Oh gang violence, wah wah, we had the third reich!

Tonight Scott Blake presented his Bar Code Art at the Musemsquarter here in Vienna. I worked with monochrom to get him in while I was here as part of my residency. I’ve known Scott for like 15 years or something and the amount of trouble we’ve caused over the years is rather immense, and I’ve loved his work since he first started playing with Bar Codes so I was really psyched to help get this together. I really wish we had video of it, because hearing him talk about it was amazing. (more pics here)

It funny, I was expecting this week to be a bit more calm from the first week I was here since Roboxotica is officially over (btw, audio from all the Roboxotica talks, including mine, are online now) however it’s been anything but. On Monday I spoke at the Akademie Der Bildenden Künste Wien aka The Academy of Fine Art here in Vienna (yes, the very one Hitler was kicked out of before moving to Germany) – I was expecting it to last an hour or so, but it went for almost 6 hours. Contrary to what you might instantly assume this was a good thing, the class was interested and asked a lot of questions and Leo, the professor, had a great deal of accessory info to add to what I was talking about and I have a list of notes I need to follow up on and research myself. I’ll have more to write on that very soon. I didn’t realize it was going as long as it was until, well, until it went that long.

Next week I’m playing insane jetsetter again and decided to bounce over to Paris to lobbycon LeWeb3. Then I found out about a Creative Commons 5 year event in Berlin just following that, so decided to tack that on to the trip too. And just to make it that much more fun every stupid leg of the trip, Vienna to Paris to Berlin and back to Vienna, in 3 days, routes though London. Fucking hell. At least none of it is overnight. So yeah, Paris folks who want to get together on the 11th or 12th let me know, and Berlin folks let me know about the 13th and 14th. I’m back in Vienna on the 15th.

Tomorrow I meet the other residents at the Museumsquarter this month, which I expect will be cool and I’m going to try and hit up some of the other amazing museums withing spitting distance of my apartment. That feels so funny to say, I’m actually living here now, as opposed to sleeping in someone else’s guest room or at a hotel. Even if it’s just for a month, it’s still something I never thought I’d be doing. Before I leave at the end of the year I hope to pull off some other cool events, and I think I’ll be speaking at the University in Graz as well. I’ve made a few great new friends which is more than I was expecting honestly, but I’m rather happy about. Of course I miss my friends in LA, but a few folks here have been going above and beyond to make me feel welcome. And I can’t thank them enough, so I won’t even try. More soon.

(title is a quote by Johannes at dinner tonight, top photo is Scott talking, bottom photo is the Academy of Fine Art)