Known Gallery in Los Angeles is hosting Indispensable: Art by the Ounce, a LEGO marijuana art exhibition by art collective LAgo. All The opening reception is Saturday May 26, 2012 from 8 pm to 11 pm and the exhibition runs through June 9, 2012.

(cough.)In the wake of increasing raids on Medical Marijuana dispensaries by local, state and federal drug enforcement agencies, the LAgo brand’s brand-new, flagship storefront is set to open on May 26, 2012 at Known Gallery located at 441 North Fairfax Avenue in Los Angeles. The LAgo brand, as a perpetual “harvest” of healing power, has been especially commodified to meet the addictions of anyone who has ever wanted to experience the transaction of purchasing medical marijuana – or fine art – at a legal business organization. Synthetic starter-plants, seedlings, clones and a totally huge selection of intoxicating, fake plastic buds- all built with LEGO bricks to resemble some of the finest strains of medicinal marijuana ever grown- will be on display and available for limited purchase. (cough.)

via High Times and Geekosystem

photos by Paul Landau for Known Gallery

Our good friend Andy Baio of Waxy.org, along with Andy McMillan, have just announced XOXO, an arts and technology conference and festival that celebrates disruptive creativity that he is organizing at the Yu Contemporary in Portland, OR this September 13-16. Tickets are available for the conference through the XOXO Kickstarter project.

We want to take all the independent artists using the Internet to make a living doing what they love — the makers, craftspeople, musicians, filmmakers, comic book artists, game designers, hardware hackers — and bring them together with the technologists building the platforms that make it possible. If you have an audience and a good idea, nothing’s standing in your way.

XOXO is in three parts:

Conference (Saturday / Sunday). Talks from artists and creative technologists around the country that are breaking new ground.

Market (Saturday / Sunday). A large marketplace with a tightly-curated list of the best of Portland’s arts and tech scenes, sharing and selling their work, with food supplied by the best of our thriving food cart scene.

Fringe (Thursday / Sunday). A series of unique events around the city, including live music, film screenings, indie videogames, and craft beer and coffee tastings.

John Hodgman and Justin Long (the PC and Mac guys from the Apple commercials) introduced Richard Dreyfuss last night at the 16th Annual Webby Awards, who paid tribute to Steve Jobs along with a special “thank you” video that included a message from President Obama.

Also check out Gary Sharma’s 16th Annual Webby Awards Highlights on Betabeat.

via Velvet Roper

photos by Scott Beale

Photo Gallery: The 16th Annual Webby Awards

photos by Scott Beale

The 16th Annual Webby Awards is hosted by Patton Oswalt and will be streaming live in HD tonight on webbyawards.com. The livestream is also available to view on iOS devices via The Webby Awards mobile app. The Red Carpet starts at 4:30 PM ET and The Webby Awards Show commences at 5:30 PM ET.

Tune in to the live online broadcast to see:

*Appearances from this year’s Special Achievement Honorees Louis C.K., Björk, Instagram co-founders Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger, Juliette Lewis and Graydon Sheppard from Sh*t Girls Say

*Hallmark 5-Word Speeches from your favorite Webby Winners

*A can’t-miss special musical performance from Passion Pit

*Plus many more surprise guests as we honor the best of the Web

What, Me Worry? 60 Years of MAD is an exhibtion at the Cartoon Art Museum in San Francisco, California. It “celebrates the rich history of MAD from the original comic book through the black-and-white magazine to its latest incarnation as a full-color bi-monthly publication supplemented by online content.” The exhibition started April 21 and will run through September 16, 2012.

Exhibition highlights include cover artwork by MAD creator Harvey Kurtzman; pages from the MAD comic book by Will Elder and John Severin; early magazine-era artwork by famed artists Mort Drucker, Don Martin, Wally Wood and George Woodbridge; MAD Fold-ins by Al Jaffee; painted covers by Sergio Aragonés, Jack Davis, Kelly Freas, Norman Mingo. Jack Rickard and Richard Williams; The Lighter Side of… by Dave Berg; Spy vs. Spy by Antonio Prohias; a look at Tom Richmond’s creative process; the dazzling caricatures of Sam Viviano; comics from contemporary contributors Chris Baldwin, Evan Dorkin, Peter Kuper, Ted Rall, Keith Knight and Joey Alison Sayers; a look at MAD Magazine around the world; and much, much more!

via FunCheapSF

Over on the Burning Blog, our friend Evil Pippi explains in detail how Krug Champagne exploited the Burning Man 2011 event with a publicity stunt where they staged a photoshoot in the form of an elaborate dinner party by the trash fence, with food prepared by NYC chef Phil Winser of The Fat Radish. The feast was setup in order to promote their champagne and they invited “society bloggers” to cover the event, which was written up by Notes on a Party and Taryn Cox The Wife. The event was also featured in serveral publications including Town & Country and W Magazine (since removed).

Evil Pippi writes:

Krug, a centuries-old luxury champagne house, and its publicity machine, staged and hosted an elaborate dinner party at the trash fence on Friday night of the 2011 event. Pre-event, Krug’s PR agency pitched members of the media to photograph and report on the staged dinner for publications such as Town & Country and W Magazine. They invited society bloggers to the “exclusive” champagne dinner with the expectation of getting even more coverage, and pro photogs to shoot it. And it worked. The organizers of this event brought paid photographers to the playa and had them falsely register with Media Mecca saying they were there to cover general art and playa happenings, instead of telling the truth; that they were there to act as representatives of Krug – obviously knowing that if they had told the truth, they would not have been allowed to photograph. They then pulled the dinner off entirely under the radar, had the dinner covered both by their captive media and the general media, and managed to get product placement articles published.

The event was called The Zoo Camp and Krug Champagne at Burning Man and it was organized by the creative events agency Silkstone based in NYC. Here’s how they described it:

In addition to catering breakfast and dinner for the Zoo Camp (120 people spread across 30+ RVs), we built a dinner table for the 120 Zoo Camp guests and hosted a seated three-course meal (accompanied by Krug Grande Cuvee) out on the playa. We began the build on Wednesday the 31st and completed it just hours before the first course went down the following day, with string lights, lanterns, and a walkway leading guests to the long table. Our head catering chef, Ana Morris, spent all day prepping the dinner back at the campsite, located about a mile away from the dinner site. Just before the dinner, our team drove our refrigeration van out toward the dinner and plated all the dishes from a makeshift kitchen space we created just next to the table.

Burning Man has always been a non-commercial event and all media has to be approved in advance via the Media Team at Media Mecca, which Krug went out of their way to circumvent. Making things worse, they did not clean up after the dinner, leaving the table, food and trash on the playa for others to clean up, an affront to Burning Man’s long standing policy of “leave no trace”.

Of course at this point the damage to their brand will end up being much greater than the promotion gained by their stunt. The Burning Man community is outraged to say the least and has been going after Krug on Twitter and Facebook.

Here’s the full story on the Burning Blog: How Not To Burn: Commodifying Burning Man

The story has also been picked up by MetaFilter, SFist, Inside Scoop SF and Burners.me.

UPDATE: Bret Bernhoft has written up a really great case study and timeline of the Krug Champagne Burning Man PR Meltdown.

photos via Silkstone & Taryn Cox, video by Raquel Baranow

Run For Your Lives is a 5K race in which participants must traverse obstacle courses and avoid hordes of zombies. Justin Rocket Silverman of The Daily recently took part in a Run For Your Lives race in Massachusetts (video). There are 11 races coming up this year in locations around the country—check the event website details.

photo by Billie Weiss

Funny or Die managed to get a copy of a leaked poster for Coachella 2013. The line-up look amazing!

Disney Parks Blog posted this “behind-the-scenes” video to promote Star Wars Weekends 2012 at Walt Disney World. In the video, Disney Idea Generator Matt Buchanan holds a Star Wars Weekends brainstorming session and Darth Vader has some interesting (and humorous) ideas of what kinds of events should happen. They also created a cute video where Yoda, Chewbacca and Darth Vader get invited to the event by Disney Event Coordinator Paul Stewart. We recently posted about the Carbon-Freeze Me experience that will be happening at Star Wars Weekends (which are every Friday, Saturday and Sunday from May 18 to June 10, 2012). The promotional videos were produced by Yellow Shoes Creative Group, in partnership with Lucasfilm.

On May 19 and 20, 2012, Make Magazine and O’Reilly Media present the 7th annual Maker Faire Bay Area at the San Mateo County Event Center in San Mateo, California. Tickets are now on sale and a livestream will be available. There is also a Maker Faire app available to download for free.

A two-day, family-friendly festival of invention, creativity and resourcefulness, and a celebration of the Maker movement.

The Hardware Innovation Workshop presented by MAKE happens on May 15 and 16, 2012 at PARC in Palo Alto, California. Limor Fried and Phillip Torrone of Adafruit Industries will be the featured keynote speakers for this event. A complete list of workshop speakers, agenda and registration is available online.

Other featured keynotes include Massimo Banzi, co-founder of Arduino; Carl Bass, president and CEO of Autodesk; Jay Rogers, founder and CEO of Local Motors; Mark Hatch, co-founder and CEO of TechShop; Ted Hall, co-founder and president of ShopBot; and Brad Feld, co-founder of Foundry Group.

photos by Scott Beale

photo by Susan Olsen

It’s no secret that I am a big fan of Fluff and last year I befriended someone who is as equally into Fluff as I am, the charming Susan Olsen (“Cindy Brady” of The Brady Bunch). We bonded over our love of Fluff and last fall, we both traveled to the What the Fluff? Festival (photos) in Somerville, Massachusetts where Susan, an artist, sold prints of her Fluff Art. She is also a strong advocate for animal welfare and works with Precious Paws, a nonprofit animal rescue organization in Encino, Calfornia.

If you are in the Los Angeles (Burbank) area tonight, Friday May 11, 2012, there is a fundraising event called A Night With Susan Olsen & Her Art at Theresa’s Family Restaurant. Susan (who has a delightfully quirky sense of humor) will be selling her artwork and handmade Candy Kitten Crap (made with Fluff, of course) to benefit Precious Paws.

Cattyland by Susan Olsen, 2012

photo by Rusty Blazenhoff

Old Jews Telling Jokes is an ongoing web series that, not surprisingly, features old Jews telling jokes. It was created in 2008 by Sam Hoffman (who also directs the videos). His rules: joke tellers must be at least 60-years-old and Jewish (“The age thing I would be strict about, the Jewish thing would be in spirit.”). . Eric Spiegelman and Tim Williams of Jetpack Media produce the series which launched in 2009 and became an immediate success. An archive of all of the jokes are available to view. An off-Broadway play based on the internet series also titled Old Jews Telling Jokes opens May 20, 2012 at New York City’s Westside Theatre.

Risqué jokes from a bygone era, delivered by a generation that loves to tell them . . . in private.

The Hardware Innovation Workshop, a conference on business and the maker movement, takes place May 15 and 16 at PARC in Palo Alto (video). The event is presented by MAKE.

MAKE will present a hands-on showcase of compelling devices, products, and platforms that are shaping the future of manufacturing and the global economy. Get up close and personal with the makers of these pioneering innovations that have the power to make and move markets.

via MAKE

D23 Presents Treasures of the Walt Disney Archives will be the largest-ever exhibition of Disney props, costumes, artwork, and artifacts ever curated and put on display by the Walt Disney Archives. It will feature “more than 500 artifacts, at least half of which have never been seen by the public.” The exhibition is presented by D23: The Official Disney Fan Club at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library & Museum in Simi Valley, California. It opens July 6, 2012 and will continue through April 2013. You may remember we recently posted a video from Weird Disney that dug up some odd items from the Walt Disney Archives.

Disney Geek recently posted a preview video of some of the props and costumes that will be included in the exhibit:

Among the extraordinary items to be featured are:

—The original script, written by Walt Disney, for Mickey Mouse’s film debut in 1928?s Steamboat Willie

—A faithful recreation of Walt’s formal office from the Walt Disney Studios in Burbank, California, including original furnishings and many of his personal items

—Hand-drawn artwork and hand-sculpted models used in the production of some of the most beloved Disney animated film classics ever created, including Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Pinocchio, Fantasia, Bambi, and Sleeping Beauty

—Props from classic Disney live-action productions, including Mary Poppins, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, The Absent-Minded Professor, The Shaggy Dog, Babes in Toyland, Bedknobs and Broomsticks, and more

—Breathtaking props, costumes, and set pieces from recent Disney classics, including the Pirates of the Caribbean films, Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland, TRON: Legacy, National Treasure, and Captain America

—Intricately sculptured busts of all 44 U.S. Presidents that were created for Audio-Animatronics® figures seen in the The Hall of Presidents attraction at the Magic Kingdom at Walt Disney World Resort

—A salute to Disneyland and the Magic Kingdom at Walt Disney World, showcasing theme park artwork, Audio-Animatronics® characters, memorabilia, and authentic attraction vehicles

via Inside the Magic

image via Inside the Magic

UNIQUE SF is an independent design show and shopping event that will feature over 200 hand-selected designers and artists. It will take place June 30 and July 1, 2012 at The Concourse Exhibition Center’s East Hall in San Francisco, California. The event is hosted by UNIQUE who has also put on a UNIQUE LA event and plans to host UNIQUE NYC in the future. Tickets will be available to purchase online soon. 10% of all ticket sales go to 826 Valencia, a San Francisco-based tutoring center that helps children read and write.

The exciting two-day shopping event makes it easy for you to buy local, discover great design and deals, join in community, and have a blast. The products at the show are proudly made right here in the USA so you’re putting your dollars right back into our economy and local community. With DJs, free drinks/photo booth portraits/activities for kids, and a great cafe with delicious food and sweet treats, it’s a great time for all – plan to spend the weekend with us!

Here is a video of footage from the 2011 UNIQUE LA show:

Photo Gallery: ROFLCon III

photos by Scott Beale

Brooklyn-based art cooperative United Photo Industries will host Photoville, a large-scale photographic village created with shipping containers in Brooklyn Bridge Park in summer 2012. Photoville starts Friday June 22, 2012 and runs through Sunday July 1, 2012.

This summer we are taking the next step in helping to create an extraordinary global community of artists. Working in partnership with local galleries, national institutions, and an international network of curatorial partners, we are building PHOTOVILLE – a unique, large-scale, photographic village with Shipping Containers in the heart of Brooklyn Bridge Park, at the Pier 3 Uplands, located on the Brooklyn Waterfront.

With its primary focus of celebrating photography in all its forms and across all levels, PHOTOVILLE will be a feisty mix of exhibitions, lectures, hands-on workshops, nighttime projections, photo dog run, and a summer beer-garden that will create a photographic destination like no other.

UPDATE: Photoville was featured in The New York Times Lens blog and is raising funds for the event via Kickstarter.

Kawaii Luncheon Meat by Jerrod Maruyama

Art Too Cute for Words: A Supahcute Dream Team Show is an art show curated by Hana Kim of Supahcute.com featuring a collection that is “simply too cute for words.” The opening reception happens May 12, 2012 from 6 PM to 10 PM and the show runs through June 24, 2012 at Leanna Lin’s Wonderland in Los Angeles, California.

Participating All-Star Artists:

Axelhoney, Beastlies, Bubi Au Yeung, Crowded Teeth, Doubleparlour, Fat Rabbit Farm, Gary Ham, Genevieve Santos, Hiné Mizushima, Jerrod Maruyama, Katie Cook, Liz Adams, Martin Hsu, Mekanikku, Melissa Hsu (Susuten), PodgyPanda, Sawdust Bear, 64 Colors, Susie Ghahremani and Yoko Nomura

Help Friends Play Games: I’ll give you ride, you give Dolly a ride by Hiné Mizushima

by Liz Adams

Unicorn Deer by Mekanikku

images via Supahcute

Memes Are People Too: Meet the Viral-Video Stars of ROFLCon, a video produced by Kasia Cieplak-Mayr von Baldegg for The Atlantic about last weekend’s ROFLCon III Internet culture conference at MIT in Cambridge, MA.

Psychedelic Surfer Dude by Robynn Sanders
2011 photo by Arturo Yee

Over 250 art cars will roll through downtown Houston, Texas for the 25th Anniversary Houston Art Car Parade on Saturday May 12, 2012 starting at 1 PM at Allen Parkway & Taft Street. The Orange Show Center for Visionary Art presents this annual event which kicks off Thursday May 10, 2012 with the Legendary Art Car Ball (tickets). The 2012 Grand Marshals for the parade are Houston Texans players JJ Watt and Connor Barwin. TV station KVUE.com has posted a large online image gallery from last year’s parade.

2011 photo by Molly Block

2011 photo by Grace Rodriguez

SETIcon II, a conference on space as seen through art, literature, and science, takes place June 22-24, at the Hyatt Regency in Santa Clara, California. SETIcon II is hosted by the SETI Institute.

SETIcon, envisioned and organized by the SETI Institute, is a unique, entertaining and enlightening public event where science and imagination meet. SETIcon brings together innovative scientists, science fiction authors, space and science artists, space lovers, and the curious and adventurous everywhere for a 3-day public celebration and exploration of space, real science, technology, imagination, and science education.

Starting May 18, 2012, visitors to the Star Wars Weekends at Disney’s Hollywood Studios (located at Walt Disney World) can step into the “Carbon Freezing Chamber” and have an 8-inch figurine created of themselves “frozen in carbonite.” The figurine is comprised of a 3D scan of the visitor’s face and the body of Han Solo. According to Star Wars News, the Carbon Freeze Me experience allows guests to the theme park to “relive the famous carbon freezing scene from The Empire Strikes Back.” The 2012 Star Wars Weekends are every Friday, Saturday and Sunday from May 18 to June 10, 2012.

Using state-of-the-art imaging technology, this experience casts your likeness as a three-dimensional, eight-inch figurine. At the “Carbon Freezing Chamber” (located adjacent to The American Idol Experience), several cameras will capture multiple angles of your face. The images are then reconstructed in a computer for processing, and, in approximately four weeks, the completed figurine is shipped directly to your house.

…The replica figurine can be hung on a wall, just like the gangster Jabba the Hutt did in Return of the Jedi. Guests also receive a light-up wristband.

via Inside the Magic

images via Star Wars News and Inside the Magic

Now in its third year, Weapons of Mass Creation Fest is an art, design and music festival that features “20 speakers, 20 designers, and nearly 30 bands.” The festival happens June 8 through June 10, 2012 at the Gordon Square Arts District on Detroit Avenue in Cleveland, Ohio. Tickets are available to purchase now.

Weapons of Mass Creation is a young grassroots movement to inspire and enable the creative mind. We believe that good things happen when ideas and talents are shared within the community. This mentality manifests itself in the lifestyle of a Weapon of Mass Creation. A person who defies the hand they’re dealt and makes stuff happen.

Once a year, we have WMC Fest; the annual gathering of this community right here in Cleveland, OH. We celebrate and showcase the creative visionaries who embody this lifestyle. We bring the movement to the masses. Some have compared WMC Fest to SXSW, Brooklyn Beta, FITC, or the 99% Conference but with an indie/diy flavor. We aren’t exactly trying to be like them, but the comparison is flattering nonetheless. It’s part conference, part concert, part art show, and part festival. It’s simply WMC Fest!

Paul “Yosemite Bear” Vasquez the Double Rainbow guy and Jay Maynard the Tron Guy at ROFLCon III.

What are they looking at? Could it be a triple rainbow made by a light cycle?

photo by Scott Beale