McLeod Residence Blog

Interactivity: A Success!

Thank you so much for attending the opening of our new exhibition, Interactivity!  If you have photos of the new show, please add them to our growing McLeod Residence Flickr pool. 

I know that many of you have questions about the new pieces, and I hope that I can help answer them.  We've added quite a bit of information about The Barbarian Group's Biomimetic Butterflies HERE, and we've also added this video:

More information about McLeod Mirror can be found on its own new site: www.mcleodmirror.com, which has a video starring our very own Rockstar McLeod.

If you HAVEN'T seen the new show, well... you MUST.  It is open until September 1st. Chris Weber and I will be around every Tuesday-Saturday 10am-6pm.  We will also be open late tomorrow for Seattle Net2 Tuesday and late Thursday for a special performance in the South Room: The Ghost of Kyle Bradford & Corridor.  Friday is Rock Night / Member Night as usual, but Saturday evening our member lounge will be closed for Chris Weber's Rock Lottery at Neumo's.  It's going to be fun -- join us?

Interactivity: Opening July 6!

Interactivity
Artists working with Technology
Technologists working with Art

Member Preview: Thursday, July 5, 6pm-12am
Opening Reception: Friday, July 6, 6pm-9pm

Interactivity explores the convergence of art and technology with an entire gallery full of electronic art that patrons are invited to play with. Featuring Magnetic Structure prints and Biomimetic Butterflies by The Barbarian Group, interactive textiles by Maggie Orth, a laser installation by Joel S. Kollin and mixed media work by Felix Livni, Interactivity opens with a reception on Friday, July 6, from 6-9pm. The exhibits will be on display until September 1. The Lounge features McLeod Residence's ongoing installation of neon work by Jeremy Bert and Jen Elek and furniture by Gary Andolina and James Reinhardt.

Seattle Notables website launches!

After countless hours learning x-dynamic-HTML and figuring out what a mime type was, our team of monkeys have two-finger-typed a brand new website to support our new show! 

When we did our call for art that requested people to send in pictures of notables from around the city, we got a ton more submissions than we were able to end up using in the show.  It was a lot of fun hearing the stories about people, and seeing how we all had a shared narrative that included the same characters that we all see in our daily lives.  So, we decided to try to capture some of that spirit in a website where anyone could tell a story and upload a picture of notables as they came across them.  And, a few weeks later, here it is!

So, your task is to let people know when you think they're doing something interesting and notable, take their picture, and submit a story about them. 

Features at launch include:

• A map on the homepage shows you where people have been recently spotted.
• Every notable has their own page (see my page as an example), which pulls in all of their sightings, where they've been seen the most, and also pictures from flickr that have been tagged with their name.
• Every location has its own page (see McLeod Residence's as an example), which again pulls up flickr pictures tagged with that name, as well as the notables that have been seen there.

Our hope is that people will find this interesting, and will take pictures of notables when they see them.  If there's someone you'd like to add to the list, please submit them here.

The spirit of this is in appreciation and celebration of the people who make our city interesting--please don't submit stories or pictures out of spite or ridicule.  A notable is a recognized personality in the city. Someone that contributes to the narrative of Seattle in some significant way. People talk about this person. Seattle wouldn't be the same without them. Notability is something we should seek for ourselves, because it makes us live more.

Help us get this site off the ground by submitting your favorite notable story.  And let me know if you find anything wrong with the site, or want to help make it better.

Our first project: a photo booth

This isn't going to by your typical old-fashioned photo booth.  This is going to save a history of all photos taken, upload them to a flickr group (join it), and be free to use.

Josh is doing the majority (okay, maybe all) of the heavy lifting on this one.  He describes what he did here.  We were initially inspired by the folks at Shine, a bar in SF that has a similar photo booth setup.  They were very open and helpful in explaining how they put theirs together.  In the end, we did ours slightly differently (we're not going to do photo strips, for example, and aren't going to brand the photos taken), but the spirit is the same.  More places should have this.

How it's going to work

We're going to install this in a closet near the staircase.  When you open the door, you'll be presented with a screen that displays one of the pictures that has previously been taken, and a menu to browse more, or to take a picture.  It's a touch screen so you just touch "take a picture" and it counts down from 5 and takes it.

It immediately uploads to the internet... which will add a bit of a risky element to the whole process.  You can take as many as you want for free.  At some point we're going to allow you to print them out, but not at first.  It's just a quirky experiment to see how it's going to be used.

When can you see it?

We hope for it to be fully functioning and in action on New Years Eve, when we'll be throwing a little party for our friends.  If you want to be invited, sign up here.