Felix
Felix was a nutty roommate of mine who constantly invented things, got started with them but never finished. He had a great idea for a sort of large walk-in organ made up of pipes, with many "player's stations", each with a set of pipes on which people could beat and make progressive music. A computer controlled the whole thing, and alowed for either a person improvising on its own or following the computer's instructions. The clever thing was that it had a computer running everything and deciding what everyone should be doing, given what's currently going on and that some participants will not follow.
Felix was going to build this for Burning Man. But, consistent with his nature, it never got built. Instead, he built something he called a Psychogazmatron, or something similar, which was a large projection TV at the end of an enclosed black passageway, playing weird, trippy visuals and music, synched together. This did make it to Burning Man one year, 1998 I think.
Felix had a number of nutty friends of a certain computer-geek/counter-culture type -- of which there were countless numbers in the Bay Area. At the very beginning of my SF adventures I encountered such a group in Berkeley (the security geeks, including the later-famous Tsutomu Shimomura), with their clothing-optional swimming parties and endless geek talk. Three years and 30 subcultures later, I came back to them, rather by accident. Felix's group was the Extropians (better living through chemicals).
As a parting gift, when we announced he was leaving our house, Felix wrote the following roommate add:
Are you Nearly Non-Neurotic and Naturally Nutty?
Are you Neurally Nimble and 'tres bon Naturel'?
If so, you are coordially summoned to examine
a Nutty Niche of Neo-Post-Post-Modernism:
* The Noe-Valley Nebula of Nifty Nonlinearities! *
You're on a noble quest for a nest: A fairly clean, classy, relaxing place
to call 'ome. A place to hang your shimmeringly-funky iridescent purple
evening gown and/or your canary-yellow bell-bottomed tuxedo...
...And a comfortable, sunny operations center to carry out your evil plans
for galactic domination and subsequent hep-ification.
Right?
The room is available July 1. You'll share our sunny, spacious,
top-floor three-bedroom Edwardian flat with hardwood floors. The room
is large and beautiful, with original built-in wood trim and shelving
units and French doors. We have a gas stove, a dishwasher, our own
washer and dryer and a shared yard. The flat is located on 24th
Street between Noe and Sanchez in Noe Valley, one block away from the
J Church and 5 blocks away from the BART. Rent is $680/month plus
utilities.
We're looking for a cool, energetic, cerebral, playful and downright
congenial housemate with oodles of verve to mingle with us during our stay
on this entertaining little planet.
PLEASE READ THE FOLLOWING CAREFULLY:
o We keep our house quite warm, warmer than some people like.
o We're somewhat nocturnal.
o No light sleepers, please. The wooden floors and trim tend to make the
sounds in the house resonate.
(We're not particularly noisy, but we're not noiseless, either.)
o There's no smoking in the house.
o No Ne'er-do-wells, Numbskulls, Nasty Nudnik Nihilists, Neanderthals or
Ninnies.