7:00pm
April 23 2025
location:
Monkeybrains
931 Treat
San Francisco, CA
Map
Street parking only
Accessible space
ZOOM link (please register): https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_lgSS3znnSG-VgB0wg1oxIw#/registration
DONATIONS MUCH APPRECIATED $5-$20 sliding scale. All proceeds go to our hosts monkeybrains
Gordon Kirkwood - How Inventing New Bubble Machines Changed My Life
This April 13th, The World's Fair, Expo 2025, opens in Osaka Japan, and the Swiss National Pavillion will feature Gordon's bubble machines as the centerpiece symbolizing Swiss innovation and creativity. In this talk Gordon tells the story of how an effort to revisit the simple joys of childhood with bubbles led to *several* new careers. He'll finish by describing his entry into the 2025 Grand Championship Kinetic Sculpture Race (memorial day weekend, May 24th, in Arcata CA): an olympic racing dinghy adapted to sail on land as well as water, and blow many large bubbles while in motion.Gordon Kirkwood is a polymath engineer, inventor, and adventurer. He has worked as a monkey trainer, operated nuclear reactors, and built many robots. He loves sailing fast little boats, teaches Dinghy Sailing at Cal Sailing in Berkeley, and plays a mean violoncello.
Liz Henry and Ian Smith - Grassroots Open Assistive Tech
Right to repair law, power wheelchair repair & hacking, and open source / open hardware approaches to DIY assistive technology.Liz Henry is Executive Director of Grassroots Open Assistive Tech (GOAT), and also works as a TPM at Mozilla and program manager for the DIFxTech fund at Borealis Philanthropy. Liz has strong connections with local hacker and maker spaces (Noisebridge, Double Union) and they are also a zine maker, literary translator, blogger, and poet. And, a powerchair and wheelchair user. https://bookmaniac.org, https://openassistivetech.org
Ian Smith works as a software engineer in San Francisco and is on the board of directors of GOAT. Their other projects include elevatoralerts.com, using public transit APIs to provide a better user experience for disabled riders. Ian studied Computer Science at MIT and Linguistics at Gallaudet University. They are Deaf and a wheelchair user.
Greg Leyh - Large-Scale Plasma Effects and the Msyteries of Lightning
Greg E. Leyh is the principal engineer for Lightning On Demand, a research facility for directly exploring the large-scale physics of natural lightning. Previous works include the Electrum Project, a 38ft tall kinetic lightning sculpture currently operating in New Zealand, and the Marx Modulator, a 14 megawatt pulsed power supply for the International Linear Collider.Isabel Rucker and Rudy Rucker - The Time Ecosystem
"To keep their society organized, humans agree upon mechanical timekeeping, but time is much more than a mechanical and linear idea. There are abstract thoughts like the fourth dimension, expansion, simultaneity, or parallel time. Animals keep time through migration and plants through growth cycles. A bumblebee, a slug, and a human perceive time differently. There are massive timekeepers of planets turning, and deep time of rock formation. Time can be various shapes and warp from quick to slow within one hour. All of these are working in concert as an ecosystem." - Isabel RuckerRudy Rucker, cyberpunk author, and his daughter, Isabel Rucker, artist, will be in conversation about a new idea project "The Time Ecosystem". On topic will be the multitude of ideas and concepts of time, including Rudy’s specialty, the 4th Dimension.
Isabel has been working on a zine to illustrate and discuss the idea of times working as an ecosystem and it will be available free at Dorkbot. Rudy and Isabel will also have time related artwork for sale at the event.
Rudy Rucker is a mathematician, computer scientist, science fiction author, and one of the founders of the cyberpunk literary movement. The author of both fiction and non-fiction, Rucker, has written three books on the fourth dimension and is the winner of two Philip K. Dick Awards.
Isabel Rucker is a multi-disciplinary artist living on California's Mendocino coast. She is a metalsmith and lapidary with a small business. She works with 2-D and 3-D media to explore color, abstraction, shape, and environmental shifts.
http://RudyRucker.com
http://isabelrucker.com
http://www.isabeljewelry.com
