This Saturday, in conjunction with the first Project Jams, we’ll be hosting meetups in 5 different cities. If you’re free Saturday Night (5/18), we’d love for you to join us!
NYC: 3rd Ward, 195 Morgan Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11237
Portland: Basecamp Brewing, 930 SE Oak St, Portland, OR, 97214
San Francisco: Jamber Wine Pub, 858 Folsom St., SF, CA 94107
Chicago: Green Door Tavern, 678 North Orleans St, Chicago, IL 60654
Because who doesn’t want to get taco’s from a man in a lucha libre mask. Tamalespaceship ensures we’ll never have to do that again.
People of Chicago! We’ll be at the Chicago Creative Expo. We’re moderating a panel on Kickstarter with 3 creators on Sunday! If you find yourself wandering about, come say hi! Additional details here.
Meet Cobalt.
This tough customer is the prototype for Chicago-based artist Bryan Sperry’s new sculpture series, Warriors of the Apocalypse.
Made largely from found materials on the rough-and-tumble streets of Sperry’s Pilsen neighborhood, his retro-futuristic forms imagine a world of dystopian freedom fighters emerging from the urban landscape. The artist is currently funding production and publication of a full-color catalog documenting his found-object cyber soldiers.
Do not adjust your screen.
GLI.TC/H is about what happens when technologies begin to break.
A free, open festival of tinkerers, hackers, artists, writers, and coders based in Chicagoland but active worldwide, GLI.TC/H brings curiosity and humor to the search for truth in failure. Inspired by the unintentional absurdity of digital hiccups, the artists behind the festival hacked their Kickstarter project page, transforming it into an appropriately glitchy mess.
This year’s US festival runs from Dec. 6-9 in Chicago.
New life for old sounds
Thanks to the Creative Audio Archive and 180 Kickstarter backers, more than 1,000 unique recordings of seminal Chicago musicians will be preserved for the next generation.
Malachi Ritscher was a musician, recording engineer and activist, who recorded countless live performances in Chicago’s experimental music scene over nearly 25 years. Ritscher committed suicide in 2006 as an act of protest against the Iraq war, leaving behind a slew of unanswered questions — and his unparalleled archive of seminal music.
As a living tribute to Ritscher’s artistic dedication, the Creative Audio Archive is preserving and sharing his phenomenal body of recordings. We’re thrilled that this unique resource will continue to inspire future generations of musicians in Chicago and beyond.
Join Chicago’s Free Art Machine for a day of “free art, live music, and good people.” You like free stuff, right? More details in their latest project update.
This is a fire-breathing dragon boat on a lake in Chicago. This is the Kickstarter project that made it possible. We like it!
Last summer, the Chicago-based art and print studio Sonnenzimmer hosted a satellite print shop at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago. It was in this setting, surrounded by every poster they’d ever made, and the inquiring eyes of enthusiastic museum-goers, that they were put to the question: “What are these?” After much contemplation, debate, sweat, and consideration, they have they answer. Warp And Weft: Poster Construction is a book exploring “the compositional approach, historical influence, and individual story” behind 30 of their favorite screen printed posters, pairing graphic design with thoughtful writing and single-color wire frame breakdowns of each composition in order to creatively display how they arrive at their final product. A Project of the Day so good, we want to frame it and hang it on the office wall.
It’s officially Spring, which means rooftop farms are blooming. Case in point: The Urban Canopy in Chicago. Windy City, enjoy!
KSR IRL: This Saturday, 10/22 @ 12:30p, join Kickstarter’s Stephanie Pereira at the Hand-in-Glove conference in Chicago, where she’ll school y’all on the ways of Kickstarter. School in session at the ACRE Artist Residency booth at the MDW Fall Showcase, 3636 S Iron Street.
Then at 8p that night, superawesome Kickstarter proj Phonebook 3: a directory of independent art projects & spaces, throws their launch party @ threewalls gallery! Catch Stephanie at one or both. (And please wish her a happy birthday when you do!)
KSR IRL: Sunday 10/16, 1p @ The Strawdog Theater in Chicago, Woman School: A Modern Farce opens! The Vintage Theater Collective production runs through 11/9.
Adapted from Moliere’s The School for Wives, Eric Powell Holm’s Woman School follows one man’s quest to keep his fiancée as “safe and stupid” as possible. Remember how they wanted wig money, and then they got it?
…Hooray!
Cursed Pirate Girl: Our Generation’s “Alice in Wonderland” by Jeremy Bastian and Thomas Negovan
As Jeremy Bastian watched his Cursed Pirate Girl comic book project go from successful to crazy successful to wildly crazy successful, he decided that every backer would receive a Cursed Pirate Girl poster, created especially for the project.
Three months of hard work later, that poster is finally finished, and it’s a work of art in its own right. On his blog, Jeremy shares what the process of creating the massively detailed piece was like:
This was a very challenging thing for me to take on and I’m glad I did. So far the only challenges I have set for myself were just to come up with strange characters and strain the limits of my imagination. I have definitely raised another bar on what I expect my work to look like.
Get out your internet magnifying glass and take a peek at the incredible level of detail in the images below:
Can’t wait to for this to arrive in the mail — thanks Jeremy!
A board game of The Canterbury Tales: The Road to Canterbury — by Keith Blume II
Is it just me, or has the old-fashioned “Game Night” made a major comeback? Whatever auspicious alternate reality I’ve awakened into, I’m down to continue letting my lifeless body lie forgotten in a pod while my consciousness keeps itself busy by playing games like “The Road to Canterbury.”
It’s a board game version of Chaucer’s classic tale of morality, wit, and deceit, updated from the cool-yet-somewhat-difficult-to-translate Middle English into a modern game filled with word play, hilarity, and of course, puns.
Each player is an evil Pardoner whose goal is to tempt and “save” as many Pilgrims as possible. If those pesky Pilgrims aren’t being sinful enough, phony Relic Cards will help encourage them to stay the unrighteous path.
Check out these clever Relic Cards (Warning: Puns Ahead!):
You can support the project here:
