Giggles goes to Ireland!

well, it looks like the Irish dig purple as well as green.... Alan got word on Halloween that the Neuron Chamber was accepted into the Lightwave Festival hosted by the Science Gallery at Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland. So in Jan/Feb 2009, the Almost Scientific team brought 'Giggles' to the emerald isle to participate in our first international exhibition.

Dracul

Winter brings dark & exciting times....
The Crucible put on the ballet, Dracul, in January to mark their 10 year anniversary. I was asked by my good friend, Ben Carpenter, to help manage, design, & build the set. Dracula is one of my favorite dark icons and a perfect body for the Crucible to breath life into as the nights get longer.

even more illegal sf downhill '08

I should've taken a hint from the heavy all-day rain on Saturday that kept me taking breaks from my work to sweep standing water out of the roll-up door... the clowns in cyclecide like to say, 'too dumb to die' -I think I'm just too dumb to not do things the hard way. Soggy welding aside, I swapped out the old taco-tires for some bomb-proof wheel-chair issue rollers that I modified to take the existing mountain bike disc brakes, getting the cart together to roll again in the 11th hour (just like last year.)
So when Shul and I finally made it to Bernal, we were pretty surprised to find the uniformed welcoming committee.
I kinda knew that we wouldn't just go home after all that hype and hard work... SF is a town of hills, right? So, not too long afterward, a sampling of racers reconviened at another tried & true downhill location (this one in Potrero Hill) and tested gravity in all our illegal glory.
The shopping cart veteran made it down about 4 times before the 'bomb-proof' wheels lost their rubber, ground down the plastic rims, and seized up with the spokes locked into the brake calipers. Perfect.

lumbering contraption

The Lumbering Contraption
Team Ratchet & Rumble's human-powered railwheel, The Lumbering Contraption. Created at Saint Louise for the first annual Handcar Regatta; September 28, 2008 Santa Rosa, California. After the race we received the Isambard Kingdom Brunel award for— Most Grandiose Feat of Engineering. Now we are sharpening our knives to cannibalize this big piece of steel!

the neuron chamber

Today Alan submitted the application for The Neuron Chamber to the Lightwave 2009 festival in Dublin, Ireland. If accepted, 'Giggles' and crew (Alan, Bender, Shul, and myself) will be traveling to Ireland in January / February. Keep your fingers crossed....

the squid

My good friend, Chad Carpenter, designed this pavilion structure for an under-utilized and ill-equipped courtyard in CCA's Hooper Graduate Center on the San Francisco campus. As CCA's SF Studios Supervisor, I 'commissioned' Chad to come up with something for the courtyard to provide shelter from the elements -something that we could build 'in-house'.

Chad put this together as his thesis project for his Master of Architecture degree. Chad, myself, and a talented sculpture grad named Patrick Gillespie, installed 'the squid' in '08/'09.

Alan Rorie took these shots.