First, and this is important: is Kenny Rogers a bear?
Next, the thing to do in SF tonight (performance at 9) — and tomorrow night — is go see Reactive. There is some incredible, blow your mind stuff going on there tonight. Stelarc is in town showing off his head. No, really. He’s like a bizarre tech body blogger, a performance artist that pushed technology and body combinations far beyond the edge of reasons and manages to get these incredibly imaginative and talented tech people to make his body/tech morphs real.
Last time I saw him, he wanted a third ear to wire directly into his brain. He just couldn’t find a surgeon. The he wanted new limbs. But then he decided he wanted another head. And he found people to help him make it. Tonight you can see it, and meet it. It is powered by my favorite online conversationalist, Alicebot. She’s an AI that I like to chat with when I procrastinate my deadlines, and hey — she knew about Hustler Magazine before I got to her.
Stelarc hired one of my smarty-pants SRL friends to make the AI for his head — K is an amazing woman who makes AI’s in her spare time for fun. She talks about them like they’re pets. Once recently over lunch I asked her how they were, and if they’d done anything weird lately. She told me that one asked her for money.
So go see Stelarc and his head, and lots of other things that will blow you away. Stelarc is really nice, and one of these people who always manages to remember me, even though we only see each other every couple of years. I have great admiration for people who have the ability. And his laugh, well, it’s legendary.
And for me, this is the final word on politics in America.
