Just a Lark

…I spent the last three hours making this:

Ness, from the SNES RPG Earthbound with his pixel counterpart.

Today, after being tipped off by my co-worker Chris about Yerba Buena Arts and Culture Free4All day I took a trip down to SF MOMA. I’ve been meaning to visit ever since I moved here (it is, after all, two blocks from my office) but the fact that I generally hate modern art (Jackson Pollack and Andy Warhol are hacks) has kept me out. Not to mention that my last experience there was with an art history class I was taking that was literally taught by the most boring woman in the universe–imagine being toured around there and lectured by the female version of the teacher from The Wonder Years and tell me you’d like to go back. Luckily, as much as I dislike most modern art I love interactive art installations, media installations, and other imaginative things. Not to mention that the collection at SF MOMA has some really awesome traditional art pieces. So the combination of the works of Olafur Eliasson and Joseph Cornell, along with the right price ($Free.99) made me journey through rain and a massive line to finally visit.

And it was totally worth it. I saw so many things I can’t even begin to describe them all. From a massive blanket of silk flowers (which I tried to take a photo of but got caught in the process) to a car made of ice to an interactive piece that used the vibrations generated by people walking on the wood floor to create ripples in a reflecting pool projected to the wall, there was a ton of awesome things to see. I spent almost four hours in there all in all, and it wasn’t enough to truly appreciate everything there was–I’m going to have to visit again sometime soon.

After I finished in the museum, I took a look at the gift store, and was surprised at how many cool things they had on sale. I ended up buying a box of PixelBlocks, which are basically single block-sized LEGOs that are transparent, stackable, and can connect to other blocks on all four sides. I’ve seen them before on the Internet but never got around to buying them, and then came home to create what you can see above. It’s Ness, the hero of probably my favorite game of all time, Earthbound–I’ve also included the original pixel version in the image that I used for reference. Considering I only had eight colors to work with, I think he turned out pretty well! I definitely need to buy some more to make other cool pixelblock art.