Fire in the Desert is a benefit for the Flaming Lotus Girls that takes place this Friday, June 2nd at The Cracktory in San Francisco. This event is being organized to help raise funds for Serpent Mother, the FLG’s project for Burning Man 2006.

The Flaming Lotus Girls are a San Francisco-based group of of female and male artists collaborating all year round to create exceptional fire art and provide a resource for learning metalworking and other essential shop skills. Our installations incorporate flame effects and enticing design on a gargantuan scale.

The Long Now Foundation, now celebrating their 10th year, is opening the doors to their new public space at Fort Mason Center this Friday, June 2nd from 10am to 5pm. Here’s the announcement that our friend and Long Now staff member Simone sent us:

The Long Now Foundation is proud to announce the opening of our new public space and offices in Fort Mason Center.

We will have prototypes of the 10,000 Year Clock Project, and Rosetta Project on display, as well as a retail space with items of Long Now interest available to the public starting Friday, June 2nd.

Stop by to peruse our works in progress, get information about The Long Now Foundation, visit our Long Now Library, and discuss projects past, present and future with other interesting people.

We open at 10am and close at 5pm, admission is free.

The Long Now Foundation was established in 01996* to develop the Clock and Library projects, as well as to become the seed of a very long term cultural institution. The Long Now Foundation hopes to provide counterpoint to today’s “faster/cheaper” mind set and promote “slower/better” thinking. We hope to creatively foster responsibility in the framework of the next 10,000 years.

The term was coined by one of our founding board members, Brian Eno. When Brian first moved to New York City and found that in New York here and now meant this room and this five minutes, as opposed to the larger here and longer now that he wa s used to in England. We have since adopted the term as the title of our foundation as we are trying to stretch out what people consider as now.

For more information, see http://www.longnow.org

* The Long Now Foundation uses five digit dates, the extra zero is to solve the deca-millennium bug which will come into effect in about 8,000 years.

The Long Now Foundation
Fort Mason Center, Building A
San Francisco
415 561 6582

Buzzed Bee, a twisted event that mixes spelling and drinking, takes place this Thursday, June 1st at Rx Gallery in San Francisco. Full details can be found on the Buzzed Bee website.

Were you permanently scarred by a childhood spelling trauma? Do you have a poster of Rebecca Sealfon over your bed? Has poor spelling on the Internet driven you to drink? Are you /still/ smarter than all of your friends? Would you like a chance to prove it?

Whether you spell “entertainment” D-R-I-N-K-I-N-G B-I-N-G-E or
S-C-H-A-D-E-N-F-R-E-U-D-E the BUZZED BEE is the answer!

Pulses will race, vocabularies will be expanded, beer will be drunk, words will be slurred, and dreams of victory will be dashed in a single round. Come to compete, or just cheer for your friends and heckle your enemies. Callously bet on who will visit “the comfort room” first. Keep an eye out for classic spelling bee contestants like “The Rich Prep School Kid” and the “Neurotic Home-Schooled Girl”. And if you’re lucky, someone will pee in their pants!

Here are some photos I shot as I traveled through the psychedelic tunnel between Northwest Airlines’ Concourse A and Concourse B & C in the McNamara Terminal at the Detroit Metro Airport. It’s nice of DTW to provide this addtional “trip” as you take your trip.

Photos of Detroit Metro Airport’s Psychedelic Tunnel

Here are some photos I shot at last Friday’s amazing ZOOM! show opening at Red Ink Studios.

Photos from ZOOM!

A group Portland Flickr users organized an excursion to shot some photos of this morning’s Trojan Nuclear Power Plant demolition, the world’s first implosion of a nuclear cooling tower. Here’s a write-up from thespeak.

Apple is opening a beautiful new 20,000 square store on 5th Avenue in Manhattan today. The entrance is a giant 32 foot glass cube, with an amazing spiral staircase that decends into the store. Like New York City, this store will never sleep, being open 24 hours a day, every day, all year. More on this opening from Gothamist and ifo Apple Store.

Ok, it just keeps getting more, more surreal. Online media maven Eric Rice recently organized a virtual world BarCamp at his Hipcast Conference & Expo Center in the popular 3D online world Second Life. Here’s Eric’s wrap-up report on the event.

Prior to the event, Brian Oberkirch was wondering if there would be Barcamp t-shirts available for Second Life avatars. What’s next, a SuperHappySecondLife with virtual Red Bull?

Previous Second Life and real life (RL) cross-over events have included book discussions by Cory Doctorow and Lawrence Lessig, as well as Burning Life, a Second Life tribute to Burning Man.

UPDATE: Robert Scoble discovered some more images of BarCamp Second Life captured by Bill Futreal.

Improv Everywhere is a group of pranksters based out of New York City who have been “causing scenes” in public since 2001. Their lastest mission took place last month when 80 of their agents showed up at the Best Buy store in Union Square wearing blue polo shirts and khakis, which of course caused mass confusion, along with the occasional electronics sale. Here’s their full mission write-up complete with photos, video (from hidden cameras) and first-hand accounts.

We met at Union Square North at 3:30 PM. Around 80 agents showed up, most them looking like wonderful Best Buy employees. More than a few came dressed in navy or teal, but with the belt and the khakis they still looked employee-like. After everyone arrived I explained the mission. The first step was for everyone to throw their newspapers away. The instruction to bring a newspaper was a red herring meant to throw people off the scent of the mission’s true nature. I then revealed the plan, “We’re heading up to the Best Buy on 23rd Street. We’ll enter the store one by one. Once inside, spread out and stand near the end of an aisle, facing away from the merchandise. Don’t shop, but don’t work either. If a customer comes up to you and asks you a question, be polite and help them if you know the answer. If anyone asks you if you work there, say no. If an employee asks you what you’re doing, respond ‘I’m waiting for my girlfriend/boyfriend who is shopping elsewhere in the store.’ If they question you about your clothing, just explain that it’s what you put on when you woke up this morning and you don’t know any of the other people dressed like you.”

The SLOMO Video Festival, which features 100 one minute slow motion videos, is having its Premiere and Slowdance Party this Saturday, May 20th at Lobot Gallery in Oakland. The festival is produced by San Francisco video artist and one-man-media-machine Ryan Junell, who is a co-organizer of Webzine. Here are a few sample videos from the festival.

SLOMO VIDEO is 100 one minute slow motion videos by 85 filmmakers and video artists from around the world. The video festival will swerve into cinemas around the world, transubstantiate time into taffy, and turn the usual expectations of a video show on its side and inside out. This unique compilation of cinematic slowness will pull the audience through a molasses-tinged warp of catastrophic visual and audio beauty.

ZOOM!, a “multimedia, interactive, kinetic, technological art extravaganza” which is part of ArtSFest 2006, takes place this Friday, May 19th from 7pm to midnight at Red Ink Studios in San Francisco. For more info, see the Squid List post.

ZOOM! is a kinetic arts extravaganza. Featuring: BOING!, an interactive latex bouncy toy installation with responsive sound and light components by Dr. Friendly; film and video performance by Machiko Saito; Inflating Latex Figures by Deidre DeFranceaux, Giant Laughing Sal, slaalom race with Rolling Fleshies, wacky (art) games, Artfag Mafia, DJs, libations, and much more!

UPDATE: Here are some photos a shot at the ZOOM! opening.

Art On Fire! The 2006 San Francisco Fire Arts Exposition takes place this Thursday, May 18th through Saturday, May 20th at Monster Park in San Francisco. This is a large scale Burning Man event that will feature a tremendous amount of fire-themed art and performances as well as helping to promote and provide education about fire art. Here’s the full schedule and ticket information. This event also serves as a benefit for The Black Rock Arts Foundation to help raise funds for public art grants.

Experience this quintessentially San Francisco art experience, an exciting and incendiary exhibition of innovative and inspiring fire art! Ranging in nature from meditative and quietly interactive to spectacular, high-tech and utterly indefinable - these featured works of art and choreographed fire performances are pushing the boundaries of art internationally. Please join us for this landmark event as the City of San Francisco provides a forum to recognize artists working in this exciting and unique medium!

$teven Ra$pa adds:

First, I take perverse pleasure in saying, “This will be the largest amount of fire in San Francisco since this city burned to the ground 100 years ago!” Only this will be the good kind! CREATIVE and joyful rather than destructive. It will be an exhibit of spectacular fire artwork and performance. And if all goes well and according to plan, it will help forge positive working relations between the SFFD and the many fire artists living here. It’s important, it’s worthwhile AND it’s going to be extraordinary. SF needs to create a space for something like this and now is our chance to build it with the blessing of the City.

UPDATE: Here’s Thomas Hawk’s write-up and photos from the Saturday night event.

The Trojan Nuclear Power Plant in Rainier, Oregon is scheduled to be demolished next Sunday, May 21st. Here are more details of the implosion as well as demolition updates.

The 499-foot cooling tower is scheduled to be imploded on May 21, 2006. PGE has chosen a contractor, Controlled Demolition Inc. (CDI), which has safely imploded a number of large structures, including the Kingdome in Seattle. Every demolition bid proposal PGE received recommended implosion of the tower as the safest demolition method with the least community and environmental impact. The Trojan cooling tower is made of concrete and steel and contains no hazardous materials. It never contained any radioactive material, and all asbestos has been removed.

Rumor has it that the Portland Cacophony Society is planning a post-nuclear picnic the day of the implosion. Come join the fun as your favorite character from The China Syndrome.

UPDATE 1: It has been brought to our attention that the Trojan Nuclear Power Plant is the inspiration for the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant that is owned by Charles Montgomery Burns and featured in The Simpsons. Aye carumba! They’re blowing up the power plant. D’oh!

UPDATE 2: Here’s some Trojan Nuclear Power Plant demolition coverage from the Washington Post and CBS News.

UPDATE 3: There are a bunch of great implosion photos on Flickr.

Skeleton Key, a benefit art show and auction for the West Memphis Three (WM3), opens this Friday, May 12th at 111 Minna Gallery in San Francisco. Robin Andersen has more WM3 background and event info over at Metroblogging San Francisco.

Featuring pieces by Damien Echols as well as over thirty other artists to raise funds for his defense. This one-night-only event includes music, speaking, and poetry readings by punk legend Henry Rollins, Jonathan Richman, Penelope Houston, Jacob Pitts of Strangers From Candy, former San Francisco Supervisor Matt Gonzalez and more…

Laughing Squid is featured in the current issue (#3) of Ambidextrous Magazine, a magazine about design that is published by the Stanford Institute of Design. The article is about cephalopod-themed design firms. It’s probably a stretch of the tentacle to call us a design firm, but regardless, we are honored to be included in this group which features SQUID Labs, Squidoo, The Octopus Dropkick and Giant Squid Design. The centerpiece of the article is the awesome “angry squid” illustration by Mule Design Studio.

Ambidextrous Magazine is a project of the Stanford d.school. It is a magazine for the wider design community, which includes engineers and ethnographers, psychologists and philosophers. Rather than focusing on promoting product, Ambidextrous exposes the people and processes involved in design.