That was fun. Mark Napier displayed a few of his net art pieces up on an overhead projector, including a couple of live interactive pieces: P-Soup, a dynamically updating java painter which could take multiple simultaneous user input; and net.flag, a collaborative user-generated graphic project using elements of flags from countries around the world.
In both cases, while he was demoing each piece, I discreetly whipped out my iBook, connected to MICA Wireless, and started fooling around with the project as he explained it to the audience. He was, of course, somewhat surprised to see another user painting onto the project live as he spoke, not knowing that it was someone in that very same auditorium. Heh heh!
But I came clean at the end of the talk and told him it was me. He wasn’t mad. Wireless totally rocks, man.
(Napier is probably best known for The Shredder, an “alternative browser” which takes the code of any given site and redisplays it in chaotically deconstructed form. Try it. It’s… um… interesting.)
Afterward, I joined my classmates for a jaunt over to Dougherty’s, an excellent little Irish Pub near the Rite Aid on Howard Street. I finally got to try some Guinness for the first time (under $4/pint at Dougherty’s!), and I must say, it’s good stuff. (I’m such a baaad Baptist.)