Andrew C. Smith

@andrewchristophersmith

director of the lab (sf) former director of indexical (santa cruz) composer, curator, arts worker if you ever found yourself thinking “that’s not a gong that’s a tam tam” this account might be for you

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Andrew C. Smith@andrewchristophersmith· 26d

As Miles Davis once said, the best gifts are the ones you don’t give (dm me if I know you and I’ll send you the address)

Invitation to my birthday with my address blacked out.

Andrew C. Smith@andrewchristophersmith· Jul 8

Wow this Marianne Amacher book from Blank Forms is pretty incredible as an archival document / artist book. (“Intelligent Life”)

[typewriter sheet with the following text:]

TY CHOLINE is very pleased with his most recent
script - REINDEER EARS!
He is able to HEAR as a
REINDEER HEARS. He's just finished simulating the intricate parameters shaping the REINDEER'S auditory neuroanatomy. He LISTENS to Bach now as a REINDEER. The BIO-MUSIC script is ready to be played on the Home Consoles - to "play" the music of Bach, Mozart, Blondie, whatever music or sound is selected, or spontaneously created, as a REINDEER would HEAR it.

Andrew C. Smith@andrewchristophersmith· Jul 7

Andrew C. Smith@andrewchristophersmith· Jun 3

bro you know you can drive to modesto

a questionnaire:
Should California continue with high-speed rail? If so, what route or scope would you support?
Matt Mahan:
It shouldn’t cost more to get to Modesto than it does to get to the Moon.

Andrew C. Smith@andrewchristophersmith· May 26

Ok but ouch

A sign for the bathroom saying “men” and “animal relief”

Andrew C. Smith@andrewchristophersmith· May 3

Get in losers we’re going to the pre raphealite cake truck

Mobile cake truck with crazy paintings of flowers and renaissance people in it

Andrew C. Smith@andrewchristophersmith· Apr 8

Ah yes, you found him, Satoshi; the only person who wrote his thesis using C++

And Mr. Back's thesis project focused on
C++ — the same programming language Satoshi used to code the first version of the
Bitcoin software.

Andrew C. Smith@andrewchristophersmith· Mar 27

today in AI splam (slop + spam): many leaders at experimental art venues struggle with client acquisition

hi Andrew, many leaders at experimental art venues struggle with client acquisition, especially in Q1.

This may be a forward question, but is The Lab, San Francisco in the same boat?

Andrew C. Smith@andrewchristophersmith· Mar 3

deeply hoping that claude, the "only safe AI," launched missiles against itself

Andrew C. Smith@andrewchristophersmith· Mar 2

we're in the weird wide world of AI infecting and rotting dev documentation to the extent that it's making up its own variables in its own auto-generating help docs. given that AI "coding tools" are often driven by documentation, this is not a great sign. (note that this code doesn't run at all...)

A bunch of code that doesn't make sense and doesn't run

Andrew C. Smith@andrewchristophersmith· Feb 28

Absolutely loving Ted Gordon’s book, “The Composer’s Black Box” — and also the incredible Alvin Lucier line he found and included as an epigraph in one chapter: Real echoes Direct imitation, without metaphor, Without metaphor, but with ambiguity (sketch for Vespers)

A book by Theodore Gordon entitled “the composer’s black box: making music in cybernetic America”. The image is of a number of electrical patch cables interconnecting a system of panels. It is a Buchla modular synthesizer.

Andrew C. Smith@andrewchristophersmith· Jan 21

Did they make white baby jesus saffron

A package of saffron with an illustration of a small white baby crawling out of a swaddling cloth

Andrew C. Smith@andrewchristophersmith· Dec 31

Image of a man in a suit putting his arm into a tub with the caption “The musical bathtub”

Andrew C. Smith@andrewchristophersmith· Dec 29

Apparently they had to ban 8-13 year-olds from using this toy robot

Toy robot with a 14+ sticker covering the 8+ age recommendation printed on the box

Andrew C. Smith@andrewchristophersmith· Dec 12

Every so often there’s a screenshot of my DMs that I feel compelled to post

An “experimental musician” at calarts michael bailey who writes:
welcome to the 30 year war of gentrification. And don't pretend that the Lab and Grey Area don't enable the toxic tech culture of selfish post-suburban sociopaths.

Andrew C. Smith@andrewchristophersmith· Dec 2

I am going off-main to note that I wish we had a city where actual grassroots cultural institutions that are not owned wholesale by billionaires and burners and bureaucrats had the respect of our political representatives. We can have that city. We need to fight for it.

An instagram post from the kitchen in nyc stating that Legacy Russell (ED/AD of the kitchen) has been appointed to a commission by Mamdani

Andrew C. Smith@andrewchristophersmith· Dec 1

Leave Ashby and me alone for a few minutes and we’ll be reading in silence listening to music

A toddler on a comically large chair reading Brown Bear Brown Bear (upside down) while a 39 year old dad lounges on the couch reading some other book. There are two turntables in the image, one covered playing music and the other (the toddler’s turntable) unplugged

Andrew C. Smith@andrewchristophersmith· Nov 22

sometimes the best reaper markers are the most honest ones (why do I not just go read a book every time I do a real-time summing bounce...)

Andrew C. Smith@andrewchristophersmith· Nov 17

Crypto bro boss level, insanity mode (not taking at a woman about crypto)

Soon the conversation turned to a tantalizing scenario — a beautiful woman approaches a wealthy crypto trader at a bar, showing an unlikely degree of romantic interest. Unfortunately, Mr. Kayll said, these interactions could be part of a so-called honey-pot scheme designed to lure the target into divulging compromising information.
"For you guys, it'll be a female — I'd send in a girl every time," he said. It would be unwise to "tell her what you know about Bitcoin."

Andrew C. Smith@andrewchristophersmith· Nov 14

Fundamentally, Lurie and Trump both elevate people with little to no experience so that they have political pawns who owe their careers to them and are functionally paying off that debt through whatever votes are asked of them missionlocal.org/2025/11/alca...

Mission Local article: In text exchange, new D4 supe writes of paying workers 'under the table, skimping on taxes
New texts raise more questions about Mayor Daniel Lurie's vetting of newest supervisor,
Beya Alcaraz
by JOE ESKENAZI
November 13, 2025, 5:25 pm
Mayor Daniel Lurie and his District 4 Supervisor appointee Beya Alcaraz take a merchant walk on Irving Street on Nov. 7, 2025. Photo by Junyao Yang.

Andrew C. Smith@andrewchristophersmith· Oct 3

The Lab is restoring the main auditorium of the San Francisco Labor Temple, built in 1914. Among other things, this is where the 1934 vote to join the longshoremen in a city-wide general strike was held. It will be the largest, longest-running space in the Bay Area dedicated to experimental work.

An image of two beams opening into a large hall with 17 foot ceilings. The wood flooring is covered by linoleum about halfway through the space.

Andrew C. Smith@andrewchristophersmith· Sep 26

Cory, and I mean this sincerely, go fuck yourself

Cory, 31, Tenn., white, Republican, construction I believed Trump was focused on lowering drug prices, prescription drug prices. I have a chronic condition. I'm a Type 1 diabetic. And since he has taken office, my medications have tripled in price.
Again, I don't know if that's a correlation to where I live or my insurance but it's gotten to a point where, for a disease I did not cause and do not have any control over, seeing a very high increase in the prices that I'm paying.

Andrew C. Smith@andrewchristophersmith· Sep 19

Gavin Newsom’s son is also named Hunter???? You can’t make this up folks

fledgling conservatives in red states. Gavin Newsom, the Democratic governor of California, said at a news conference on Tuesday that his 14-year-old son, Hunter, had called him from school the moment he heard that Mr. Kirk had been shot, anxious for news of his condition. He had been an admirer.
Conversations with his son served as "a reminder of how many young people were impacted by this death in a pretty profound way," Mr. Newsom said.

Andrew C. Smith@andrewchristophersmith· Sep 11

god bless our local news missionlocal.org/2025/09/s-f-...

subject line: "City finally awards trash can contract"

Andrew C. Smith@andrewchristophersmith· Aug 30

We’re all dreaming a dream Brittany don’t ruin it for us

An email:

From: Brittany Gibson
Sent: Friday, August 29, 2025, 12:36 PM
To: DL WHO Wranglers
Subject: Pool 3 - Music selection
Adding some color on the music today at the White House, correspondents have heardBowie, the Beatles, Michael Jackson, Andrea Bocelli and "I Dreamed a Dream" from Les Misérables. The music is still playing.
White House did not share additional information on who
President Trump is currently with while playing the music, but said that he has policy meetings and a media interview on his schedule today.

Andrew C. Smith@andrewchristophersmith· Aug 29

I’ve had this longstanding belief that it’s impossible to truly evaluate the importance of a presenter / space / organization in isolation. Starting to put these ideas into more concrete thoughts, as we received $150k recently to support a project with this aim in mind. These are a few napkin notes.

Notes app screenshot:

Compost metrics
Key point being that these are necessarily network metrics. It is impossible to evaluate a single organization's programming in isolation.
Non-temporal metrics:
Connectedness: metric of redundancy / ubiquity of artists with other organizations or presenters. Can show strong "scene
presence"
Novelty: the inverse of connectedness in that there is a % of artists who are frequently a part of programming
Temporal metrics:
Seedlings / incubator: the first entry-point for an artist to a connected network, leading to the artist having a high level of connectedness

Andrew C. Smith@andrewchristophersmith· Aug 12

Wading into the discourse to say that $850 is fairly low overhead (the lab’s is $1150) and if you don’t expect someone working a full night of “sound & lights” to get paid $400 gross including workers comp, taxes, etc, then uh good luck with the solidarity I guess

Just a settlement sheet showing a pretty bad turnout and bad payment too

Andrew C. Smith@andrewchristophersmith· Aug 9

we caught a mouse so we named it gpt5-mini and released it into the wild* *the chatgpt office a couple blocks from my house

A photo of a very small mouse inside a green translucent trap

Andrew C. Smith@andrewchristophersmith· Jul 29

out of curiosity I attempted to try out microsoft 365 copilot chat and I don't think I've ever encountered a more "graphic design is my passion" wait screen from a 3 trillion dollar company

A "coming soon" screen for Microsoft 365 Copilot with a bunch of text boxes that look warped and pixellated in crazy ways saying things like "generate a powerpoint presentation from the contents of this document" (the product doesn't exist yet)

Andrew C. Smith@andrewchristophersmith· Jul 11

I'm trying to figure out the math but I didn't go to MIT Total 2024 OpEx was $4.3B. Their net return on investments in 2024 was ~$2.2B (wow), and 8% tax on that would be $174M. That's 4% of OpEx, not 10%. Am I missing something? 2024 Treasurer's Report: facultygovernance.mit.edu/sites/defaul...