Art in DC is excellent, although not typically fodder for tech-focused blogs. Hooray for exceptions.

Leo Villareal's installations are really something to behold. He makes big LED-based works whose lighting patterns are based on rule sets of his design. He claims Conway's Game of Life as a major inspiration. And goodness, does video make his stuff look cool. Lucky for us, he's currently working on his largest installation yet, and in DC! At the National Gallery of Art! The concourse between the NGA's East and West wings will be lit by somewhere around 40,000 LEDs for the next year. Installation is going on now. I've never had a chance to see the artist's work in person, and I'm really, really excited to walk through it.

He's also going to be showing at the soon-to-reopen (and historically awesome) Conner Contemporary gallery, starting on September 27th until November 9th. The gallery plans to have an opening reception on the first day, but the press release says it's invite only. Something tells me that nerdy programmers won't have an easy time making the list. Still, I'm excited to get over to their new spot in NE. Bigger is always better.

Art!

On Wednesday Ben and I headed over to the monthly meeting of Dorkbot DC and soldered our little hearts out. I've only been to one Dorkbot before (well, unless you count the one at SXSW — but that was mostly an opportunity to buy t-shirts and drink free beer). My previous experience had been enjoyable, but maybe a little dry. It's inevitable that the speakers won't pique everyone's interest every time, I suppose.

This meeting was a lot more fun, and a lot more hands-on. The organizers did a fantastic job, preparing instruction material, assembling kits and even pre-drilling jigs for the rest of us in an effort to introduce the extremely large crowd to soldering by way of MAKE Magazine's LED cube weekend project, slightly modified to work with an Arduino.

Sure, it's a simple project, but we've never claimed to be electronics gurus. Besides, it was a great opportunity to refine our soldering skills — something I'm in sore need of after nearly trashing my Wii during a botched modchip installation.