will have to move because SRL founder/director Mark Pauline is currently being forced to find a new location for the shop. This is a massive and expensive undertaking and there will probably be several fundraising events prior to the move, which I’ll be posting as they come up. If anyone has any good leads on a space, let Mark know.

Photos of the Survival Research Labs Shop

Here are a few photos from lasts night’s SHDH 7 hack-a-thon. Kudos to David and Jeff for yet another great SHDH event, which continues the tradition of encouraging collaboration between talented people working on interesting projects.

Photos from SuperHappyDevHouse 7

Reconsidered Materials, an exhibit focusing on the use of unusual materials to create art, opens at the Exploratorium in San Francisco on Friday, February 3rd. The opening night will also feature live performances, films and one-night installations. The exhibit will be on display through June 18th, 2006.

Featured artists include Andrew Junge, Flash in Tonyland, Ulrike Palmbach, Finley Fryer, Dorothy Trojanowski, Jonathon Keats, Ellen Babcock, Jim Haynes and Mary Elizabeth Yarbrough.

Reconsidered Materials or Although Suitcases May Seem As Though They’re Made of Stone, They Seldom Are is a special exhibition of over ten artworks on view from February 3-June 18, 2006 at the Exploratorium. It draws attention to the invisible interaction between object and substance by creating works from unusual or unexpected materials. On the night of February 3, the whole museum will be filled with performances, films, and additional one-night-only artworks that further comment on the subtler and more abstract relationships objects have with the materials of which they’re made. On February 3 only, don’t miss Liz Hickok’s San Francisco in Jell-O, replete with dry-ice fog, or Mauricio Ancalmo’s sound and light installations, dialogs between film projectors, sewing machines and word processors. The special opening-night event, which is co-sponsored by Campari and features an additional ten “performances,” takes place from 7-9pm, and is included in the price of admission ($13) to the museum.

UPDATE: Marc has just informed me that that amazing Wet Gate will be performing at the opening.

The next BrainJams event, BrainJams30Jan2006, takes place this coming Monday, January 30th at the DC Improv in Washington DC. The first two local BrainJams events were such a success that organizers Chris Heuer and Kristie Wells have decided to expand BrainJams beyond the Bay Area with their first East Coast event. More info can be found on the BrainJams wiki.

A BrainJams event is an unconference which combines knowledge networking and conversations in open spaces. We strive to bring people together from Non-profits, Technology, Business, the Arts and Government to share our insights and experiences to accelerate the pace of positive change and innovation in the world. The organizing principle of each event is separate from the format. While each BrainJams event can focus on different topics, the principal focus of our conversations at present is on how real people are using emerging social media tools (i.e. Web 2.0, citizen journalism, blogs, podcasts, social bookmarks, open collaboration, etc.).

BrainJams returns to the Bay Area next month with BrainJams25Feb2006 in Berkeley.

Laughing Squid is proud to be one of the sponsors of both the DC and Berkeley BrainJams events.

Dave Winer organized one of his infamous Blogger Dinners last night in Berkeley. Here are a few photos that I shot. I agree with Dave that it’s better to have these dinners be less formal and structured, in order to enable better “circulation”. Often at the sit-down type dinners, you are only able to talk to the people who are sitting near you.

Photos from the Berkeley Bloggers Dinner

Here’s a write-up from Jay Cross, who as there last night as well and liked my use of the equalizing term “West Bay”. Hey, at least I didn’t say I was from “The City”.

Head’s up, the How To Destroy The Universe: Part 5 West Coast tour is coming to San Francisco this weekend with a show on Saturday, January 28th at Studio Z and another show on Sunday, January 29th at Bottom of the Hill.

SuperHappyDevHouse returns to it’s roots this Saturday, January 28th with SHDH 7. If you plan on going, please RSVP on Upcoming.org and join the annoucement list to hear about future events.

January 28, get ready to rock it old sk00l with SHDH. No presentations this time (that doesn’t mean they’re gone for good, we just wanted to get our hack on full steam). So bring your laptop and a beer and get ready to make something great. Bonus points for coming up with really cool stuff in the middle of the night. :)

UPDATE: photos are now online