Play is serious business. Messing around with equations, images, ideas, sounds, chemicals, time, space and stuff is the basis of virtually all science and art. For our September 13th Categorically Not! we’ll be fiddling with song, futzing with food, fooling with found materials. Partnering with Kinetic Show: LA at Santa Monica Art Studios, we’ll marvel at mechanical toys, design rockets, eat ice cream and enjoy jazz, brought to us by Janice Littlejohn, director-producer of the work-in-progress documentary, “... But Can She Play?”
The art duo Wendy Marvel and Mark Rosen, curators of the show, will discuss how tinkering has been central to their Mechanical FlipBooks, wondrous whirling movie machines that create a telling human narrative. Their dedication to the vanishing art of handcrafting has led them on a surprising journey that’s included scavenger hunts in aerospace junkyards, international collaboration with Leica, competing on a Discovery Channel show for Myth Busters, and the development of an award winning toy.
From a science perspective, Michael Clive will draw on his experience as rocket design engineer, telling us how tinkering with flame throwers and metal machining brought him from designing special effects in Hollywood to working in the space industry. Using liquid nitrogen and kitchen ingredients, Clive will ask the audience to participate in a cryogenic ambrosial experiment. Michael is also the baker/engineer behind the latest incarnation of the Black Rock Bakery, a high tech ice cream parlor in the desert playa at Burning Man.
Musician Aubrey Logan will tinker with tools she uses best: trombone and the human voice. Breaking traditional genre barriers by combining jazz vocals with R&B, neo-soul, pop and rock. Aubrey has performed around the world, winning the Audience’s Choice and Jury’s First Place Awards at the Montreux Jazz Festival Voice Competition in Switzerland. She’ll talk about the role "tinkering" plays in her songs, performances arrangements. She’s one of the artists featured in “...But Can She Play?”
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