Thursday evening: Youth Radio and Pesco at California Academy of Sciences

Tomorrow evening, Thursday May 20, I'll be at the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco helping out my pals at Youth Radio for a special session of our Brains & Beakers sci-tech interview series. For those who don't know Youth Radio, it's a very cool Oakland-based organization that helps underserved young people learn how to make their own media. You may have heard some of their segments on National Public Radio. Together, we created Brains & Beakers, a series where I bring in a scientist or engineer to hang out at the Youth Radio studios for a couple hours doing demos, presenting, and answering questions. The students document the whole thing and produce audio and video pieces from the material. But tomorrow night, we're doing a special session "on location" at the California Academy of Sciences as part of the museum's hep "Nightlife" program.

To gear up for Maker Faire next weekend, our guests are two incredible musical instrument makers. TradeMark Gunderson, founder of mash-up band Evolution Control Committee, will demonstrate his Thimbletron and the VidiMasher 3000, hacked from Wii remotes (and previously featured on BB). And Tom Zimmerman, inventor of the DataGlove and researcher at IBM Almaden, will show off his PVC pipe electronic drums, 6-foot PVC bass, and other sound contraptions. A jam with Youth Radio's Quincy Mosby (aka Quinn 2.0) on the mic may ensue. Youth Radio's Julius Toledo will be the host of the extravaganza. Our interactive presentation is at 7pm. If you're in the area, and over 21 (bummer, I know), please stop by! California Academy of Sciences: Nightlife

• [wolfiesma]

  Have fun! It looks to be a super cool evening. I hope one of the kids makes a movie about the pvc pipe drums (?) (!) Gotta see that… :)