Today's New York Times has a feature on our friends at Dorkbot-NYC, the informal geek gathering of "people doing strange things with electricity." From the article:
In five years, chapters of the club have sprung up in nearly 30 cities around the world, from Seattle to Rotterdam to Mumbai.
At every New York meeting, (founder Douglas) Repetto invites three people to deliver 20- to 30- minute presentations of their work, which tends to inhabit a no-man's land between science and art. A question-and-answer session follows, which serves as an informal peer review to help presenters hone their ideas, Mr. Repetto said.
"They're doing things, but they're not quite sure, What is this? Where does it fit?" Mr. Repetto said. "It doesn't belong in a gallery, and they can't write a paper on it…."
(At a recent meeting, Mikey) Sklar, a UNIX engineer presenting at dorkbot for the second time, demonstrated how he had a $2 chip surgically implanted into his left hand – and why he did it. (Previous BB post here. -ed) The Radio Frequency Identification tag under his skin uses the same technology that the E-ZPass system employs to identify cars on toll roads. Mr. Sklar, 28, said his tag unlocks his computer and accesses news feeds as part of an art project.
"This is a pretty crude attempt at becoming a little more cyborg," he explained to the audience, only half joking.
As for why he chose dorkbot for the debut of his body-hack, Mr. Sklar wrote in an e-mail message: "This forces me to get my act together. By that I mean I have to clearly document my project and come up with an explanation of why I did this work."
Link to NYT article, Link to my article about Dorkbot-SF in the first issue of MAKE: magazine (Thanks, Patty Trujillo!)
