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While in New York a few weekends ago I visited the Solar Powered Arts Festival at the encouragement of a local techy and all around good guy Jacob. He and the ever smiling Diana met me at Stuyvesant Cove Park on Sunday afternoon, both of them having used pedal power to get up there from Brooklyn; I took the metro.

There was a lot of really cool artisans and builders out. From the friendly woman who paints bicycle portraits to the kooky guy setting alight aluminum and lye (the combination creates hydrogen gas) and giving away plans for sterling engines. A stage was powered entirely by solar panels where local musicians were jamming. Also, the Children’s Zoo had a couple of snakes and monarch butterflies out for people to touch and their keepers, of course, who you couldn’t.

I had a good time photographing the two “structures” the organizers had built: the first built out of cardboard tubing, the other a pile of tires. The tubing was a mish mash of concrete-piling-forms connected together with “a couple thousand bolts”; this from the guy further reinforcing it further with nails pounded in by the side of his wrench “to fill time”. It was throwing some crazy shadows. The tires were just a bunch of tires piled up with plants in them; it was a nice juxtaposition of green and black.

video link | fullsize image

I go down to New York City to see my friend’s new apartment, and somehow get roped into teaching people how to videoblog. What a crazy weekend.

Manhattan Neighborhood Network (MNN) hosted a videoblogging meet-and-greet in their studio on Saturday night as part of Node101 Weekend. There were lots of food, people and of course cameras. Many attendees were cable access producers who had never vlogged before. I showed them how easy it was to shoot, edit, compress and upload. Click on the tableau above, or here to see what people were posting.

After my long walk on Saturday I ended up in Harlem for a Youth Channel blockparty hosted by Manhattan Neighborhood Network (MNN), one of the largest (if not the largest) public access stations in the country.

Youth Channel provides disadvantaged, low-income and minority youth with access to a quality media forum through which to express creativity, foster dialogue, and to encourage social and political participation. At the blockparty there were lots of food, music, fun and of course, cameras.

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