Dorktober report

Spent the evening attending the fall's first Dorkbot Seattle meeting, at CoCA. Tonight's program, from the dorkbotsea-announce list:

This month, Seattle artist and weaver LAURA MACCARY and her father and collaborator, Spokane-based sculptor, poet and electronics expert LAWRENCE MACCARY will be talking about the hows and whys of their "Dialectric" series of interactive artworks, which all consist of an electronic component woven of conductive or resistive material and a circuit designed around the weaving (http://www.maccary.com/ ); TOBY PADDOCK will explore "Magnetic sensors for the unwashed and lazy:  using Hall Effect devices without learning very much".  inside a magnetic sensor is a lot of science, but outside they're small, cheap, rugged, have few wires and are easy to get along with (http://www.seanet.com/~tpaddock/).  Local experimental music duo PINKY & REX will discuss their re-contextualizing of thrift-store toys, toy instruments and electronic oddities to create symphonic walls of sound.

IMO Laura MacCary's weaving-based sculptures were very cool. Pinky and Rex's musical performance was intermittently interesting, though it dragged at times (inevitable, perhaps, with improv techno performed on toy electronic guitars). The rest of the program, so-so. Anyway, dorkbot's weird and unique enough that I think I'll be going to future meetings.