Come get your hands dirty and join us for this fun series in May:

UCSD TESC’s Triton Junkyard Derby

Monday, May 6, 9am – 3pm, Library Walk outside Geisel

The UC San Diego Library will award a prize to the team that demonstrates the “maker spirit” and their cart will be displayed in the Library.

 Make Origami with origami Master Bruce Gemmel

Monday, May 6, 12 – 4pm, S&E in Geisel Library

Drop in and explore origami with Bruce Gemmel, San Diego origami artist and teacher at the Reuben Fleet Science Center. Bruce makes folding origami easy, with step-by-step instructions and plenty of encouragement. Whether you’re new to origami or an expert, come and learn, talk, fold, and de-stress.

Screen print t-shirts with a Geisel or Biomedical Library building design

Monday, May 13, 12 – 1pm @ Geisel, 2-3pm @ BML

Bring your own t-shirt or tank top, and add a Library design to it(we’ll have some tee shirts if you don’t have your own!).

Make Crafts with Duct Tape

Monday, May 20, 12 – 1:30pm, outside Geisel Library

Duct tape isn’t just for home-repair! Bring your imagination and make something awesome!

Make Origami and attend lecture by Robert J. Lang

Wednesday, May 22, 12-1:30pm, S & E events room, first floor in Geisel Library

Show off your paper folding skills or learn how to make origami! Then attend a lecture by Robert Lang, one of the foremost origami artists in the world as well as a pioneer in computational origami and the development of formal design algorithms for folding. Register for the lecture HERE.

Make your very own Button

Tuesday, May 28, 12 – 1:30pm, outside Geisel Library

Everyone is handing out badges; now you get to make your own!

The images in these collections will be of great assistance in teaching a myriad of subjects like history, literature, and fashion. The New Yorker’s cartoons are legendary for their incisive wit and for shedding light on the dominant topics of every era, from the Depression to the Internet. The magazine’s cartoonists include renowned figures like, Peter Arno, Roz Chast, Otto Soglow, William Steig, James Thurber, and Gahan Wilson. The Condé Nast Collection, containing images dating back to 1892, represents one of the world’s greatest collections of magazine photography, encompassing fashion, celebrity, and lifestyle photography from publications such as House & Garden, Glamour, Vanity Fair, and Vogue. The Fairchild Photo Service, comprised of more than three million photos gathered over six decades, is the fashion world’s preeminent image gallery.

Condé Nast is home to some of the world’s most celebrated media brands. In the United States, Condé Nast publishes 18 consumer magazines, four business-to-business publications, 27 websites, and more than 50 apps for mobile and tablet devices, all of which define excellence in their categories. The company also owns Fairchild Fashion Media (FFM), whose portfolio of brands serves as the leading source of news and analysis for the global fashion community. Condé Nast has won more National Magazine Awards over the past ten years than all of its competitors combined. For more information, visit condenast.com or follow them on Twitter @CondeNastCorp.

MCASD La Jolla will host the West Coast premier of the film on Saturday, March 16. Guests are invited to come early for a pre-screening happy hour beginning at 4:30 PM, which will include light snacks and a no-host bar as well as the opportunity to view archival footage of Warhol and Paul Morrissey making the film.

This never-before-seen footage was filmed by La Jollan Lee Pratt.

San Diego Surf was filmed on the shores of La Jolla in May 1968. Shot in color on 16mm with two cameras manned by Warhol and collaborator Paul Morrissey, the film features Factory superstars Viva, Taylor Mead, Louis Waldon, Joe Dallesandro, Tom Hompertz, Ingrid Superstar, Eric Emerson, Nawana Davis, and others. Its loose narrative concerns an unhappily married couple (Taylor Mead and Viva) that rent their beach house to a group of surfers.

After it was filmed, the work was only partially edited and never released. In 1995-96, The Andy Warhol Foundation commissioned Morrissey, under the supervision of Foundation curator Dara Meyers-Kingsley, to complete the editing based on existing notes and the rough cut. Andy Warhol produced more than 4,000 reels of film between 1963 and 1971, when the works were withdrawn from circulation. In the early 1980s a project began to preserve and re-release his films. One of the last films in which Warhol had direct involvement, San Diego Surf is being released by The Andy Warhol Museum.

Free exhibit; free event; free kazoo!

EXHIBIT:
“The Kazoo: More than Just an Annoying Party Favor”
This exhibit will showcase the kazoo’s African and African-American roots, plot its place in Americana, reveal its role in the early jazz age, catalog its classical repertoire, and peek at its popular music successes. A collection of intriguing kazoos will be on display.

Some surprising kazoo facts will be explored further at the exhibit:
Speech therapists have had considerable success using the kazoo as a therapy tool.
Richard Wagner, Arnold Schoenberg, Charles Ives, Paul McCartney, and other musical luminaries have used the kazoo in composition, performance, and recording. An exhibit bonus: the physics behind how the kazoo works will be revealed!

Exhibit runs January 2 through January 30, 2013 on the lower level, West wing of Geisel Library at UC San Diego. For more information: spaulson@ucsd.edu or (858) 822-5758

AND ON Monday, January 28, 2013 at 12:00 noon we’ll have a NATIONAL KAZOO DAY EVENT!
All library visitors on National Kazoo Day will get a free kazoo! We’ll survey the kazoo’s greatest hits and premiere some new chamber works for kazoo. Hosted by Scott Paulson, outreach coordinator of the Arts Library at UC San Diego.

Drawn from the collection of Mingei International Museum and other institutional and private collections, this exhibition draws the eye to the art of music making, sharing the beautiful form and design details of musical instruments, bells, gongs, rattles, whistles and noisemakers from cultures across the world. Visitors moving through the exhibition will also be able to listen to recordings of a number of exotic instruments.

Check it out HERE

This annual Turkey Calling Show takes place the day before Thanksgiving and is presented in the style of an old-time live radio broadcast. In this fast-paced show: get instruction on how to use turkey calls and find out how the American turkey became popular in European art. Special note: with all due respect to the East Coast turkey, visit us at this show and find out why the West Coast turkey rules!

Hosted by sound effects expert Scott Paulson (leader of the Teeny-Tiny Pit Orchestra and the Outreach Coordinator of the UC San Diego Arts Library).

Special guests include: Melanie Peters (story lady) and Aislinn Sotelo (appearing as “radio ballet teacher”). Also featuring: Glenn Motil & Christian Hertzog As always, the house band is: The Teeny-Tiny Pit Orchestra.

ABOUT SCOTT PAULSON AND THE TEENY-TINY PIT ORCHESTRA:
”Classically trained and charmingly twisted” (San Diego CityBeat) ”Paulson’s brand of G-rated fun, a sort of modern day morphing of Captain Kangaroo and Spike Jones, is always lively and at times wonderfully chaotic.” (LA Times) ”Weird and wonderful” (San Diego CityBeat) ”An out-of-the-ordinary cinematic experience.” (LA Times) ”The assorted keyboards of Paulson’s Teeny-Tiny Pit Orchestra provide a rich aural tapestry.”(San Diego Union-Tribune) ”Unique and popular…Scott Paulson’s merry band of eccentric nightingales is an inspired notion.” (SD Union Tribune) ”This madcap ensemble is reinventing an art form.” (LA Times) ”Madcap and somewhat in the Spike Jones/Dadaist tradition.” (Union Tribune)

October 31, 10:00 p.m.
Seuss Room, Geisel Library, UC San Diego
Local premiere of a black & white horror movie from Midwest-based filmmaker Christopher Mihm, “House of Ghosts.”

Info: spaulson@ucsd.edu or (858) 822-5758

Special features of this screening:
Audience will assist with live over-scoring, providing additional horror sounds: play on a real Theremin, if you dare! Also: coax some spooky sounds from ritual percussion instruments and orchestral oddities such as the thunder sheet, flex-a-tone, vibra-slap, waterphone, etc.
This film will be screened in Esperanto! (A frighteningly good linguistic educational opportunity.)
Also, celebrating some of the gimmicks of 1950’s era spooky movies, “horror guards” will be issued for those too squeamish to watch every frame of the film. These horror guards may be placed in front of ones eyes for protection, at your discretion.

About the filmmaker:
Christopher R. Mihm is the writer, director, and producer of feature-length black-and-white films, inspired by 1950’s icons such as William Castle and drive-in
cinema. More information about the “Mihmiverse” of Christopher Mihm’s films is available at: http://www.sainteuphoria.com

Your host at this screening is Scott Paulson, outreach coordinator at the UC San Diego Arts Library and director of the Teeny-Tiny Pit Orchestra, who is leading the audience in the live over-scoring of the film, utilizing a collection of Theremins, ritual percussion instruments and orchestral oddities.

Serious music for toy piano?
The first composer to write a “serious” piece for toy piano was American composer John Cage. His Suite for Toy Piano, written in 1948, uses nine consecutive white notes of a piano keyboard. This is significant because some toy pianos only have white notes (the black notes are sometimes merely painted on as a reference point so that players will know where “C” and all the other notes are.) Composer George Crumb used toy piano to great effect in his chamber music piece Ancient Voices of Children (1970). The score of this piece even shows a diagram of where to place the toy piano on stage.

Here in San Diego, toy pianos are celebrated with great fanfare in the month of September (because John Cage’s birthday is September 5!!) at UC San D’iego’s Geisel Library. It is there that Scott Paulson and his colleagues at the UCSD Arts Library host an annual toy piano festival. Composers visit the Library and pick a specific toy piano from the collection, and a piece is written specially for that instrument. Some toy pianos only have nine notes, some three octaves—so each piece has its own special charm and special limitations.

The Toy Piano Collection at Geisel Library consists of actual instruments, recordings, extant literature and commissioned scores. In 2001, because of the Toy Piano Collection’s activities, the Library of Congress issued a special call number and subject heading for Toy Piano Scores: M 175 T69

UCSD has a history with toy pianos that pre-dates the annual toy piano festival. Composer Robert Erickson, a founder of UCSD’s Music Department wrote a piece for toy pianos and bells that was premiered on California’s PBS television stations in 1966, just months before Erickson’s arrival at UCSD.

Featured: new works from local composers, a work from John Cage and songs from The Cat in the Hat Songbook.

Performers and composers this year include: Sue Palmer (the Queen of Boogie Woogie!) Ryoko Amadee Goguen, Christian Hertzog, Kenneth Herman, Gail Gipson, Ellen Lawson, Dana Mambourg Zimbric & of course, Scott Paulson!

PARIS — France’s Culture Ministry has confirmed that award-winning French filmmaker Chris Marker has died, one day after his 91st birthday. Many critics count Marker, with his experimental documentary style, as among the most influential French filmmakers of the post-war era. His 1962 classic “La Jetee” — a 28-minute post-apocalyptic movie comprised almost entirely of stills — is often ranked among the best time-travel films ever made.

It was the inspiration for Hollywood’s “Twelve Monkeys,” which Marker co-wrote. Cannes Film Festival President Gilles Jacob called Marker an “indefatigable filmmaker,” paying homage to a director who was still active into his 80s.

Enjoy light refreshments with fellow futurists, explorers and adventurers and attend Anastasia Hunter’s survey of steampunk literature (from Jules Verne onwards).

on display at the tea: Examples of Victorian era entertainments such as magic lanterns, paper theatres and paper optical toys. Critique a scale-model paper theatre version of Jules Verne’s “Journey Through the Impossible”  and drop in for screenings of steampunk-friendly films in our high-def viewing rooms.

Attention new visitors: steampunk literature re-imagines the Victorian era with a sci-fi aesthetic in a steam-powered, gaslight world filled with wind-up gadgets and clockwork technology.

About our guest speaker:
Anastasia Hunter, Director of Programming for the  Gaslight Gathering, San Diego’s premier steampunk convention, will speak about the history of steampunk literature, from its inception in the 19th Century with the works of Victor Hugo and Jules Verne, to the 1980′s when the term “steampunk” was first coined. Ms. Hunter will also survey more recent examples of the genre from authors such as Scott Westerfeld and Cherie Priest. Anastasia’s presentation will highlight the use of steampunk as an inspiration for journeys of discovery both real and imaginary.

This event is free and open to the public. Parking is free that day, as well.
For more information, contact Scott Paulson at spaulson@ucsd.edu or call (858) 822-5758, or visit http://artslib.ucsd.edu