P'unk Avenue Window

Star Wars Uncut is finished! And next Wednesday, August 11th at 6pm we’ll be screening the entire crowdsourced, fan-remade movie on the projector in our office. I’ve downloaded the whole darn thing and assembled the most popular scenes as voted by the participants. This stuff is awesome.

Please join us for beer, snacks and force-fueled goodness. Or as Chewbacca would put it, “AROUUUUHUUHHHH! ARRRRRGGUUUUU! ARROOOOHAAAAAAH!”

PLEASE RSVP by commenting here so we have a rough idea how many people to expect. Keep an eye on this blog for updates in the event of catastrophic popularity and other natural disasters.

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

“Where?” 1168 E. Passyunk Ave, South Philly.

“When?” Wednesday August 11th, 6pm.

“Who?” Grownups and teens. There is some adult humor in two very funny scenes that totally deserve to be in the movie.

“Who made this?” Casey Pugh of Vimeo created and executed this brilliant project. Fans all over the world contributed 15-second scenes.

“Did you guys submit a scene?” Yes, I (Tom) did, but it didn’t top the voting for that scene. Here’s my scene:

“Will there be more crowdsourced movies?” Pugh says there will be an Empire Strikes Back Uncut. Personally I’d like to see Big Lebowski Uncut. If you know what I mean. And I think you do.

PLEASE RSVP by commenting here. Thank you!

Thursday April 23, 2009

The discussion which will begin at 7pm. Food and drink at 6pm.

Please join us next Thursday, April 23rd at 6pm for the Junto. This month we will be discussing the past, present, and future of art criticism in Philadelphia. We are pleased to host an all-star panel representing the many sides of the art world.

Sid Sachs: Director of Rosenwald-Wolf Gallery, UArts faculty, author, curator, with a long history in the Philadelphia art world.

Roberta Fallon and Libby Rosof: the ever-present writers/critics responsible for the Philadelphia Art Blog. Roberta and Libby founded the Zero .1% for Art Commission to bridge the gap between ordinary people and art. Artblog, established in 2003, is an outgrowth of that mission.

Katie Murken: Philadelphia artist and educator. Since receiving her MFA in Printmaking & Book Arts from the University of the Arts Katie has been an instructor at the Tyler School of Art and practicing artist. In 2007, she worked with P’unk Avenue on the multimedia installation Debtor’s Inheritance at the Schuylkill Center. In 2008, she received an Independence Foundation Fellowship for the Public Author Project, a long-term interactive project that will use text messaging to explore the phenomenon of books and libraries in today’s digital climate. Katie is currently collaborating with three Philadelphia artists as part of the Little Berlin gallery’s upcoming exhibition Offerings.

Andrew Suggs: (from the Vox Populi website) “Recent exhibition venues include The Galleries at Moore (Philadelphia, PA), Fleisher-Ollman Gallery (Philadelphia, PA), ThreeWalls (Chicago, IL), Publico Gallery (Cincinnati, OH), The Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts (Cambridge, MA), and Vox Populi (Philadelphia, PA). Andrew currently lives and works in Philadephia, where he is the Executive Director of Vox Populi. He earned an AB cum laude from Harvard University.”

As always, we provide the cold Newcastle Brown and Philadelphia’s best tomato pie. You bring something to share, if it is not too much trouble.

Hope to see you there!

When:

Thursday April 23, 2009 at 6pm

The discussion which will begin at 7pm. Food and drink at 6pm.

Where:

P’unk Avenue
1168 E. Passyunk Avenue
Philadelphia, PA 19147

This Friday, Tom and I will be heading to Austin, Texas for SXSW Interactive. As hard as it is to pull myself away from my family, this conference is time well spent. We have started to use it as a milestone for our work at P’unk Avenue and in the Philadelphia tech/geek scene. As in… imagine how many cool things we will do by the time SXSW rolls around next year.

Well, this year has rolled around and I am happy to report that many very cool things have happened. I am also happy to report that Tom and I are heading down with clear missions. Mine is to do a good job on the Regional Whuffie Building: Attracting Innovation to Your City panel. I am looking forward to talking about how Philadelphia is a kick ass place to be right now.

More importantly, though, Tom is looking to bring home the OK Happy Cog’aoke trophy. Some of you may not realize that Tom’s karaoke roots go deep. He has tracked the Philly Karaoke scene for a long time. This will not be an easy task since he will up against competitors from around the world. However, Alex Hillman and Jonathan Finnegan also from Philadelphia could serve to be some of his toughest competition.

If you are going to be there… drop us a line so we can hang out.

And, wish us luck!

If you have passed our studio in the evening, you may have seen a rear projection installation in our window that faces E. Passyunk Avenue. University of Delaware professor, Ashley Pigford was inspired to create this site-specific piece after observing the diverse activity that unfolds at our intersection.

We will be having an opening and discussion on Thursday March 19th. Hope you can come.

P’unk Avenue Active Intersection
A new Sound Installation by Ashley John Pigford
Opening / Discussion: March 19, 6pm-9pm.
Hosted by P’unk Ave
1168 E Passyunk Avenue, Philadelphia PA 19147

In Ashley’s own words:

A camera records activity of the intersection of E. Passyunk Avenue and Federal Street in South Philadelphia. The amount of activity is translated into a constantly updating audio composition that is broadcast through low power FM in the area of the installation. Additional audio of the intersection, recorded live, is mixed into the broadcast composition and the composite video image of the camera is projected into the window of P’unk Avenue. This piece is intended to be experienced as an active participant of the intersection, with your radio tuned to the FM frequency that is projected in the window, or as an observer.

Bringing together great people for Ignite Philly on a weekday evening has been great… imagine what a Saturday night Ignite Philly will be like! That’s right, we are beginning planning now for Ignite Philly (3). It will take place once again at Johnny Brenda’s on the evening of May 2, 2009.

We are looking for inspiring speakers that are doing cool things in Philadelphia. Are you working on a rad project, have something interesting to say or know someone that is? Please comment with links and we will do our best to follow up and get them on the stage. Keep in mind, this is not a sales event. This is about sharing ideas.

Last Saturday John and I saw Thurston Moore and Mats Gustafsson at the International House at 37th and Chestnut. Thurston is obviously most well known for his involvement in Sonic Youth, but has also spent the better part of thirty years running his record label Ecstatic Peace!, produced a number of solo records, and dabbled in the free jazz scene. Mats Gustafsson is a Swedish free jazz saxophone player. It was a free jazz show.

It was my first free jazz show. I attended with an open mind, half fearing it would be an unironic mimic of the Bill Pullman jazz scene in Lost Highway. Thurston and Mats took the stage, picked up their instruments, and started to produce a cacophony of squawks using chopsticks on the guitar and eastern African click-type noises from the sax, respectively. It progressed thus for ten or so minutes alienating my ears, getting them fairly accustomed to 80dB nails on the chalkboard.

Then the show started. Mats switched to playing a photo theramin, making complex waves of white and grey noise, which played against Thurston’s kneaded guitar feedback. I started to feel drawn in by the inclusive envelop of sticky noise. It was around this time I got a text message from John sitting four seats down:

This initial set ran for about 45 minutes, ebbing and flowing between thick, lush, womby noise and the trebly terror of a dentist’s office in a machine shop.

After a short break, the encore. Thurston quietly signaled with three extended fingers that this would be a short, short, three minute, short piece. Mats used his thigh as a mute, creating a very convincing ship docking sound. He then started a feedback loop with the theramin, some sort of distortion pedal, and a digital delay, taking it closer to his amp for another layer of feedback. Thurston spent a moment playing with the quarter inch jack on his guitar, then touched the head to the top of his amp. This created a sympathetic feedback loop with Mats’s in a totally incomprehensible magic wand sort of way. This big sticky peanut butter sandwich of noise progressed and throbbed for a minute or two. Thurston ground his guitar against the top of his amp, scratching and dragging them around, then let the feedback rest and swirl a bit.

He walked to the center of the stage, bent down toward the shared surge strip, and flicked the power.

At BarCamp Philly, I attended a thought provoking session on data portability in health care led by Mark Scrimshire. As Mark reported in his post, I had no idea that I had so much to say on health care.

Mark is making the trek up from Maryland on Wednesday December 10th to lead what will hopefully be another stimulating session on this topic.

Also on the panel will be Brendten Eickstaedt of UPenn Health System’s radiology and teleradiology dept. Brendten is an application developer, informatics person and lively professional contributor to health topics on Twitter.

As always, we provide the cold Newcastle Brown and Philadelphia’s best tomato pie. You bring something to share, if it is not too much trouble.

Hope to see you there!

When:
Wednesday December 10, 2008 at 6pm

The discussion which will begin at 7pm. Food and drink at 6pm.

Where:
P’unk Avenue
1168 E. Passyunk Avenue
Philadelphia, PA 19147

Tonight’s Junto on health has been moved to Wednesday the 10th as previously announced on Twitter. Our apologies for any confusion.

This Saturday, BarCamp is coming to Philadelphia, and we are hosting the pre-party on Friday!

BarCamp does not happen in a bar or even a tavern. In fact, we helped to bring it to UArts, a place that P’unk Avenue has a deep history with since four of us are graduates and this company grew out of relationships that began when I was a Multimedia professor there.

BarCamp Philly will take place at The University of the Arts, located in the heart of Center City. The Graphic Design and Multimedia departments have generously donated their classroom space which is equipped with state of the art technology, projectors and in some areas, an intentional focus on openness and collaborative learning. This venue is ideal for the participatory nature of BarCamp.

So what is BarCamp? According to Wikipedia:

…an international network of user generated conferences — open, participatory workshop-events, whose content is provided by participants — often focusing on early-stage web applications, and related open source technologies, social protocols, and open data formats.

In simplest terms, it is a bottom up conference. Anyone that attends can lead a session on any topic. It allows for the topics to emerge during the course of the event and to take on a life of their own.

We look forward to seeing you at the party.

BarCamp Philadelphia Pre-Party
at P’unk Avenue
1168 E. Passyunk Avenue, Philadelphia, PA 19147

November 7, 2008 from 7 to 10 pm.

This month’s Junto is on Free Beer.

We will be drinking multiple beers that were brewed for the event by Chris Matta and Howard Ross and we will be talking about that process.

However, the free beer movement is about more than beer. It is really about Open Source using free beer as a metaphor or a manifestation of the process. Playing with the “free as in free speech, not as in free beer”.

We have 3 panelists to discuss beer, speech, and open source.

Howard Ross is a web developer and co-founder of Grainstar Brewery, a local homebrewing operation that was started two years ago in South Philly.

Rob Hall is an Adobe Community Expert specializing in the Flash Platform, and is manager of the Philadelphia Flash Platform Adobe User Group.

Tom Boutell is a developer here at P’unk Avenue. His open source projects include the GD Library and the PNG Image Format. He has a background in software development and long experience with the web. Tom created the original WWW FAQ, which continues to be a frequently-consulted “how-to” resource for web developers. At RealNetworks (then Progressive Networks), Tom was instrumental in the creation of RealAudio 1.0, the first streaming audio solution for the web.

Moderators will be Kelani Nichole and Alex Gilbert.

Come drink the beer brewed for the event. We will provide tomato pie.

Please bring something to share, if it is not too much trouble.