Nerd Nite Phoenix

Archive for the ‘Upcoming Nerd Nite Events’ Category

Nerd Nite is coming to First Friday at Phoenix Art Museum!

July 6, 2018

7:30 – 9pm

RESERVE YOUR SEAT (It’s free, but seats are limited!)

“Woman, I can hardly explain,” said the smartest Beatle at a rare loss for words, but there will be no man-splaining tonight!

Nerd Nite celebrates the opening of the newest exhibition at Phoenix Art Museum, “In the Company of Women” by showcasing three super smart madame speakers, empowered by PowerPoint and years of collective knowledge on their topics of expertise, presenting such femme-tastic topics as Jane Austen, the smokey seductresses of David Lynch films and how technology is making things icky for men and women alike.

We’ve been gone awhile so to remind you of what Nerd Nite is, think learning at bar, and in this case, the bar happens to be the Phoenix Art Museum. One thing Nerd Nite always is though is fun. And free. Nerd Nite is free because we do it for love.

And without further ado, our presentations!

*Presentations may not be listed in the order in which they will appear
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The Making of Jane Austen
by Devoney Looser

Whether you think of her as quaint, twee Jane Austen or name-in-lights, disco ball Jane! Austen!, you may not need an introduction to this nineteenth-century British novelist. She’s one of the few writers who manages to keep one foot in great literature and the other in chick lit. Today she’s also a political lightning rod, claimed as the rightful property of conservatives, moderates, liberals, and progressives. How did she come to mean so much to so many, and to whom ought she really to belong?

ASU English Professor Devoney Looser (author of the book, The Making of Jane Austen, a 2017 Publishers Weekly Best Summer Book Nonfiction) will present a lightning-fast, humor-filled history of how this beloved author became an icon. Join us to think through which Jane Austen is your Jane Austen, your mother’s or father’s Jane Austen, or your son’s or daughter’s Jane Austen, and why.

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The Unruly, Disruptive and Utterly Grotesque Women of David Lynch
by Jenna Duncan

Auteur David Lynch is known for packing his work with sensational, supernatural and downright bizarre characters. In this Nerd Nite talk, local writer Jenna Duncan will take a closer examination of the women characters in Lynch’s major film and TV works. From the murdered prom queen to the mysterious two-sided love interests, to the wise old witches and psychic dreamers, Lynch’s women often show us a side of humanity that is dark, seedy and alluring. Some of these women are hopeless victims. On the other hand, many of them are empowered with gifts of the supernatural, and are strong or natural leaders. Let’s talk about the women in Lynch’s major works including Eraserhead, Blue Velvet, Lost Highway, Twin Peaks, Mulholland Drive and more.

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A long, groovy, and slightly discomfiting history of technology that counts human life
by Jacqueline Wernimont

Counting steps, people, life seems to be all the rage these days – a shiny new tech domain to help optimize our lives. While the “quantified self” movement dates from the early 2000’s, the tech is old. Really old. As old as Shakespeare and the rise of scientific technology. Does it change our love for our shiny new tech when we know that it’s both old and deeply entangled in colonial practices? Does your wristband feel different in the context of debutante balls and the early republic? Come find out!

Jacqueline Wernimont is an anti-racist, feminist scholar working toward greater justice in digital cultures. She writes about long histories of media and technology – particularly those that count and commemorate — and entanglements with archives and historiographic ways of knowing. Numbered Lives: Life and Death in Quantum Media will be out with the MIT Press in the fall of 2018. She is a network weaver across humanities, arts, and sciences. This work includes co-directing HASTAC and ASU’s Human Security Collaboratory. She also runs Nexus: A digital research co-op and is a fellow of the Global Security Institute.

When: Thursday, May 21

7pm – 10Pm

Where: mod on Central

2828 N. Central Ave

How much? FREE Admission

For our last scheduled Nerd Nite of the school season, we didn’t overload you with anything that might seem too much like summer studies homework. So relax behind that tall beer of yours, there’ll be no high-end presentations about the inner workings of a bilabial fricative. No mainframe buoyancy performance charts. Nothing more complicated than the flatness of your pocket protector will be discussed. And if there’s anyone in attendance for this evening of low-brow bleatings even remotely resembling Pythagoras Rasputin, or an ASU professor, well, it wasn’t for lack of trying.

Scheduled for the evening’s fun summertime splendish:
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1. Embracing the Vortex by Michael Patrick

Sounds complicated but belive us, it ain’t. Esteemed scholar Michael Patrick explores what it means to embrace The Vortex with all ten fingers wiggling in tandem. Exploring themes of philanthropy, string theory and entropy of the ID.

Michael Patrick is an avid reader of fiction, bird watcher and 40K enthusiast

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2. The Yeast Infectious Sounds of Bread

Respected rock critic for Phoenix New Times and azcentral (and Nerd Nite co-host) Serene Dominic reprises his 2012 talk on the magical macho mush of David Gates and Bread. The purveyor of such soft-rock classics as “Make It With You,” “Baby I’m a Want You,” “If” and the humiliating “Diary,” Bread held us spellbound for years with this stuff. You pretended not to like it but it took hold of you when you heard it coming out of your dashboard. And now Serene is making it easy for you to be among people who will admit it too. He may been chasing rainbows, but baby, here goes.

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3. Confessions of a Jeaopardy Contestant

Amy Thon is a museum employee by day, presidential hotness blogger by night, and was one of the lucky few selected to be a Jeopardy! contestant.

From yelling out answers on your couch to standing at the podium in front of Alex Trebek himself, find out all about what it takes to get yourself on TV and show off your trivia skills!

Special Bonus Addition:

If weather permits , a special sneak preview of a local production of “Rocky Horror at the Firehouse” which runs May 29 and May 30.

Thursday, April 16th

7pm – 10pm

mod on central

Or “If I Said You Had a Beautiful Aura Would You Hold It Against Me?”

A Design Themed Nerd Nite!
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Presentation #1
Chromotrivia (Apologies to David Batchelor)

Color seems like it’s one of those things about which we discover something new every day. Maybe that’s because it’s really just mostly an illusion.

About the Presenter:

Dain Q. Gore is a current Faculty Adjunct at ASU and Phoenix College, completing his MFA in painting at ASU in 2009. Having studied End-Times myths of his culture, he presents Biblical–as well as apocryphal– stories, along with other controversial philosophies with humor. His cast of absurd characters shifts between the religious and secular worlds to suit his own vision of a supernatural realm.

His motto is, Puppets All the Way Up.”
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Presentation #2
Brasilia: Good Intentions, epic failures and our alien overlords

What if you had the opportunity to build a city from scratch? You have unlimited funds, four years and a remote stretch of uninhabited tropical savannah. What could possibly go wrong? Brasilia, the capital of Brazil, is a test tube utopia. A mid-century modern epic fail, found at the cross section of communism, federal ejaculation, and Latin mysticism.

Ana Cox went to library school but she would rather watch a movie than read a book. She spends most of her time embedding metadata at Phoenix Art Museum and thinking about public radio. Known to many as “Lil Tex” she would happily discuss the myriad of things she loves about her native land, whether you want her to or not.
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And then…..
It’s Design Week Karaoke with Sean Whitcomb and the Mobile Karaoke Unit. Karaoke fans, UNITE!

Nerd Nite is, put simply, Learning and Drinking. Three speakers give 18-21 minute presentations while the audience drinks along.

On April 1st, Nerd Nite at Phoenix Art Museum dives into the world of that moody, candle-lit overachiever of an era we call the Renaissance, and in particular, one of its most widely revered and enigmatic thinkers, Leonardo da Vinci.

From Mnemotechnics to Time Travel to  Fluid Dynamics, our speakers riff off of themes from Leonardo da Vinci’s Codex Leicester and the Power of Observation. Age 21+.Free Admission but seating is limited. RSVP here!

The Evening’s Presentations

What is a Time Machine?

Learning. Beer. Friends. What more could you ask for?

When:

Thursday, February 19

7pm-10pm

Where: mod

2828 North Central Avenue, Phoenix

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Presentation #1: Dating Tips from the Animal Kingdom: What to Wear and How to Flaunt It

by Kaci Fankhauser

The animal kingdom is full of color: from hummingbirds and rainbowfish to butterflies and lizards, almost every major taxon has a shiny piece of the color spectrum to show off as their own. Often times these colors are used as warnings to predators, suggesting that the wearers are unpalatable or, in many cases, armed and dangerous. However, bright colors are also commonly used as sexual signals, showcasing the bearer’s fitness to potential mates. Whether they are judged on the quality of their colors or their ability to “flaunt what they got,” the loudest and the proudest are the varsity players of animal courtship.

Kaci  is a senior at Arizona State University, studying biology and anthropology. An aspiring wildlife veterinarian, she stumbled somewhat unknowingly into the world of research in the fall of 2011 when she was recruited to help rear tropical butterflies for an animal coloration lab on campus. Three and a half years later, she has worked on projects with numerous species of local and tropical butterflies, as well as predation experiments with quail and chickens. She is currently focusing on completing her thesis, studying iridescent signals in pigeons. In her free time she works at an emergency animal hospital, goes to local art events, and spends time with her bird, cat, lizard, or any/all of her four furry canine roommates

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Presentation #2
Epiphylogenesis OR Why we do Things with Stuff

by Ron Broglio

Like manic lovers we want to be close to our technology and then we want to dis it and be free …until we miss it again. We want our identity as separate from our gadgets but our personalized cell phones, quadriphonic stereos, and cuisinarts are just so much a part of us.

Ron Broglio will use snazzy terms like techno-prosthesis, epiphylogenesis, and necromedia to explain how being human means being technological. And yes, our technologies will out live us—it won’t be like the robot wars of Terminator. It’s a velvet revolution where technology of one generation determines and preconditions the lives of the next generation.
We are already cyborg.

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Presentation #3:Dwarf Planets, Scientific Strife, and Cosmological Dischord OR How We Discovered Eris and What We Did To Her When We Found Her.

by Kevin Flanagan

Kevin Flanagan explains why Pluto is and isn’t a planet, how an obscure Greek goddess is to blame, and tells the largest joke (by mass) mankind has ever told.”

Annual Nerd Nite PHX  Holidays in Space Party

Join us for our 3rd annual celebration of Life Day! Each year we screen clips from the movie so unloved by its creator, George Lucas, he might actually hand-deliver a cease and desist letter to your home just for watching it! Yes, ladies and gentlemen, it’s the Star Wars Holiday Special with commentary from Dr. Jedi himself, Dustin Diehl.

And the fun doesn’t stop there. That’s because there’s karaoke. Holidays in Space karaoke. Sean Whitcomb and his mobile karaoke unit will be bringing you hits from beyond this universe, with a little added holiday merriment.

And don’t miss some of the weirdest holiday trailers of all time, brought to you by FilmBar Phoenix.

And did we mention the booze? Oodles of booze!

That’s right folks – all of this party in one place. Doors open at 7:30, and show starts at 8:00

Thursday, October 16th

Carly’s Bistro

7:30 pm

Presentation #1

Ancient Dick Pics: Phallic Depictions in Art before 500 AD

As Anthony Weiner, a.k.a. “Carlos Danger,” can attest, cell phones with cameras (and well-stuffed boxer-briefs) have irreparably altered courtship etiquette. But horny congressmen aren’t the only ones obsessed with their packages. Throughout history, there have been many renderings of impressive phalluses, most available for the public to view. The various implications of such representations, however, are not as straightforward as one may assume, and sometimes it takes (*ahem*) a helping hand to understand what these images truly mean.

In this Nerd Nite presentation, Mike Zajac and Kassie Lamp focus on depictions of phalluses from ancient cultures, be they lucky, apotrpoaic, fertile, or downright erotic. Pulling samples from 16,000 years of art history, the scholars explain the varied connotations of the male member, and educate why such pictures and sculptures cannot be assumed to be simply pornographic.

Mike Zajac is an independent scholar specializing in reconstructions of brothels and areas of sexual commerce in ancient Rome. He holds a BIS degree in Art History and Psychology, and an MA in Art History, both from Arizona State University. He is an active lecturer in the southwestern United States and speaks on a variety of topics, both sexual and not. He has looked at a lot of explicit images. A lot.

Kassie Lamp is an assistant professor of classical rhetoric at a local institution of higher education, from which she does not want to be fired for talking about smut in public. She has a PhD and a MA in rhetorical studies from the University of Illinois, and a BA from Randolph-Macon Woman’s College in communication and classical archaeology. Her first book, A City of Marble: The Rhetoric of Augustan Rome, argues the Augustan cultural campaigns were influenced by classical rhetorical theory. The book has 45 images in it, and, yes – one of them is an ancient dick pic.

Presentation #2

“Amazonian Bondage Queens: William Moulton Marston and the kinky origins of Wonder Woman”.

“She’s one of the World’s Finest Heroes. An Amazonian warrior princess who can deflect bullets with a flick of her twist and hogtie the truth out of any villain with her magic lasso. She’s the most iconic female character in the history of comic… created by a kinky male polyamorous psychologist. Come find out who and what inspired William Moulton Marston to bring Wonder Woman to life (and find out what surprising invention he had a hand in creating).”

Ashley Naftule is a writer, performer and man about town. An ensemble member and playwright with Space 55 theater, he’s also performed in The Encyclopedia Show, PHIL Talks, FFNL, Ignite Phoenix and produces the Trunk Space’s annual H.P. Lovecraft Birthday Party. He is currently organizing “The Rides of March”, a Shakespearean bike tour that will happen next year in downtown on the Ides of March. He considers himself to be a hard line Groucho Marxist, and won third place in this year’s Air Sex championships at FilmBar.

Because we are a random universe, a cluster of improbabilities all brought together by some one-in-a-million brain fart in an ever-expanding universe, why shouldn’t your Thursday Nerd Nite experience reflect that dynamic? Except of course for the brain fart bit. Those are expressly not allowed where fine foods and alcohol are served. It’s a health code violation.

Nerd Nite 20 brings together three speakers on disparate topics ranging from Thelonius Monk to social engineering to Chinese television with beer the only connective tissue we could come up with. And what’s wrong with that? We’d like to know cause here we go again.

September 25th, 7pm

Carly’s Bistro

128 East Roosevelt

Presentations. Beer. Fellowship with other Phoenix nerds. 
Be there and be square.

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Thelonious and Me
by Michael A.L. Broyles

How can we describe our relationship with recorded music? How has the development of music-recording technologies affected the way we view and interpret our lives, our world, and our connection with others? Why am I asking these questions in the first place? In this talk, Michael tells the story of his relationship with the music of jazz pianist Thelonious Monk (1917-1982) and explores the impact music recording technology has had on humanity since. Included are discussions of the symbolism of hat-wearing, jazz tattoos, mental illness, dancing, African American religions, and Sufism…along with video of the master-pianist at work.

Michael A.L. Broyles spent the decade between his 13th and and 23rd year desperately searching for fame as a pianist. This search brought him paid-for trips around the globe and experiences and heartbreaks worth more than gold, but, alas, no fame. The following years were far too epic to fit into this short biography. Now, he studies American religions at Arizona State University while teaching, aka subjecting undergraduate students to his random musings and keen wit.

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“My Life in the Meat Hacking Industry: Social Engineering and Hacking People
by Shawn “Doe”

As an information security professional our number one security hole is people. The people that have been granted legitimate access to our systems are the easiest way for a hacker to strike. Social engineering is known by many other names: Human hacking, layer 8 exploits, cons, user manipulation and hacking the meatware. What is social engineering? What do you as a user need to look for to protect yourself? What are some techniques used by social engineers? How do you prevent yourself from becoming a PEBKAC with an ID-10-T error?

Shawn “Doe” *cough cough* has worked in the technology world for over 20 years. Much of his time was spent with telecommunications companies and working in security. Information security has always been more of an interest for Shawn than a job. It started with an 8088 and a BBS in the 90s. (huh?) He spent much of the early part of the century running around the world setting up new and interesting networks in foreign lands. Now he works for a large telecommunications company mitigating attacks.

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“Romance of the Three Kingdoms”
by Kevin Flanagan

Kevin Flanagan is a writer, performance artist and musician who currently works as a mindless drone for a local cult. He was selected as one of the New Times “100 Artists” in 2012; They haven’t contacted him since. His expertise on the “Romance of the Three Kingdoms” comes from having actually read the “Romance of the Three Kingdoms,” as well as playing a bunch of video games based on it. He is currently watching a Chinese television show called “Three Kingdoms” which he thinks is pretty good.

Generally we describe Nerd Nite thusly: “It’s like the Discovery Channel – with beer!” We can best describe Nerd Nite 13 as “The Joe Franklin Show with beer.” Don’t remember him? It’s not a problem. It used to be a New York late night talk show where the host Joe F. would invite musical guests on and you could watch them squirm uncomfortably as Joe played their records on his crappy turntable. It’ll be something like that. But a whole lot more.

Tonight we’re going to speak to a panel of knowledgeable and nerdy musicians like:

Becky Grace, a marching band leader at a local high school, to an indie artist from Tucson!

Mariella Morton who unearthed a carousel of 1964 World’s Fair slides and set them to music!

and we’ll speak to every local musician who participated in this years RPM Challenge and recorded an entire album from start to finish in the month of February. Who finished and who folded and why will be the topic of discussion with the Challengers and hosts Ty Fishkind and Serene Dominic.

Nerd Nite: a sound solution to your drab Thursday night! At Filmbar! It’s fun, it’s free and we won’t test you afterwards.

Join us for A MOST UNHOLY NERD NITE!  Sunday, NOVEMBER 11 at Carly’s Bistro in downtown Phoenix 7 – 10 pm.

Presentation#1
WHY THE ENGLISH HATE THE CATHOLICS
Devori Kimbro is a born-and-bred Idahoan, recently transplanted to the Arizona desert to pursue her PhD in English Literature at Arizona State University and figure out why Great Britain ain’t smitten with the Catholics! Over the course of about a century, English anti-Catholic rhetoric underwent a radical transformation – turning from matters of doctrinal difference with Protestantism to downright ridiculous caricatures of scheming Jesuits and lascivious Popes. In this presentation, Future-Dr. Kimbro offers us a quick-and-dirty guide to how English Protestants viewed their Catholic counterparts, and what those views meant to English national identity along the way.