Getting your geek on
Attention all hackers, podcasters, circuit tinkerers, backyard roboticists, contraption constructors and electrical conductors -- you're not alone.
Maybe your friends and family don't understand why you think writing code is more relaxing than watching "Grey's Anatomy." Maybe your neighbors are suspicious of the strange lights flickering in your garage late at night. Maybe your significant other calls you "Dr. Frankenstein" under her-- or his -- breath.
If this sounds like you, you might want to check out Dorkbot tonight at Brillobox, in Bloomfield.
"The official tagline of Dorkbot is 'People doing strange things with electricity,'" says Golan Levin, a professor of electronic arts at Carnegie Mellon University and co-founder of the local chapter. "It's basically a community for people doing weird stuff with art, technology and electricity."
At a Dorkbot meeting, you might see bleeding-edge research by some of the top minds in the local tech community -- like Jonny Farringdon of Downtown-based BodyMedia Inc., who spoke in September about wearable body monitors, woven sensors and the challenges of fitting computers into Levi's jeans.
But meetings just as likely to feature self-taught hobbyists like Pittsburgh-based musician and "circuit-bender" Kevin C. Smith, who made a presentation in November.
"He takes children's toys, like Speak 'n' Spells, and twiddles around with the circuits inside, gets them to create completely different sounds, and records music out of them," says Drue Miller, Dorkbot's communications director.
Dorkbot was started as a sort of salon, or show-and-tell in New York City in 2000 by Doug Repetto, a grad student at Columbia University. Since then, it has spread to nearly 40 cities worldwide.
"When I saw that it had spread to Minsk, in Belarus," Levin says, "I said 'There's got to be one in Pittsburgh.'"
Miller and J. Eric "Jet" Townsend, who recently moved to Forest Hills from San Francisco, contacted Repetto at about the same time. Soon, word was spreading along the local geek grapevine, and Dorkbot Pittsburgh lurched to life.
Of course, it's an open secret that Pittsburgh is a haven for geeks. This is something you might not notice at first, with all the football going on.
Pittsburgh was named in this month's issue of Wired magazine as one of the top 10 places "to get your geek on," using criteria like proximity to top engineering schools and comic-book stores per capita. But Carnegie Mellon, and its bevy of robotics spinoffs and startups, was the main reason.
Levin didn't want Dorkbot Pittsburgh to seem like a totally CMU operation.
So it's upstairs at Brillobox, a stylish but relaxed bar and performance space in Bloomfield. At each event, at least two presenters discuss their work, and demonstrate it, if possible. There's also Open Dork, where people in the audience can get up and explain what they're working on.
"It's a fun venue for giving a talk because everyone is happy to be there to be entertained and educated," says Garth Zeglin, a researcher at CMU's Robotics Institute, who made a presentation in November. "I think the meeting includes academic artists, engineers, tinkerers and hobbyists, but also an art-friendly, nontechnical crowd. So I tried to present the work as an art talk, with discussion of motivation and process, but also throwing in a lot of real technical details for those who are trying to build machines themselves. ... I think that technically or artistically minded high-school-age students would find it interesting."
In his day job, Zeglin works on robots that walk or hop, but his art career has involved "technology unselfconsciously incorporated into sculpture." He discussed some of his current work on "talking mirrors." As a byproduct of Dorkbot, he's formed a robotic-art working group, with a show planned for late February at 937 Liberty Avenue in the Cultural District.
"Our goal is to every night have an art person and a tech person -- if we have a person who does a little bit of each, that's good too," Townsend says.
From the art side of things, Pittsburgh artist-musician Dave Mansueto gave a very energetic talk about video podcasting. He made video, uploaded it and showed how it works. Two other Pittsburgh-based artists, Alexi Morrissey and Damien Miller, presented something they call 'Wakeup Call,' that enables one to order a wakeup call from people reading spoken word poetry, or playing jazz, Townsend says.
From the tech side, "We also had a guy talk about scientific visualization work he's doing for NASA," says Townsend." We've had a guy talk about hacking the TiVo -- adding all these features that TiVo doesn't support."
Most local Dorkbot chapters have their own vibe, and set of obsessions. New York's Dorkbot is very "Art with a Capital 'A,'" and San Francisco's often explores social and political issues. Dorkbot Tokyo seems to be really interested in electronic music. So far, Pittsburgh's is fairly informal and low-key.
"They're not 'saving the world with art,'" Townsend says. "They're doing cool little things in their backyard, or in their lab at CMU."
Since geeks can be reclusive by nature, Dorkbot tries to maintain a very open, noncompetitive atmosphere. The presenters aren't worried about others copying their work.
"I know there are intellectual property issues," Townsend says. "The guy from BodyMedia isn't going to reveal trade secrets. But I don't think people are as worried about their ideas getting stolen as they are worried about people not showing up to hear their ideas."
Additional Information:
Dorkbot
What: A monthly meeting of artists, engineers and hobbyists working with electricity
Where: Brillobox, 4104 Penn Ave., Bloomfield
Details: 412-621-4900 and www.dorkbotpgh@dorkbot.org
Featured speakers
Jason Simmons, of Arlington-based Gradient Labs, is founder of thisishappening.com, which creates personalized calendars of local events. He's an information and interaction designer, and creator of missinglink.biz, Progress Pittsburgh Knowledge Base and the Warhol Timeline.
Jacob Ciocci, is a Pittsburgh-based artist and founder of the art collective Paper Rad, which creates comics, music, animation, online art and performance pieces that have been featured at the 2004 Whitney Biennial and the Tate Modern in London.
Kazuhiro Jo, is the founder of Dorkbot Tokyo. He's in town visiting Carnegie Mellon University's Computational Design Lab, and will be talking about his work, and Dorkbot Tokyo.
