Nerd Nite in Austin
Tonight I discovered Nerd Nite. It was pretty sweet.
A friend of mine, Cynthia Phelps, gave the opening talk. It was on “The Neuroscience of Logo Design.” Her talk included a lot of information about emotional responses to color and symmetry the way we read shapes. I’ve often struggled with the idea of committing to a logo. As someone who tends to pull from a lot of different areas, and wears a lot of different hats, even in my freelance years I could never settle on a single image to represent it all. Maybe tonight I will dream of something with Cynthia’s inspiration. I don’t need it now as much, but it’s always good to have ideas like that filed away.
She was followed by Bruce Leander’s “Advanced techniques for digital fine art nature photography.” Bruce got into the advantages of HDR (high dynamic range) photography, focus stacking, and panoramic images created from stitching images together virtually. Really technology has come so far in being able to put images together like this. It’s something I’d like to get into if I ever find the time. As digital cameras get better and better, some of these techniques have become much more accessible to the non-specialist. Bruce was actually a specialist though, and his work was beautiful.
And lastly Jason Neulander spoke on “How The Intergalactic Nemesis Started Taking Over the World.” I was not familiar with The Intergalactic Nemesis before tonight, but it sounds fun and I hope to catch a showing sometime. He’s basically writing comics/radio plays that are performed live with foley and music and projected art work. I’d like to see it sometime. And I really appreciated his talk about getting the show launched and his path as a creative.
Anyway, it was a fun night, a fun crowd, and interesting speakers and topics. Apparently they do these nights in a lot of different cities. Someone in Chicago is doing podcasts and recently interviewed an actual ninja, and there’s a magazine, and people posting videos of talks to Vimeo. It’s a whole little world I never even knew about. I have to admit, I’m a little tempted to try and give a presentation myself sometime. I could talk about anaplastology, or educational media, or maybe talk about anatomy and art. Could be worth doing if I were to manage to summon up the nerve and energy to put something interesting together. And whether or not that ever happens, I’ll definitely be going back to more of these.