Gizmodo: festival

Drink Cocktails Mixed By a Robot Based on Your Mario and Tetris Gameplay

Kat Hannaford — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 13:26:09 EST

To me, a festival is a field, a few musical acts, pair of rain boots, and heaps of mud. But then, I do live in England. Roboexotica, on the other hand, is robots and cocktails. Much more civilized.

Held in Austria, it's basically a bunch of boozehounds that show off their cocktail-mixing robots. The best of the creations appear in the two in the videos below, which force you to play Mario or Tetris, with the sort of cocktail the robot mixes you dependent on how you play the games. Slow and steady wins the race, in my books, but what would that earn me? [Roboexotica via Kotaku]

Image Credit: MattDork

Nikon's Twitter-Inspired Digital Film Festival Will Feature Ashton Kutcher and Dwight Schrute

Dan Nosowitz — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 09:27:47 EST

Twitter is so hot right now, you guys. It's so hot it influences things totally unrelated to Twitter, like the Nikon Festival—a digital film fest that challenges micro-auteurs to create 140-seconds-or-less digital videos. Obviously, Ashton Kutcher is involved.

The Nikon Festival has the theme "A Day Through Your Lens," and asks budding filmmakers to upload digital films with that theme, of length less than 140 seconds, to their website. The contest is six weeks long, starting right now. Festival judges include Rainn Wilson (Dwight Schrute of The Office fame), photographer Chase Jarvis, and some girl unfortunately described as an "Internet Personality" with the even more unfortunate name of iJustine. But guys, Rainn Wilson!

Oh yeah, and Ashton Kutcher will be sharing his own entry, partly because he has an advertising deal with Nikon and partly because this contest is tangentially related to Twitter. That '70s Show was a long time ago, you know, and now Twitter is his job—and Ashton Kutcher is nothing if not dedicated to his job.

The winning filmmaker will get $100,000 and some sweet Nikon gear, and there'll also be an audience favorite award worth $25,000, in case iJustine is out of touch with modern independent filmmaking. [Nikon Festival]

Maker Faire This Weekend

Wilson Rothman — Fri, 29 May 2009 16:39:00 EDT

Reminder to you lucky bastards in the Bay Area: Maker Faire—the world's largest DIY festival—is happening this weekend at the San Mateo Event Center. There'll be huge Tesla coils, battling battleships, cybernetic giraffes, and lots of crazies running around. Like Burning Man, but safe for kids. [MF]

The Blip Festival: Like Girl Talk and a Game Boy Had a Baby

Dan Nosowitz — Sat, 06 Dec 2008 19:00:00 EST

Brooklyn's Blip Festival 2008, which is taking place this weekend, December 4th through 7th, is a celebration of modders, music, vintage game consoles, and graphics. Artists come from all over the world to perform electronic music created with Game Boys, Commodore 64s, and Famicoms, and it's more than just bleeps and bloops: this stuff is really fun.

Chiptune musicians mod archaic game systems from Atari, Commodore, and Nintendo, among others, to be used as musical instruments. The music sounds a lot more varied than I would have expected, from hard-pumping dance electro to atmospheric pieces, not to mention the workshops, screenings, and presentations that are included in the Festival.

The documentary Reformat the Planet, which debuted earlier this year at South by Southwest, will be shown at the festival, and the trailer here does more than I could to describe how cool this is. The Blip Festival's tickets are $15 a night, and held at the Bell House (149 7th Street, Brooklyn).

[New York Times, photograph by Richard Gin]

Does Pittsburgh Dream of Electric Sheep? No: It's Got One Already

Kit Eaton — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 05:28:00 EDT

A six-legged robotic sheep, with grass-mowing teeth and GPS navigation: gotta be inspired by Philip K. Dick, right? Yes, it is: Mower was created by Osman Khan, a visiting professor at Carnegie Mellon's School of Art, and is on display as part of the Bigbots exhibit at the Robot 250 festival. Mower roams around using GPS to place itself on grassy areas, has collision avoidance sensors and makes the most amusing array of sounds as it clatters about. Clearly intended to be a humorous reference to robotic lawnmowers and the "green" method of using real sheep to do it, he's on display at Phipps Conservatory & Botanical Gardens. Robot 250 runs until July 28th. [Robot250 via BotJunkie]