Assemblyman Mike Gatto proposes cottage food law for home cooks ... why is this man fascinated with Apocalypitc visions of the 1970s ... Materials and Applications intrigues Silverlake, world ... The Jazz Bakery gets a new home, at last ...
Eat-LA on Off-Ramp: The California Homemade Food Act
A couple years ago, we profiled Mark Stambler, a Silverlake man who bakes bread in a brick oven in his backyard. He started baking bread as a young man to impress women (he says it worked), but got serious and even won a blue ribbon at the state fair for his baguette.
A while later, the LA Times picked up the story, adding that Stambler was selling his bread to local stores and restaurants. The very morning the story ran, the county health department came calling to shut down Stambler's efforts. State law, it said, bans the bartering of backyard baguettes.
In stepped Assemblyman Mike Gatto with AB 1616, the California Homemade Food Act.
"If the Act passes," according to Gatto's office, "homemade foods available for sale within the state would include breads and other baked goods, granola and other dry cereal, popcorn, nut mixes, chocolate-covered non-perishables, roasted coffee, dry baking mixes, herb blends, dried tea, honey, dried fruits, jams and jellies, and candy."
There's still a long way to go, but Stambler, who built his own 900-degree oven, can take the heat.
Three miracles move The Jazz Bakery closer to a new home in Culver City
Off-Ramp host John Rabe talks with The Jazz Bakery's founder, Ruth Price, about three strokes of great fortune putting Culver City on track to having a new Jazz Bakery in a couple years: a gift of land from the city - right next to the Kirk Douglas Theatre - plus a $2-million Annenberg grant, and a commitment from celebrity architect Frank Gehry to design the place.
Architecture projects blossom in Silver Lake front yard
Materials & Applications sounds like the name of an engineering class, not a respected "research and exhibition center dedicated to advancing new and underused ideas in art, architecture and landscape," as its website states.
Its offices look more like a crammed hobby closet than a design studio. And yet this small Silver Lake nonprofit has helped launch some of the most innovative architecture projects in the world.
The current project up for viewing is Bloom by architect Doris Sung, a 20-foot-tall shiny metal flower that opens and closes in response to sunlight. It's body is made of laser-cut alloys and aluminum, and the tabs that resemble the flower petals are made of the same thermo-responsive metal that you can find in old thermostats.
"At first I thought it was an oversized kitchen utensil," says shopkeeper Scott Turuya of Silver Lake Liquor, with a smile. "But this one is the most impressive. I really enjoy it."
Turuya's store is right across the street from Materials & Applications, and for more than two years he's seen big sculptures come and go. For people in the neighborhood, the projects are a breath of fresh air, but they don't always understand what's going on.
"In many ways it’s inspired by the Museum of Jurassic Technology style of street presence," says Materials U Applications co-director Oliver Hess. "It’s cryptic enough that as an art project, people are not turned off by the fact that it’s an art project. If we did say that, I think a lot of people would think, ‘I’m not interested in art’ and just move along. We have a little bit of didactic literature outside, but it’s never enough for people to understand what type of operation we’re running."
Materials & Applications, began in 2001 when founder Jenna Didier bought the building and decided to turn the front parking lot into a public exhibition space. She was making a living building water features – fountains and things. As Didier told KPCC:
I purchased the property in 2000 and started working on the concept of M&A in 2001, with the first unveiling occurring in May 2002. I curated and completed several projects involving architects whose large-scale prototypes of new materials/processes were exhibited in the courtyard before Oliver Hess joined me in 2004. By then, M&A was established as a public exhibition space focusing "on building, on radical forms and experimental materials," with the public invited to participate "every step of the process." His skills in computer-aided rendering and his ready willingness to tackle the challenging work I was doing made him a wonderful partner. He was not yet a "structural artist." He learned this through working with me on projects at M&A from 2004 onward.
"Often we take proposals from artists, architects or designers," Hess said. "But we turned it into a situation where it’s about catalyzing the public’s interest. There’s the idea of engaging local craftspeople, or local hobbyists – people who are interested in construction or design – allowing them to participate in the art they experience. We have a volunteer core, a group of thousands of people who want to help build."
Their studio sits on a narrow lot between two apartment buildings, and their projects are typically mounted in their modest front yard. Inside, the office is tight — they have a hard time getting rid of old projects.
"Every room becomes a storage room, and it’s kind of a palimpsest of what we’ve been working on. That’s giant bamboo over there, the biggest bamboo you can get. This is the laser cutter. [It cuts] everything from fish to pretty much every piece of plastic, metal or wood."
The first project to make waves at Materials & Applications was a 2005 installation called Maximilian’s Schell, a golden mylar canopy meant to resemble a black hole that you could probably see from space.
"I think, without a doubt, Ball and Nogues' Maximillian’s Schell was more successful than probably anything else in the entire genre of this work. It was a staggering achievement that they could so effectively strike this nerve in the entire world. Even now, anytime I try to describe what Materials & Applications is, people who have no interest in this kind of stuff say, ‘That was amazing.’"
It’s tricky to explain the genre Hess and his fellow artists work in – generally speaking, it’s a field where wild geometric shapes meet their technological possibilities. Hess says the new installation Bloom is a perfect example.
"This is a hyperboloid made of hypars," Hess says. "It’s been pulled up in the front to give this beautiful archway entrance, and inside it tapers down like an hourglass to a very small, tight passage. It’s got thousands of these thermo bimetallic panels that overleaf each other. When the sun shines on it, those leaves actually curl up, so what looks opaque sometimes opens up and becomes a dapple light that shines through."
While architecture geeks are afforded a space to test new materials before moving on to bigger public venues, Materials & Applications also just gives people in the neighborhood a place to wander into or simply meet up. It’s a pocket park and even has a little goldfish pond.
"Some really cool kids down the street, they put those fish in there, and they still come by and feed them, and the neighborhood kids love them," Hess says.
Looking ahead, Oliver and Jenna of Materials & Applications are researching a sculpture for a new visitor center at Vasquez Rocks, and they’re heading a project to build more pocket parks like theirs in other parts of L.A.
When it comes to building things, their pockets are deep.
An earlier version of this story mischaracterized Hess' role in the foundation of Materials & Applications. KPCC regrets the error.
Oscars? What Oscars? We want fashion!
What do you look forward to most about the Academy Awards? Is it the hard work and fortitude of filmmakers, and actors being honored by the Academy? A trip down Colorado Boulevard in Old Town Pasadena proved that notion utterly wrong.
Most passersby willing to chat admitted they were eager to gawk at celebrities on the red carpet and didn't really have too much to say about nominees and their favorite movies. A handful of interviewees admitted, albeit with some embarrassment, that they didn't even know the Oscars were this Sunday.
Although representative of just a small pool of movie fans, the Old Town foot-traffickers reasons for watching the Oscars point to a striking revelation: We don't care about the awards, but we do want a fashion show!
Some conclusions as to why people look forward to the red carpet catwalk are obvious. Celebrities are nice to look at, and on the red carpet, we get to do just that, devoid of the shame that comes with reading National Enquirer or browsing TMZ. We get to see up to the minute, cutting edge style that fascinates the average design aficionados.
So this Sunday, Oscar (or fashion) fans will sit comfortably on their tushes and critique the outlandish dresses and dapper tuxes worn by their favorite movie stars. It will give them the opportunity to critique and praise who looks the best, or on the other hand, provide more cynical viewers to just "make fun of people," as one interviewee stated.
ABC's coverage of the red carpet begins at 4pm Sunday.
Apocalypse then: Paleofuture's Matt Novak anaylzes 1970s visions of the Apocalypse
Matt Novak, founder of the blog Paleofuture, writes about how people of the past envisioned the world of tomorrow ... but not just the way we'd live, but the way we'd die, catastrophically.
Paleofuture blog started out as a college project in 2007, but today has an esteemed home at the Smithsonian’s collection of blogs. Novak says today's predictions of the future are repeating those of the past.
"As a society, we tend to be more pessimistic when the economy is down," he says. "I think that's natural."
Life in the 1970s was difficult. Government and society were in turmoil, manufacturing jobs were leaving the country, the U.S. was at war with North Vietnam, and there were constant threats of nuclear destruction. Novack says out of that struggle "came the predictions about the end of the world."
Novelists like Alvin Toffler and Hal Lindsey were writing that the end times were near. Toffler believed "we've now reached the point where technology is so powerful ... it could destroy us." Lindsey thought judgement day was just around the corner.
Despite his interest in the pessimistic predictions of the past, Novak keeps an open mind about the future.
"When we feel there are no answers to any of our problems, and the future is just this futile endeavor, why would we get up in the morning?" he says. "It's important to critically analyze the problems we face in society, but we need to do our best to have a little bit of hope."
CyberFrequencies: Brain-controlled drones
From the Daily Mail:
"Weapons operated by thought control and helmets that stimulate soldier's brains for more accuracy could become a reality in the not-too-distant future."
"Yikes," say Tanya Miller and Queena Kim of CyberFrequencies.