Erick Lyle (formerly known as Iggy Scam) looks back at the past ten years of activism and guerilla art in San Francisco with his new book “On the Lower Frequencies: A Secret History of the City“. Come join Lyle and collaborators in a night of free vegan food, art, readings, and live punk rock music, featuring Zara Thustra, Sy Loady, Shotwell, Black Rainbow, and many more. Dinner at 6pm, Music at 9pm

11th Annual United States of Asian America Festival - “The Location of Identity,” moderated by Berin Golonu. Presented as part of the “East of the West” exhibit.

Join us for this special evening which will feature James Frey reading from his new novel “Bright Shiny Morning.” (he’s the author of  “A Million Little Pieces” who duped Oprah’s book club into thinking his book was truly autobiographical) The night will also feature special guests Josh Kilmer-Purcell, Stephen Elliott, pictures by Terry Richardson and a musical performance by 3rdrail. This event is free & open to the public - no tickets are required. event details

The Artists Guild of San Francisco is the oldest outdoor art collective in the country. Its mission is twofold: first, to bring art and artists into the community for public interaction and education; and secondly, to help artists sustain themselves with art as a full-time career.

Composer/pianist Jon Jang’s musical language re-contextualizes Chinese folk songs within a contemporary music framework, a metaphor for the changing face of Chinese America. Unbound Chinatown pays homage to Alice Fong Yu, the first Chinese American teacher hired by the San Francisco School District. With his stellar ensemble, including saxophonist Francis Wong and trombonist/music director Wayne Wallace, and guest vocalist Min Xiao Fen, Jang paints musical portraits of Yu’s life as a community and political leader during the 1930s.

Bring your tortillas (stale preferred), your costumed, your naked and your beer and participate in one of the largest races in America, and also one of the most strange and “San Francentric.” The Third Sunday in May sees this crown jewel of SF events with over 70,000 race/walk/stroll 7.46 miles from Bay (Howard/Beale) to Breakers (the western end of Golden Gate Park) in a costumed mass of people. Be prepared to see 1,000 ridiculous costumes, lots of naked people and the tired “salmon” swimming against the tide of racers. Although you’re supposed to register and pay $48-$59 to race, but many people just show up and race anyway. We won’t tell anyone.

The fifty performers of Gamelan Sekar Jaya, the Bay Area’s acclaimed gamelan ensemble, present the driving rhythms and refined dances of Bali in this beautiful garden setting. Led by one of Bali’s most brilliant artists, I Dewa Ketut Alit Adnyana (guest music director), Sekar Jaya will feature two large percussion ensembles: the 25-player orchestra of bronze gongs, metallophones, and drums called a gamelan gong kebyar, and the ensemble of giant bamboo marimbas, gamelan jegog. The outdoor setup reflects the open-air settings used in traditional Balinese contexts, where groups often play within or in front of temple courtyards. The audience is welcomed to view the performance from various perspectives, to enjoy the complex interlocking rhythms and virtuosic ensemble sensibility of Balinese gamelan and the myriad expressions and delicate movements of Balinese dance.

The Mo’Rockin Project is a brotherhood of kindred North African and jazz musicians traversing the inner experience of the human soul. Handcrafted from traditional Moroccan melodies, and with striking musicianship, salient vision, and immeasurable spirit, the music is alluring, lyrical, creative, funky, spirited and spiritual.

In the striking Mario Botta-designed building, SFMOMA houses the West Coast’s most comprehensive collection of twentieth-century art including painting, sculpture, photography, architecture, design, and media arts.

The stellar collection tells the story of modern and contemporary art through master works by Ansel Adams, Bruce Conner, Joseph Cornell, Salvador Dali, Richard Diebenkorn, Eva Hesse, Frida Kahlo, Ellsworth Kelly, Yves Klein, Sherrie Levine, Gordon Matta-Clark, Henri Matisse, Piet Mondrian, Pablo Picasso, Robert Rauschenberg, Diego Rivera, Cindy Sherman, Alfred Stieglitz, Clyfford Still, and Edward Weston, among many others. (more…)

The Cartoon Art Museum is the only museum in the United States dedicated to the preservation and exhibition of cartoon art in all its forms. This unique institution houses approximately 6,000 original pieces in its permanent collection; a complete volume research/library facility is located on the museum’s premises. In addition to seven major exhibitions a year, the museum has a classroom for cartoon art and a bookstore. (more…)

Yerba Buena Center for the Arts is the Bay Area’s premier venue for adventurous art. A multidisciplinary art Center, it features exhibitions, performance, film/video and community engagement programs.

Everyone’s seen birds flying, ants foraging, bees working, and fish swimming — all with the apparent purpose and coordination of a single conscious organism. But with no leader, no centralized management, how does each individual participant know what to do and where to go? The collective behavior of such animals — each oblivious to the master plan, but contributing to the group’s goals and success — is what’s known as swarm intelligence. Researchers have found that such self-organizing systems function through constant interactions between individuals, each of which is following simple rules. In 1986, computer graphics researcher Craig Reynolds created a steering program called boids, in which life-like graphical objects follow three basic rules of motion. The result looks awfully familiar. He is now a leader in the field of computer animated crowd simulation, doing research on visual effects for films and video games. Tonight Craig will talk with us about his work and how it relates to biology, society, business, robots, and more!

Apple is offering a FREE 1/2 day seminar on using video production & editing software Final Cut Studio 2 and Final Cut Server (Apple’s new media asset management and workflow automation software). This in-depth seminar features workflows used by some of the industry’s leading film and video production companies. Apple experts will give step-by-step demonstrations that reveal how each of these customers used Final Cut Studio 2 and Final Cut Server to achieve exceptional results. Source: onedigitallife.com (more…)