Irrelevance Glorified

In the beginning of May I went with Cameron and his boss, Elizabeth, to the Maker Faire: Bay Area 2008 convention in San Mateo. Maker Faire is put on by the publishers of Make and Craft magazine, and is really a celebration of do-it-yourself-ness and unguided experimentation. Read on for pics of some of the things I saw…

The convention had a number of buildings that were vaguely themed, such as robotic stuff, flying stuff, clothing stuff, etc. But most of the stuff outside was either people selling their crafts, or public art, which was often pretty cool. The first thing we made a beeline for was the Life Size Mousetrap, by artist Mark Perez. It’s basically a 25-ton kinetic art sculpture that has been obviously inspired by the boardgame of the same name.

This first image should just give an idea of the scope of this project, which is pretty huge. And ramshackle. But ramshackle in a charming way. It’s fairly faithful to the original, with the exception that instead of a cage that comes down onto the mouse…..

A giant safe comes down and crushes the poor mouse. In this case, you can see what’s left of some cardboard imitation cheese.

Here we can see the beginning of the sculpture, along with the musical accompaniment, Esmeralda Strange, the One Woman Band. Seriously, all that crap on the stage, that’s the stuff that she plays, often all at once. There was a theme song that went along with this sculpture, although the melody escapes me at this moment.

Here’s a picture of Mark himself, acting as ringleader for this show. You can also see the mobile Victorian House in the background. So, we’ve seen most aspects of this mousetrap….where are the mice? Well, for this show, you don’t just get normal mice…..

….you get slutty mice! Here they are posing with cheese. Now, now, I shouldn’t be rude and assume anything about their promiscuity. The one on the right is actually Mark’s fiance. But, c’mon, you have to admit…..

….it does look a little bit burlesque, doesn’t it?

Finally, we have a short video of the whole proceedings.

All props to Cameron for filming all this, because I, being an idiot, forgot to make sure that there was a memory card in my camera before bringing it, so it wasn’t until I found a Radio Shack booth that I could actually take pictures of stuff. And actually, Cameron stopped filming when the mousetrap screwed up. But they cheated a little and got the safe to come down and crush some fake cheese, because after all, that’s what the crowd came to see.

So next, we turn around, and I see something approaching. Something…oddly familiar.

It actually took me a few moments to realize it was the Governator himself. At first glance, I actually thought it was Ronald Reagan for a second. Then I realized it was Ahnuld, and what a horrifying likeness it is. And why is he holding the world in his cold, mechanical clutches? Is this a harbinger of his ambitions?

Oh yeah, this is some sort of electric rickshaw sort of deal.

The next set of pictures is just stuff that I saw when walking around the outside.

This set of sculptures, which all these people are blocking my view of, would probably be more recognizable if you saw them at Burning Man. And if they were on fire. Unfortunately, the guy in the middle seems to think I’m taking a picture of him. If you want to see what I think is the left sculpture actually on fire, you can check out this link.

There was plenty of stuff like this here as well. It was like Halloween in May, although costumes would have to be homemade. In fact, there were quite a few Goths out at Maker Faire. I think they viewed it as an opportunity to put on their best piercings and dog collars and such. It’s like winter formal for them.

Honestly, I’ve forgotten exactly what’s going on here. But I’m pretty sure that this is a game where you need to coordinate with whoever’s on the other side of the wooden box, and working together pick up the blocks at the bottom. This would be a lot better if they covered the sides in acrylic and filled it with stuffed animals. Although it’s possible that that’s indeed what it was, and I just arrived too late.

I shouldn’t be so specific by calling this image “Jurassic Mini Golf”, because clearly it’s just Art Golf, but whatever, you’re hitting golf balls through cheap art.

I thought this was a cool little project. This was created by Kevin Mathieu, and it’s the Lego Jeep! Basically, the outside of the Jeep is covered in a Lego base, so that kids can come up and make little structures. I’d hate to be stuck behind him on the highway, though.

This little sculpture is composed of old motherboards and other useless computer parts. The face was reciting words from some work of literature, and the smug baby-sitter was running a trivia contest on what it was reciting from. I call him smug because someone answered “Alice in Wonderland”, when it fact it was “Through the Looking Glass”, or something lame like that.

There were a number of people in these vehicles, which I’m pretty sure were dressed up tricycles. Anyways, I managed to not take a picture of one with a British flag on it, that I assumed to be an English Muffin. Get it? Get it? That’s precisely the sort of joke I expect these people to make. Seriously, I hope these things had air conditioning.

Next we hit the main convention areas. This included lots of kits and books to purchase (more on that later) as well as a stage area for speakers. One of the things that stuck out was this item:

I’m pretty sure, based on the helicopter rotors, that this is a flying car. There was no demonstration, and the guy wasn’t standing next to it, triumphant, so I’m also pretty sure that it’s not working. Yet.

Unfortunately, we entered the exhibition area too late (or too early, depending on how you look at it) for the Tesla Coil concert, but it wasn’t too late to take a picture of the coils!

Sometimes, you want to play Pong…but sometimes, you just want something to put your coffee cup on. This item serves all your needs right there. Four person Pong!

Legos are a favorite part of all of our childhoods. At least, those of who weren’t deprived. This was a very impressive set-up of Lego buildings and a train set.

I forget what this has to do with making…anything, but I thought it was interesting anyway. I didn’t remember what this type of plant was, but I have a feeling it’s a Mimosa plant. Upon application of a stimulus, it responds by contract/folding its leaves.

We walked into the building to see some Robot on Robot violence, but the stands to the “arena” were hopelessly packed, so we ended up checking out the other items in the room. For instance, there was this clear version of a pinball table, so you could exactly how nothing much happens in a pinball machine. In the background, you can see the creepy robot that I was trying very hard to not make eye contact with.

One of the more interesting areas was a section devoted to machining. Basically, there is a network of machine shop co-ops of sorts, and for a membership and usage fee you can use equipment that would normally be well beyond your means.

I suppose if you were skilled, you could do something like this. On the left appears to be the armor from some dark character in Lord of the Rings, and I’m pretty sure that evil looking dude on the right is a character from the video game Killzone. And to the right of them you can see the makings of a Stormtrooper outfit. These were all homemade, I believe.

The machining tools that they had were pretty impressive, they had laser machining and I think an EDM tool and a 3D printer. And of course, CNC mills. I believe that’s what was used to make this. Awww yeah, it’s a Dymaxion projection of the Earth; that’s my favorite kind!

Outside the machine shop were demonstrations of more traditional arts.

For instance, there was a blacksmithing demo, where they invited people to come and try their hands at beating the crap out of metal. That’s not a ‘real’ fire truck behind them there. This organization actually bought an old, retired fire truck, and now it’s used to hold thing that create fire. How ironic.

Around the other side of the fire truck was a welding demonstration. Obviously, you can just have kids stare at you while you’re welding stuff, so they made a little welding peepshow booth, where depending on your height, you can just pick a welding mask and check out the action. The people inside the booth were pretty much welding anything and everything they could get their hands on.

Next to the welding was a little glass blowing demonstration. I guess strictly speaking, there was no blowing going on here — it was just glass forming. Still, I really enjoy watching a skilled glass blower pull and tease a glob of molten glass into a spectacular object.

So, that’s all of my images. All in all, Maker Faire is a pretty cool gathering for people who like to do stuff with their hands. The whole theme of DIY is one that speaks to core American values. For the most part, the world has become too complicated and we have become too specialized for us to create much of anything by ourselves. Why should I, when someone with more expertise and capital has done it for me, and cheaper? Make and Craft tantalize with the prospect that with just a little bit of help, I can create something for myself.

In the main convention center, they were selling all the editions of Make and Craft magazine, as well as some “best of” issues (I bought one myself), books on a bunch of other topics ranging from computer repair to crocheting, kits for making solar powered…anything, basic electronic and computer tools, everything. And they were making a killing. One of the things about Make is that it really does make it seem like such knowledge is accessible to anyone. The reality is probably less rosy. A lot of the cool stuff that people were doing took years of training or practicing, hours of free time, and probably a good amount of money. If they did a follow-up survey of everyone who purchased a book from the Make store, talking to them after six months and one year, I wonder how many projects, on average, a person actually did. Probably not many, if any at all — I know I haven’t cracked open my “Best-Of” book. We all have money and aspirations. Unfortunately, not all of us have the commitment and free time. Still, it’s good to know that some people out there are bearing that DIY standard. After all, we’ll be counting on them after the apocalypse.

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