Go grab one of the couple EV1s that you guys have floating around by test tracks or wherever. Sit in the car. Turn it on. Take a few laps around the track. Go off GM grounds and get a coffee or a shake in the car and sit outside drinking your beverage. Listen to the comments of the people that ask about the car. Don’t discount people’s opinions about the car or GM’s actions, even if they’re negative. They aren’t directed towards you or anyone you know, they are directed at the frustration they have at being told they can’t buy the car you’re driving. They want in. Think about yourself being the proud owner of the car and hearing the amazed people talking about it and asking where they can get one. Think about the possible numbers if this many people in a tiny random sampling are interested in the car. Is there actually a market for this? Let your mind think of some of the basic things that could be done to produce the car more cheaply and think about how much money those simple changes would save. Go back to GM, and have a closed door meeting with some engineers and ask them each for their five easy money-saving ideas for producing something like this. Is it actually feasible?

Here’s one of them:

Here’s a few foldy things for you.

Steps: Print, cut, fold, glue, enjoy. I think that’s more steps than setting up an iMac.

Even when printed as large as possible on 8 1/2 x 11 paper, these are fairly hard to deal with. Better would be 11 x 17. Bonus: printing on textured paper, or paper with some sort of design or adding a design to your image before printing results in a cool-looking object.

Cut them out using an xacto blade and a cutting mat. If you’re a masochist, you could try scissors. I’d at least suggest surgical scissors, big ‘ol craft scissors will likely drive you batty.

I still haven’t figured out the best glue to use. Wood glue works great if you can figure out a way to hold the pieces of paper together long enough to have the glue dry. Hot glue works, but is messy even when you do it perfectly, and you also have to hold the pieces together while the glue is steaming hot. Potentially painful. I’d almost suggest super glue, but I’ve never had luck with that stuff.

I’m picturing these as hanging objects in my studio apartment. I have a high ceiling that would be nice to fill with a few of these in different colors. If you think about the size of each little face though, even a poster sized print will only give me something like a 1′ object.

I shot a bunch of pictures of one of the cooler cars out there, one which I think holds a lot of historic significance, a GM EV1 (though they would rather none exist in any capacity). They let a few universities get a hold of some to use as test platforms and will only let them run in hybrid orientations, apparently.

This car is mostly functional, and will get some sort of small motorcycle engine tucked in that will kick in on the highway to be able to cruise indefinitely (well, with enough gas that is).

You can see that quite a crowd came out in freezing weather to see this car. I felt like we were having to clandestinely come see the car in an alley.

Click any of the images above or this link to see all of my EV1 photos on flickr.

I don’t know which university this is below, but it feels a bit crazy to be hacking apart 1 of about 40 vehicles in existence. The youtube post says that they have theirs running as a turbojet/electric hybrid.

Youngstown Open House
Saturday, December 1st
4-10pm
*Free, All Ages

(I’m doing visuals along with Jason Pitt’s audio from 9:15-10, or so says the schedule.)

Join us and enjoy music, performance, and visual art during our annual open house & open studios event. Cultural Center staff will be on hand along with resident artists and representatives from tenant organizations Arts Corps, Nature Consortium, Southwest Interagency Academy, Twelfth Night Productions, Power of Hope, The Service Board, and Youth Media Institute. Studios in Cooper Artist Housing will be open and performances and activities will take place in the Cultural Center.

The 2007 Touring Reel Youth Film Festival will be screened in our theater from 6:30-8:30pm in partnership with Native Lens, Reel Girls, Longhouse Media, and Power of Hope. Showcasing the best of youth filmmaking, the Reel Youth Film Festival is a collection of insightful and entertaining short films made by youth ages 19 years and under from all over the country. Ranging from the comedic to the dramatic, using video and stop motion animation, this year’s films explore a wide range of themes, reflecting the diversity of the culture and concerns of youth today. Films made by Seattle area youth will also be screened as part of this special presentation.

Adjacent to the screening, Youngstown’s Movement Studio will play host to live performances. Youth dancers from around the area will perform from 6- 7:30pm in an exhibition of krumping, a relatively new, highly stylized and exciting freestyle form birthed in Los Angeles. Seattle’s best youth and adult spoken word artists including Khatsini Simani, Rose McAllese, Dakota Camacho, Angela Dy, Rocky Bernstein, James Ray, eLa Barton , Matt Gano, Chris Carroll, and Karen Finneyfrock will take the stage from 7:30-9:30pm in an intimate reading of their work. Seattle is home to nationally and internationally recognized poets, and the performance will feature slam poets from Youth Speaks-who recently placed 5th in the nation at the National Youth Poetry Slams-and adult poets who regularly showcase their work at the Seattle Poetry Slam.

Residents of Cooper artist housing will mount an exhibition of their work in Youngstown’s promenade gallery. Upstairs, they will open their studios to show and sell their works. Their mediums range from painting, photography, sculpture, and installation, to clothing, jewelry, video, and more.

* This year’s Open House is taking place in conjunction with Come Over! a Delridge Open Campus event. The community is invited to Come Over! between 6-10pm for a progressive menu of delectable foods, entertainment, raffle, and tours of: Youngstown, the Delridge Community Center, and Southwest Youth and Family Services. The event will provide an opportunity for neighbors to connect with one another and learn about programs and services offered by the organizations.

I’m working on The Machine documentary pretty heavily lately and so am always looking for something to help me to not go crazy. I must have clicked on some monome link recently that made me remember that I had a monome kit waiting in my closet.

I soldered it together last night and am trying to figure out how exactly to create the grid of buttons. I have a bunch of lit buttons from an old audio mixing console and I’m trying to figure out if I should replace the lamps in them (not LEDs) or try to go with what I’ve got. They look good as is, they just might burn out after a short while.

I took photos as I was going to see what kind of stop motion animation that would make. So that’s what you’re looking at.

Time lapse animation of a fog bank lifting off of downtown Seattle. Taken from Alki Beach.