On PAX, part 2
Aug. 30th, 2007 02:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
missroseroseOr, All the Stuff Rose Forgot To Put in the First Post.
Let's see...
The Experience Music Project: Housed in what is certainly one of the more interestingly-designed buildings in existence (Brian's words: "It looks like Mecha-Godzilla puke"), the EMP does contain some fascinating exhibits on the history of music, mostly in the context of location (in this case, Seattle). There is, unsurprisingly, a distinct emphasis on grunge, up to and including a timeline of sorts delineating important points in the history of the grunge movement. While interesting, this didn't hold my attention anywhere near as long as some of the more universal exhibits - the history of the electric guitar, for example, with multiple physical examples of each styling change and design innovation throughout the decades. The centerpiece of the place, though, was what I'd call easily the most stunning piece of modern art I've ever seen - If VI Was IX, a huge sculpture constructed of hundreds of electric and acoustic guitars, approximately forty of which were wired with robotic strummers to play music in real time, which you could listen to with headphones. The information was interesting, but the sculpture itself was absolutely fascinating both to watch and listen to. B+
The Science Fiction Museum: Often mentioned in the same breath as the EMP, since they are housed in the same (very strange) building, the Sci-Fi Museum is nonetheless an entirely different beast. In a lot of ways, it was almost a sci-fi geek's mecca - there was such a huge morass of artifacts, ranging from a first printing of H.G. Wells' War of the Worlds to the shooting model of the tree-of-life-in-bubble used in The Fountain, with enough costumes and props and action figures and movie posters and pulp novels and animatrons to cause even the most hardcore nerd to leave his parents' basement.
My favorite exhibit was probably the costumes, which ranged from several pieces from the original Star Trek series (I loved the cheesy EV suits) to one of the Viper pilot flight suits from the new Battlestar Galactica. Something Brian commented on was the way the costumes progressed, both in quality of materials and workmanship. Some of this was due to budgetary restrictions of the various shows, but a lot of it was also due the progression of entertainment technology. Since most folk were watching the original Star Trek on 15" standard-definition TVs, the art directors had a fair amount of leeway in how realistic things had to look on camera. By comparison, Battlestar Galactica is shot in high-definition and often viewed on 50"+ screens, which means it has to look a lot more realistic; the aforementioned flight suit looked like it had walked right off the screen.
One of the other costumes that I found particularly interesting was Seven of Nine's blue catsuit from Star Trek: Voyager. Not for any particular technical reason (it was a simple enough outfit on the outside, so it looked more or less like it did onscreen), but because the costume looked awfully short. Ryan's height is listed on startrek.com 5'8", but her suit looked significantly smaller than that...maybe that's with her Borg heels?
About the only thing I could fault the Museum for was the conspicuous absence of anything Firefly or Serenity related. Hopefully time will remedy the exclusion...A-
Jonathan Coulton: A troubadour for the Internet generation, Jonathan Coulton actually reminded me in person of no-one so much as a 1970s-era folk singer a la Dan Fogelberg or Neil Diamond - soft-spoken and vaguely hippie-looking with a beard, longish hair and acoustic guitar. His songwriting, however, is distinctly geek-oriented, whether it's about an evil genius ("Skullcrusher Mountain") time spent in cubicle farms ("Code Monkey"), abstract math ("Mandelbrot Set") or the overuse of pharmaceutical intervention ("I Feel Fantastic"). What makes his music especially noteworthy, however, is that the geeky gimmicks are only the hook - underlying almost every piece is a very human longing and a sense of loneliness that seems rather at odds with the often-bouncy rhythms and catchy tunes. Plus, he sells his music as DRM-free with full-song preview streams available, which automatically makes him one of the cooler musicians working today. So seeing him in concert was doubly awesome. A
Monorail Espresso: Brian and I spent about twenty minutes traipsing about downtown Seattle trying to find a non-Starbucks espresso stand. (While the search seemed doomed, it did prove that there were at least eight different Starbucks stands in a one-block radius of our hotel - something that disturbs and frightens me quite a bit.) Fortunately, I espied a neon sign through the traffic that read "Caffiene", and we approached it to find a small, independently-owned stand run by cute friendly hippie girls that served one of the best damn mochas I've ever had. They've supposedly been there since 1980 (two years before Starbucks, or a geologic age in coffee-stand terms), so we're very much looking forward to going back again when we return next year. A+
Let's see...
The Experience Music Project: Housed in what is certainly one of the more interestingly-designed buildings in existence (Brian's words: "It looks like Mecha-Godzilla puke"), the EMP does contain some fascinating exhibits on the history of music, mostly in the context of location (in this case, Seattle). There is, unsurprisingly, a distinct emphasis on grunge, up to and including a timeline of sorts delineating important points in the history of the grunge movement. While interesting, this didn't hold my attention anywhere near as long as some of the more universal exhibits - the history of the electric guitar, for example, with multiple physical examples of each styling change and design innovation throughout the decades. The centerpiece of the place, though, was what I'd call easily the most stunning piece of modern art I've ever seen - If VI Was IX, a huge sculpture constructed of hundreds of electric and acoustic guitars, approximately forty of which were wired with robotic strummers to play music in real time, which you could listen to with headphones. The information was interesting, but the sculpture itself was absolutely fascinating both to watch and listen to. B+
The Science Fiction Museum: Often mentioned in the same breath as the EMP, since they are housed in the same (very strange) building, the Sci-Fi Museum is nonetheless an entirely different beast. In a lot of ways, it was almost a sci-fi geek's mecca - there was such a huge morass of artifacts, ranging from a first printing of H.G. Wells' War of the Worlds to the shooting model of the tree-of-life-in-bubble used in The Fountain, with enough costumes and props and action figures and movie posters and pulp novels and animatrons to cause even the most hardcore nerd to leave his parents' basement.
My favorite exhibit was probably the costumes, which ranged from several pieces from the original Star Trek series (I loved the cheesy EV suits) to one of the Viper pilot flight suits from the new Battlestar Galactica. Something Brian commented on was the way the costumes progressed, both in quality of materials and workmanship. Some of this was due to budgetary restrictions of the various shows, but a lot of it was also due the progression of entertainment technology. Since most folk were watching the original Star Trek on 15" standard-definition TVs, the art directors had a fair amount of leeway in how realistic things had to look on camera. By comparison, Battlestar Galactica is shot in high-definition and often viewed on 50"+ screens, which means it has to look a lot more realistic; the aforementioned flight suit looked like it had walked right off the screen.
One of the other costumes that I found particularly interesting was Seven of Nine's blue catsuit from Star Trek: Voyager. Not for any particular technical reason (it was a simple enough outfit on the outside, so it looked more or less like it did onscreen), but because the costume looked awfully short. Ryan's height is listed on startrek.com 5'8", but her suit looked significantly smaller than that...maybe that's with her Borg heels?
About the only thing I could fault the Museum for was the conspicuous absence of anything Firefly or Serenity related. Hopefully time will remedy the exclusion...A-
Jonathan Coulton: A troubadour for the Internet generation, Jonathan Coulton actually reminded me in person of no-one so much as a 1970s-era folk singer a la Dan Fogelberg or Neil Diamond - soft-spoken and vaguely hippie-looking with a beard, longish hair and acoustic guitar. His songwriting, however, is distinctly geek-oriented, whether it's about an evil genius ("Skullcrusher Mountain") time spent in cubicle farms ("Code Monkey"), abstract math ("Mandelbrot Set") or the overuse of pharmaceutical intervention ("I Feel Fantastic"). What makes his music especially noteworthy, however, is that the geeky gimmicks are only the hook - underlying almost every piece is a very human longing and a sense of loneliness that seems rather at odds with the often-bouncy rhythms and catchy tunes. Plus, he sells his music as DRM-free with full-song preview streams available, which automatically makes him one of the cooler musicians working today. So seeing him in concert was doubly awesome. A
Monorail Espresso: Brian and I spent about twenty minutes traipsing about downtown Seattle trying to find a non-Starbucks espresso stand. (While the search seemed doomed, it did prove that there were at least eight different Starbucks stands in a one-block radius of our hotel - something that disturbs and frightens me quite a bit.) Fortunately, I espied a neon sign through the traffic that read "Caffiene", and we approached it to find a small, independently-owned stand run by cute friendly hippie girls that served one of the best damn mochas I've ever had. They've supposedly been there since 1980 (two years before Starbucks, or a geologic age in coffee-stand terms), so we're very much looking forward to going back again when we return next year. A+
