I’ve spent the week in Providence, Rhode Island for the Pixilerations Festival. The experience as a whole has been great, exciting, and as always, a huge learning experience.

Social Structure

[ Construction no. 1] had the huge privilege of getting the largest space in brand new Granoff Center at Brown University. It was up as an interactive installation for a few days and then we held a performance the last day. The attendance and feedback were good. Pixilerations Festival as a whole is a good one. They had three centers: two for installations (Granoff Center, Brown and Sol Koffler, Rhode Island School of Design) and the concert in the Grant Building, Brown. It is difficult to coordinate a multi-center, cross-town festival, but Pixilerations is a good event.

I’m now sitting in College Hill Cafe across the street from the Granoff. My other two collaborators have left (for Boulder, Co and Baton Rouge).

The culture and student bodies (Brown and RISD) are so different than LSU and Baton Rouge. There is no obvious sartorial branding for anything, than perhaps black plastic-rimmed glasses. There’s a large hill (half mile? at a moderate grade) with Brown atop and RISD in the middle, so everyone here looks far more beautiful and in shape. The entire “hill area” seems to be filled with artistry and community. Thayer street is full of places to eat and shop. One of the biggest downfalls of the area LSU is there is no walkable food/shop area except for the Chimes Street, which compared to the last two campuses I’ve visited (Stanford and Brown/RISD), pales in its selection and price.

Providence holds an event, called FireWater, along a waterway where they light floating torches, give gondola rides, hold lightsaber fights, organize flash mobs, offer free dance lessons and yoga classes, and sponsors like Mohegan Sun hold table games in the middle of Downtown.

My goal was to hit a couple of the galleries and museums in the area today before I left, but many are closed on Mondays.