Zer01 and Eric Dorf

Museum hopping in San Francisco can be exhilarating and exhausting. Fortunately, a couple of staff members made it to the city by the bay last weekend to check out a few choice science and art museums. Among other trip highlights was a trip to the California Academy of Sciences sustainability exhibit, a visit to the Cal Academy's famed living rooftop and the chance to play with the butterflies in the rain forest globe.

Another great highlight of the trip was a visit to the SubZERO Festival in San Jose. The festival, run by the folks at Zer01 (who also do a tres cool biennial), was an eclectic collection of street art, low-tech displays, audience interaction, and performance. One thing that caught our eye was a video installation by Eric Dorf, who filmed people's reactions to popular ads and edited them together.

The result is a strangely mesmerizing mosaic of Madison Avenue and mouths. The video we saw at subZERO was slightly modified from this YouTube clip, but you'll get the general idea from this version. We tip our figurative Leo hat to Dorf for his creative mash-up that stopped us in our tracks and kept us engaged, focused and interested with all the distractions of a street fair happening around us!