Dorkbot 7 year Anniversary Party June 20th
Posted Under: art cars,Boiler Bar and Theater,Entertainment Announcements,Volt Aged
Dorkbot 7 year Anniversary Party June 20th
Presenting:
Greg Solberg & Keith Johnson
How to bake an electric cupcake, Tesla Roster, and the Marriage Wrecker.
Greg Solberg’s Bio: Greg has an undergraduate degree from UC Berkeley and thirty years of programming experience. Fifteen years ago he got involved with electric vehicles. Encouraged by a complete lack of knowledge on the subject he took on the task of converting his Honda Del Sol to electric propulsion. Four years later the Del Sol was running. Since then he has created a number of amusing electric art car vehicles (Electric Couch, Pink Bunny Slippers, and Cupcake Cars). Currently he has landed his dream job at Tesla Motors where he spends much of his time extracting the last little bits of performance out of the Tesla’s AC induction motor drive.
Keith Johnson’s Bio: At Stanford University, Keith wrestles with thorny issues around preserving very-long-term access to digital information-from esoteric research data to the digital photographs we’re all making now. For fun, he tinkers with anything mechanical or electronic, especially cars. Five years ago, encouraged and assisted by Greg Solberg, Lisa Pongrace, and his wife Merrilee Proffitt, he built two electric cupcake cars. Last year, inspired to create something a bit bigger, he built a full-size, air-suspended, electric-powered, robotic horse- drawn carriage (without the horse) decorated briefly as an industrial- age Cinderella’s Pumpkin Carriage. Though the carriage fared well on the rough Playa, the pumpkin shell disintegrated, and the carriage found its name, the “Marriage Wrecker.”
Jon Sarriugarte
One or more of the following topics:
The Giant Iron Snail Car the Golden Mean
1928 Hogan Tesla Coil
Powertool Drag Racing
Volt-Aged Whiskey
Bio: Born and raised in Boise, Idaho, Jon made the trip out to California to create the metal furniture company Form & Reform in 1987. He has studied and worked as a blacksmith/ fabricator for over 25 years. He co-owns the Kraftworks building in West Oakland that houses over 20 industrial craftsmen and performance artists. Not content to “merely” excel at work, Jon also believes in plain old fun. His entries in the Power Tool Drag Races have been featured on the Discovery Channel, and his work on Vortex generators were featured on the History Channel. He continues to be active in the Bay Area art group, Survival Research Laboratories. Two years Jon and his wife Kyrsten Mate founded the Boiler Bar Theater. This Oilpunk group built an entire bar from a turn of the century oil town and along with a bevy of stage talent, has taken the show on the road as far away as Texas. The Golden Mean is the newest addition mixing Jules Verne and Dr Doolittle in a hot rod car from the past.
Mike Winter
Interrogation by Robot
Recently he created robots that hug, laugh,
interrogate, party, make up stories, remove free will and buy beer. Currently he is working on Artificial Personality projects. He will be talking about interrogation by robot, there will be a short video.
Bio: Michael Winter is co-founder of Stupid Fun Club, a Berkeley based think tank. Before that, he founded three successful technology companies. More importantly, he won the first Robot Wars with his flipper robot, X1.
Omega Recoil
Wireless Power Transmission: How did Nikola Tesla do it? By Omega Recoil
In the late 1800s Nikola Tesla began experimenting with transmitting power wirelessly via the earth’s crust and the ionosphere. He invented what we now know as the Tesla Coil; this device was capable of generating extremely high voltages, and was the pre-curser to radio transmission. What was Tesla doing? How was he doing it? Does wireless power work? The Omega Recoil team have been re-creating some of Tesla’s wireless power experiments, with interesting results.
Our presentation will include videos of our Tesla Coils running and power being transmitted wirelessly.
Bio: Omega Recoil is a team of Scientists, builders, engineers, showmen and industrial artists that have created extremely large sparks in the San Francisco Bay area since 1999. The members of the group began work with: Pyrokenetics, Dr. Megavolt, Flaming Lotus Girls, SRL, Firefall, SimNuke, and Acme Muffineering. Omega Recoil is the intersection where Mad Science meets Art and Education.
Plus more! After the speakers each of these topics will be presented in larger than life demos!
Details
June 20th 2009, 8pm-2am 2600 Magnolia at 26th street in West Oakland Map Enter through the Parking Lot Gate $10 donation to support the Boiler Bar As always at the Boiler Bar: DJ’s, & ravers are welcome to talk and learn.
Reader Comments
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