Announced late last month, Shakedown is what Pope calls "circus, striptease, and go-go, set to a rock and roll soundtrack," hosted by Sultry Siren of Burlesque Miss Harvest Moon and featuring performances from, amongst many others, Paul Pope.
As well as DJing for the entire night, Pope's main contribution to the burlesque bacchanal will be Psychenaut, the next step after this DJ experience: a movie that cuts up classic science fiction to create something that he's called "a 21st century update of the old gel light show bands like Velvet Underground and Pink Floyd used in the '60s." We asked Pope to explain more:

The idea of the film is to take some really great, mostly vintage sci-fi films and isolate key visual effects from certain scenes. These are all very short clips, like 5 or 6 seconds each. We slow them down to the point where they become essentially "slow life" images— not quite still images but pictures moving at a slow enough rate that we're able to really consider the pictures as ends in themselves.

I tried to isolate images which tend toward the abstract— light flares, wind and lightning, surfaces reflecting light, objects floating in deep space— images which suggest the macroverse of space contrasted with images suggesting the microverse of biology and the cell structure. Reframing these into a continuous, abstract film gives the images a new meaning, a new direction. This is my attempt at video mash-up using the rules and tools which guys like Eclectic Method do so well using pop imagery and topical media clips, rceombining these with music to create a sound/visual texture— but doing it in my own way. I'm trying to go more for the gel light effect or psychedelic light show of '60s rock concerts. Why? I dunno. Art for its own sake.

If that isn't enough Pope for you, Shakedown will also give you a chance to pick up his new "Homage To Crepax" screenprint and t-shirt, the proceeds of which go to support the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund. But why a tribute to (Italian comic great and creator of some of the sexiest comic art ever) Guido Crepax?

Why Crepax? I love his work and want to expose him to more people in the US. I think he is largely underrated by contemporary comics fans, and I want to try to elevate him to the stature he deserves... He and Japanese pop artist Tadanori Yokoo are two of my biggest influences.

Doors open tomorrow for Shakedown at 11pm at the Brooklyn Bowl, tickets are $5. Everyone who's in the area, I'm very jealous.

Charlie Jane and Annalee (that's me) will be in NYC next week, and we're dragging Meredith along with us to host the io9 NYC Meetup. We'll be in the back room at The Magician, from 8-10 PM (and probably a little later to be completely honest).

Free drinks to the first ten people who find me (I'll be in wearing a tie) and tell me what their favorite scifi novel of the past year is. Depending on how drunk I am, I MAY be persuaded to buy drinks for people who can name a favorite indie scifi movie, but this is not guaranteed.

See you Thursday!

This year's Arse features performances and presentations from a ton of amazing folks, including R.U. Sirius, Jonathon Keats, Ani Niow, Jason Scott, Rose White, Violet Blue, and even yours truly (I'm going to be part of the opening ceremonies on Thursday, showing some gay porn mashups from Japan; and then I'm speaking on Saturday about the future of love). There will be a party at the Center for Sex and Culture, as well as a hands-on technical workshop on Sunday at San Francisco's kickass hacker space Noisebridge.

You can peruse the whole schedule on the Arse Elektronika site, but here's a quick overview:

October 1 (6 PM-midnight): Film festival, opening ceremony and Prixxx Arse Elektronika Gala @ Roxie Theater
October 2 (8 PM-midnight): Art, pixels, interactive performance @ Center for Sex and Culture
October 3 (11:30 AM-9 PM): Talks and discourse @ PariSoMa
October 3 (after 10 PM): Party and performance night @ Femina Potens Gallery
October 4 (12 noon-10 PM): DIY workshops @ Noisebridge

Here's how the organizers introduce this year's theme:

Scottish SF author Iain Banks created a fictitious group-civilisation called "Culture" in his eponymous narrative. The vast majority of humanoid people in the "Culture" are born with greatly altered glands housed within their central nervous systems, who secrete - on command - mood- and sensory-appreciation-altering compounds into the person's bloodstream. Additionally many inhabitants have subtly altered reproductive organs - and control over the associated nerves - to enhance sexual pleasure. Ovulation is at will in the female, and a fetus up to a certain stage may be re-absorbed, aborted, or held at a static point in its development; again, as willed. Also, a viral change from one sex into the other, is possible. And there is a convention that each person should give birth to one child in their lives. It may sound strange, but Banks states that a society in which it is so easy to change sex will rapidly find out if it is treating one gender better than the other. Pressure for change within society would presumably build up until some form of sexual equality and hence numerical parity will be established.
Does this set-up sound too futuristic? Too utopian? Too bizarre?

We may not forget that mankind is a sexual and tool-using species. And that's why our annual conference Arse Elektronika deals with sex, technology and the future. As bio-hacking, sexually enhanced bodies, genetic utopias and plethora of gender have long been the focus of literature, science fiction and, increasingly, pornography, this year will see us explore the possibilities that fictional and authentic bodies have to offer. Our world is already way more bizarre than our ancestors could have ever imagined. But it may not be bizarre enough. "Bizarre enough for what?" — you might ask. Bizarre enough to subvert the heterosexist matrix that is underlying our world and that we should hack and overcome for some quite pressing reasons within the next century. Don't you think, replicants?

I love a conference about sexual futurism that begins with a long discussion of Iain M. Banks. And so will you!

Find out more at the Arse Elektronika site, and buy tickets here. (Tickets are for the events Thursday and Friday night, as well as Saturday lectures. Saturday night performances and Sunday workshops are free and open to the public.)

Munroe, who just released xkcd: volume 0 last week, appeared at last night's Electronic Frontier Foundation's Geek Reading fundraiser. Munroe talked a bit about the experience of publishing the book, which contains strips from the site as well as annotations, the centerpiece of the event was a question and answer session. Users on Reddit submitted and voted on questions to ask Munroe to create a sort of crowd-sourced interview. Reddit cofounder Alexis Ohanian (who also founded breadpig, the company that published xkcd: volume 0.

We were at the event and took video of the ten questions (plus one non-question) Munroe answered over the course of the evening, questions ranging from topics he won't write about to one fan's take on the Traveling Salesman Problem:

[xkcd]

With the start of WorldCon coming this Thursday, we're ramping up to cover our second con in a few weeks. And io9 will be hosting a party with the awesome Cecilia Tan of Circlet Press on Friday night, in a yet-to-be-identified room.

Anticipation 2009 has been putting out tons of info — including a draft list of guests. And in addition to guest of honor Neil Gaiman, Nobel-winning economist Paul "I was right" Krugman will be there, giving a talk about his love of Asimov and holding a conversation with Charles Stross, whose Merchant Princes novels Krugman has waxed admiringly about before.

There's also info about the whopping ten awards that will be given out at this year's Con. The Hugo Awards are always given out at WorldCon, whose members vote on them, but this year you also get to see Cory Doctorow accept his Prometheus award as a libertarian hero for Little Brother, and you get to find out who's Canada's outstanding science fiction author, thanks to the Aurora Awards. And the artist-focused Chesley Awards. Not only that, but there's something called the Golden Duck Award, which sounds rude but is actually for children's SF lit.

Curious to see if the libertarians will play nice with Krugman? You can find out, without making a major commitment.

You can try out WorldCon with a "taster" membership and see if you can handle it in a realtime situation. You can show up and pay 75-95 Canadian dollars for a day membership, then wander around and drink in the sights. Go to a few panels, see if you can get Elizabeth Bear's autograph. Then if you decide that WorldCon isn't for you, you can go back and get refunded all but $20 of your day membership (or $10 for a child's membership).

We'll see you in Montreal! WorldCon "I, Robot" image by Changa Lion on Flickr.

Variety reports that the first four shows announced for April's 26th William S. Paley Television Festival are Dollhouse, Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog (which isn't actually a television show, but, you know, Joss), Fringe and True Blood. I promise you, we haven't taken over the programming committee for the festival.

Joss Whedon will be present at both the Dollhouse and Horrible panels, along with further cast and crew from both shows, yet to be announced, talking about the behind-the-scenes process required to bring us the goods on a regular basis. Cast and crew from Fringe and Blood are also expected to appear during the festival's April 10th through 23rd run. All we need to complete the set would be appearances from Ron Moore, talking about Battlestar Galactica, and Bryan Fuller showing the unseen final three episodes of Pushing Daisies, and I'd be flying down to start waiting outside the ArcLight Cinemas' Cinerama Dome with my sleeping bag for the next two months.

'Dr. Horrible,' 'Dollhouse' do Paley [Variety]

It's a world-premiere and signing event for Kubrick and Be@rbrick figures based on the show, although it's not clear from the announcement how many new figures are being released. There'll also be a one-off Lost BE@RBRICK figure, which is ten times the normal size and signed by the show's cast and producers, which will later be auctioned with proceeds going to the Children's Defense Fund. And there'll be exclusive Lost art by producer Jack Bender on display.

Says Meltdown:

Scheduled to appear at the event are “Lost” co-creators and executive producers J.J. Abrams and Damon Lindelof, and executive producers Bryan Burk, Jack Bender, Edward Kitsis, Adam Horowitz and Carlton Cuse. Also scheduled to attend are writers Elizabeth Sarnoff, Paul Zbyszewski, Melinda Hsu Taylor, Kyle Pennington, and Brian K. Vaughan.

It runs Weds., Nov. 19, from 7 to 11 PM. And here's the poster:

Bassist and techie journalist geek Greg Huang writes in to say that Honest Bob is playing a rare one-night show in New York City at Sullivan Hall. You can buy tickets from the Sullivan Hall website. Or if you're like me and you can't fly 3,000 miles to NYC even to bask in the tunes of Honest Bob, you can feel the surf-nerd vibe of their new single, Soy Bomb, on their MySpace page. Soy Bomb is featured in Guitar Hero II, by the way, if it sounds familiar.

If you haven't ever gotten into Honest Bob before, I recommend you start with the album Second and Eighteen, if only because it includes the world's most awesome song ever: Time Cube.

Honest Bob and the Factory to Dealer Incentives [official site]