by Alice Parman

Ancient Rome before it gets sacked, from Liz Glynn's

The session on “Design for Participation” was full of great ideas. The Machine Project capped it off with their uniquely original slide presentation, narrated by a singer/songwriter [Emily Lacy] who accompanied herself on the banjo. Her song had many verses and was often hilarious. I would consider moving to Los Angeles to participate in events organized by the Machine Project. For example, Building Rome, a 24-hour session at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Participants made scale models of ancient Roman buildings in a gallery of antiquities, building Rome in a day. Then they became Visigoths and sacked the city in (if memory serves) 27 seconds. I took fairly complete notes during insightful presentations by Dan Spock, Kathy McLean, panel chair Nina Simon, and Kris Morrisey. But multi-sensory impressions of “the banjo incident” will linger longest in my subconscious.