Opposable Thumbs

Swallow the Frog: Tackle the important and uncomfortable in your creative practice.

December 5th, 2017  |  1 hr 27 mins

backup, hard drives, mirrors, mood boards, nas, photography, screwdrivers, style guides, ui kit

Sara Schnadt is our guest this week! Los Angeles in the house!
Sara, Taylor and Rob talk about tackling things we don't want to tackle. We also chat about collaborating with non-artists and merging the work-life with the art-life. Mirrors are pretty cool, even in the 21st Century. It seems Colonel Sanders had a proclivity for the pistols. We also fit Daredevil and Systems Engineering into the conversation... somehow!

Taylor decides he should really get his archive situation in order before entropy wins the battle. Sara shares the thinking and re-thinking she's been doing on her art practice after multiple moves, life changes and health hurdles. Rob spends two weeks creating a new sandbox for himself and decides he needs more road trash and hot pink in his work. WARNING: The phrase "mood boards" was used more than once during the recording of this episode.

Also, it is our 20th episode! Thanks to all our previous guests! You can hear a brief update from Meghan Trainor, Huong Ngo, Dan Bustillo, Federico Tobon, Matt Steinke, Kelly Coyne and Erik Knutzen (the Root Simple posse!), Violet Juno and Ranjit Bhatnagar on this episode!

Check out our project photos, videos and more at http://projects.opposablepodcast.com

Thanks to Nik, Luke and Kelly (http://kellymariemartin.com)! They're our top Patreon supporters! And props to Mike and Jen as well! Ya'll are great too! Join 'em at: https://www.patreon.com/opposablethumbs

Lo-Fi Space Exploration

November 21st, 2017  |  1 hr 9 mins

2600, 3d printing, audacity, conferences, defcon, feds, frontpage, hacking, interstellar, open source, phreaking, predators, prusa, puzzles, space, style, whiteness

No guest this week! Taylor and Rob blasting off into the inky void of lo-fi space.... .... ... .. . . . (yikes!) We talk about white male predators. yuck. Defcon, fed spotting, phreaking, hacking, 3d printing, FrontPage 98, Audacity and how scary it can feel to contribute to open source projects.

Rob channels his inner Container Store and gets packed for nowheresville. Taylor takes us to a cold, dark and lonely place... probably inhabited by little ice monsters.

Check out our project photos, videos and more at http://projects.opposablepodcast.com

Thanks to Nik, Luke and Kelly (http://kellymariemartin.com)! They're our top Patreon supporters! And props to Mike and Jen as well! Ya'll are great too! Join 'em at: https://www.patreon.com/opposablethumbs

Time Based Improvisation

November 3rd, 2017  |  1 hr 10 mins

ableton live, amen break, audacity, frequency hopping, ken burns, lock picking, maps, mustaches, osama bin laden, pepe, protonopia, radio, sdr, shia labeouf, software, space, vietnam

No guest this week! Taylor and Rob keeping it... real? real loose and jazzy, maybe. If you're interested in Ken Burns' very interesting hairstyle, the toothbrush mustache, protanopia and "the Amen break" you've come to the right podcast.

We dive into creating and sequencing music with images, random number generation and software defined radios (SDRs). We also get into science fiction, topo maps, lockpicking

Check out our project photos, videos and more at http://projects.opposablepodcast.com

Thanks to Nik, Luke and Kelly (http://kellymariemartin.com)! They're our top Patreon supporters! And props to Mike and Jen as well! Ya'll are great too! Join 'em at: https://www.patreon.com/opposablethumbs

Microdemocracy

October 24th, 2017  |  1 hr 17 mins

braided belts, ca glue, clients, cults, design, ibm, oblong industries, processing, starbursts, superglue, watson

J Stephen Lee is our guest this week! Portland, Oregon in tha house! We chat about designcraft on really large screens and the craft of design as a distillation and specification process. We also talk about challenges of working with clients the advantages of being articulate about your decisions. And then we got on the topic of braided belts, the Heaven's Gate cult, BBS culture and the Starburst unit of measure... just so you know you're listening to the right podcast.

Taylor investigates making things as a way to deduce the decision-making capabilities and preferences of two-year-olds. Stephen generates and abstracts in the Trumpist era. Rob puts the nano in microdemocracy.

Check out our project photos, videos and more at http://projects.opposablepodcast.com

Thanks to Nik, Luke and Kelly (http://kellymariemartin.com)! They're our top Patreon supporters! And props to Mike and Jen as well! Ya'll are great too! Join 'em at: https://www.patreon.com/opposablethumbs

Episode 16: Arrow Through the Heart of Capitalism

October 7th, 2017  |  1 hr 23 mins

arduino, arrows, art, blood, bomb, calorimeter, cinchel, cool tools, donald bell, electricity, endurance, esp8266, fletching, ganzeer, gastropod, guitar, hemacite, honest money, instruments, ivan stang, klf, lord of the rings, mapping, money, music, on kawara, pareidolia, pentametron, performance, raubdruckerin, screenprinting, slack, smiley face murder, subgenius, timebanking, trigger, voltmeter, wall street, walter kitundu, wifi, zodiac killer

Ranjit Bhatnagar is our guest this week! Brooklyn in the house! We talk about plastic made from blood (hemacite!), seeing faces in things (pareidolia! :-) ), the Church of the SubGenius, redaction, instrument making, and beaver pelts as currency.

Rob tests the flight characteristics of paper and plastic. Ranjit isn't the Smiley Face killer... well... probably isn't. Taylor's project is fire (and electricity)!

Mad props to The KLF. They burned a million quid. We didn't do that. Also, check our all our links. Holy cow!

Check out our project photos, videos and more at http://projects.opposablepodcast.com

Thanks to Nik, Luke and Kelly (http://kellymariemartin.com)! They're our top Patreon supporters! And props to Mike and Jen as well! Ya'll are great too! Join 'em at: https://www.patreon.com/opposablethumbs

Episode 15: Exceptions to Originard

September 25th, 2017  |  1 hr 5 mins

aliens, bentonite, britannia metal, casting, equifax, furries truckers, gloves, highways, ipod, iron, mold making, optivisors, originality, petroglyphs, pewter, podcasts, poplar, postmodernism, sand, silicone, time, ui, ux

We have no guest this week! Just Rob and Taylor keepin' it Originard... Originard!?! No! Not a typo! You'll have to listen to Episode 14 to get the details on that! We talk about furries, truckers, Equifax's ridiculously jank website, and Bunnie Huang's awesomeness. Taylor's flocking is on fleek! He revives a past project and gets metal with it. Bluetooth was a person? Rob tries something new and kinda contemplative about aliens, petroglyphs, time, originality and... postmodernism. Listener warning: We got arty.

Check out our project photos, videos and more at http://projects.opposablepodcast.com

Thanks to Nik, Luke and Kelly (http://kellymariemartin.com)! They're our top Patreon supporters! And props to Mike and Jen as well! Ya'll are great too! Join 'em at: https://www.patreon.com/opposablethumbs

Episode 14: In Reverse Dance Poem

September 11th, 2017  |  1 hr 7 mins

90's, ai, arduino, electronics, face mapping, file systems, flask, flocking, gas masks, grunge, haiku, machine learning, neural networks, punk rockers, python, raspberry pi, rnn, satanism, solenoids, tensorflow, turntables

Jon Satrom is our guest this week! Chicago (x2) in tha house! We talk about being punk rockers, dropping projectors and being deep in the hippie game. There are many things to buy when the invisible hand of disaster capitalism pays full retail price for your surplus gas masks.

Internet Engineering Task Force... take notice! Taylor has created the haikulink transport protocol (Is port 575 taken?). Jon squeezes Taylor and Rob through a neural network and a whole bunch of like... awesome weird stuff comes out, you know? Rob talks trash on solenoids but they came through in the end so he probably shouldn't get too puffy about it.

Check out our project photos, videos and more at http://projects.opposablepodcast.com

Thanks to Nik, Luke and Kelly (http://kellymariemartin.com)! They're our top Patreon supporters! And props to Mike and Jen as well! Ya'll are great too! Join 'em at: https://www.patreon.com/opposablethumbs

Episode 13: Make a Flag

August 28th, 2017  |  1 hr 16 mins

99% invisible, anti-defamation, art, audacity, cmyk, datamoshing, deportation, design, disability, focus groups, glitch, hate groups, hex fiend, hitler, ice, image glitch, immigration, los angeles, making, markers, peckerwood, process, racism, satin, silk, symbology, u.s. flag, wind

Violet Juno is our guest this week! Bay Area in tha house!!! We discuss working hard, pain, constant pain, and chronic pain. We miss talking about The Chronic, somehow.

Taylor injects symbols into the system and gets some really weird and great results. Well... We made it 12 episodes before Pepe entered the conversation. Violet grabs wind by the horns and unfurls the awesomeness. They also tip us off to some rad fabric and cool markers in the process. Rob tries to melt ICE in Los Angeles and keep the focus group focused.

Check out our project photos, videos and more at http://projects.opposablepodcast.com

Thanks to Nik, Luke and Kelly http://kellymariemartin.com! They're our top Patreon supporters! And props to Mike and Jen as well! Ya'll are great too! Join 'em at: https://www.patreon.com/opposablethumbs

Episode 12: Keys of Understanding

August 14th, 2017  |  1 hr 25 mins

3 point perspective, arduino, art, bicycles, biking, bones, breadboard, burning money, cards, circuit diagram, college, deck, decolonization, design, dogen, drawing, dying fetus, electronics, feldspar, flag pole, flags, form, fritzing, gameshows, high school, icons, knives, language, leds, los angeles, meaning, metal, mosfet, paulo freire, pedagogy, perspective drawing, philosophy, poetry, schematic, scp foundation, secure contain protect, soylent, spirituality, stock, tarot, teaching, tip120, transistor, translation, western thought, zen, zines

Artist and public school arts educator Arturo Romo is our guest this week! Northeast Los Angeles in tha house! We discuss public education, the joys of collaboration and creating life stability. Some people look like vegetables, and some vegetables looks like humans. Rob now wears a bike helmet and deploys as many icons as possible to preach the bike safety gospel. And he encourages you earn the "burn money" merit badge. Arturo moves the bones to shuffle and stack colonialism and decolonization. Taylor gets his 3-point perspective on! Mosfet is not a Star Wars bounty hunter... that we know of. Taylor also names the "woke death metal" genre.

Thanks to Nik for being our top Patreon supporter! And thanks to Luke and Kelly (Happy Birthday Kelly!) as well!

You can check out photos of our projects at http://projects.opposablepodcast.com

Episode 11: Uncertainty Generators

July 31st, 2017  |  1 hr 20 mins

air compressors, cad, catacombs, catering, coin toss, cooking, doubt, duchamp, food service, healthcare, hustles, identity, mcmaster-carr, movies, pager codes, paris, pharmaceuticals, pvc, quarters, travel, uncertainty, wallets

Erin O'Brien is our guest this week! Los Angeles (via Paris) in tha house!

We talk about traveling, movies, pager codes and Operation Mincemeat! Rob has no idea what was said for 5 minutes of this podcast. Taylor's project "flies off the handle" and Erin and Rob go "WHOA!" at the same time! Erin concocts a very intriguing vessel that could definitely change how your day is going... no matter the orifice. Rob digs through 10 years of digital photos and runs over stuff with his truck.

Check out our project photos, videos and more at http://projects.opposablepodcast.com

Thanks to Nik, Luke and Kelly http://kellymariemartin.com/! They're our top Patreon supporters! And props to Mike and Jen as well! Ya'll are great too! Join 'em at: https://www.patreon.com/opposablethumbs

Greetings Australian listeners!

Episode 10: Creating Problems

July 17th, 2017  |  1 hr 33 mins

3d printing, additivism, aspic, dit, diy, food, knolling, low tech, mcluhan, raspberry pi, salukis, seed bombs, solar, sous-vide, tape delay, targets, thermal printing

Erik Knutzen and Kelly Coyne of the Root Simple publishing empire are our guests this week! Los Angeles in tha house! We talk about targets, tape delay, adobe mud, knolling, sous-vide, puppies and the secrets contained in Lower Level 2. Rob is surrounded by tall people. Hello Macedonia! Thanks for Listening!

Erik and Kelly concoct suborbital weed bombs. Yep. You read that right. Suborbital. Weed. Bombs. Taylor pushes us one step closer to the inevitable Internet of Poems. Rob gets inspired by additivism and tries to 3D print a thing.

Check out our project photos, videos and more at http://projects.opposablepodcast.com

Thanks to Nik, Luke and Kelly http://kellymariemartin.com/! They're our top Patreon supporters! And props to Mike and Jen as well! Ya'll are great too! Join 'em at: https://www.patreon.com/opposablethumbs

Episode 9: Jigs

July 3rd, 2017  |  1 hr 15 mins

"ice cube" relays, acrylic, ants, bespoke, breaker, bubbles, cnc, dog bowls, ice picks, jigs, laser cutters, modernist, rusty cans, shop vac, terrariums, toaster ovens, vacuum tube

Matthew Steinke is our guest this week! Austin, Texas in tha house! Jigs is our topic! We cipher on Matt's forays into robotic music making, radio transmissions, terrariums, art objects and weird retail experiences.

Taylor synthesizes CNC prototyping, mold-making, felting and leather-working to create something even cooler than a bespoke modernist CNC dog bowl. And you thought it wasn't possible! Matt wields shop vac, laser cutter and toaster oven while chasing the allure of bubbles, "ice cube" relays, and vacuum tubes. Rob just might have a way to conquer his giant pile of rusty cans ... ... ... or he will get tetanus and be in a lot of pain. Taylor busts out an amazing Frieza impression. "This isn't even my final form!"

Share an episode and we'll send you a sticker! Just let us know how you shared an episode of the podcast and send your address to us at opposablepodcast@gmail.com

A big shoutout to Nik, our top Patreon patron! Thank you Nik! Nik, Kelly and Luke are like... like... Charlie's Angels but with additional cool psychic powers and breakdancing prowess!

We post photos, videos and other cool stuff related to our projects at http://projects.opposablepodcast.com and we're on Instagram at http://instagram.com/opposable_podcast. Thanks for listening!

Episode 8: Crafting Security

June 19th, 2017  |  1 hr 36 mins

99% invisible, beekeeping, ecovillage, encouraging creativity, evilmadscientistlabs, fat pencils, gimp, guns, handcrafting, hersheytext, inkscape, jeremy fielding, jigs, jimmy diresta, jlin, keys, killer key, lego, locks, nick cave sound suits, one time pad, passwords, perler beads, prayer beads, root simple, rule 34, safety, security blankets, shrink wrap, squatters, teaching, visual cryptography, woodgears, xkcd

Federico Tobon is our guest this week! We put the kraftwerk in Crafting Security! We talk LEGO, laser cutters, bubble wrap, metalworking, Enigma machines, crosscut sleds, fat pencils, Inkscape, hersheytext, the awesomeness of scissors and a whole lot more.

You might want to bring a battering ram if you're at a dinner party with Taylor. Just sayin... Federico makes creating your next password the most fun and contemplative part of your day (mad props to xkcd). He also shares a way to convert your 3D printer into a laser printer. um... WUT! Rob heats up some perler beads and ices up his grille cryptography. Also shrink wrap is a wonder.

You can check out our projects for this episode at http://projects.opposablepodcast.com/episode-8-crafting-security/ Also, we're on Instagram! http://instagram.com/opposable_podcast

A big thanks to Kelly (kellymariemartin.com) and Luke, our top Patreon supporters!

Episode 7: Homemade Chemicals

June 6th, 2017  |  1 hr 10 mins

best friends, bflg, burbank, carbon, center for land use interpretation, charcoal, circuit, circuit boards, composting, copper, cryptography, cryptoparties, diamonds, foundry, gallium, homegrown evolution, humanure, hydrogen peroxide, learning, microwaves, milk, mosfets, muratic acid, nitrogen, peanut butter, plastic, poop, recycling, root simple, sharpie, simparch, styrofoam, tip120, utah, vinegar, world power systems

Dan Bustillo is our guest this week! It's plastic buckets all the way down as we don our ordnance disposal suits and mix up some homemade chemicals! Polystyrene and acetone don't mix. No! Wait! Dan shows us they do mix... into a very goopy suspension. Your very goopy lower intestine seems like a good place to hide secret messages but... is it? Rob puts the doo-doo in Do It Yourself. What's in the boooox?!? Taylor concocts a potion and sketchy is transformed into etchy! Can you make diamonds in a microwave? Mmmmmaybe... and if that fails you could probably make a death ray.

A big thanks to Kelly (kellymariemartin.com) and Luke, our top Patreon supporters!
Mike and Jen also joined the "Opposable Thumbs League of Patreon Supporter Badasses!"

You can check out our projects for this episode at http://projects.opposablepodcast.com/project/7/

Episode 6: Whiteness

May 22nd, 2017  |  1 hr 20 mins

bearings, celery, cnc, colonialism, curiosity, fidget spinner, foster parenting, high school, python, race, reparations, robin diangelo, self-study, sms, suburbia, twilio, w.e.b. dubois, white fragility, whiteness

No guest this week! Just Taylor and Rob digging into whiteness... Whiteness. WHITENESS. We poke and prod woke suburbia, white fragility, guilt, walking the walk, confederate monuments, and complicated family stuff. We discuss creativity as more than the act of making things, but we did make things also. Taylor concocts an object to help him stay frosty while digging into fidget-inducing whiteness studies. Rob looks to interruptive technologies to help him navigate life in the smog of whiteness. A big thanks to Hương Ngô for this very challenging challenge!

Listeners! Please let us know what you think about this episode!. Also, how do you stay informed and move through your day thoughtfully? How do you stay curious about daunting topics like whiteness? How do you turn talk... into walk?

Thank you Kelly and Luke for being our top sponsors on Patreon!

Episode 5: “I Don’t Care, You Pick": Real, Recorded and Random Decision Making

May 8th, 2017  |  1 hr 23 mins

artists, balloons, bone folders, cameras, cnc, common, databases, etching, github, helium, internet, juice, maker culture, oblique strategies, paper, rock, scissors, trans, trees, usb drives, whiteness, women, word jazz

Artist Hương Ngô joins us this week! Chicago in the house! We consider the cinematic grossness of windblown shopping bags to the face. Our helium shortage is real and Rob is wasting it being dreamy. There is a champion of rock, paper scissors... and a robot champion... Hương hurls a rock through "I would show more work by ________ but I just don't know any..." Taylor creates some high burrs with his orthogonal strategies.

Ken Nordine and Brian Eno walk into a bar and say to the bartender... "Pour me a Pull Yourself Up By Your Bootstraps." The bartender says "Who do I look like, Ben Franklin? Try the Dream Machine, instead." Put that in your technicolor dream coat and smoke it! Try to end the day on a solution.