Lite & Brite Newsletter 4/27

Hello, what’s up, and welcome to the Lite + Brite newsletter. This week we are fortunate to have an interview with Austin events visionary Mike Stefanik. Everything Mike creates is worth going to, and in our Q+A below he gives a little insight into how he comes up with and executes so many bizarre and brilliant ideas.  We also have our weekly virtual dance party tonight and our playlist from last week, so scroll on to be entertained and delighted. If you’re not already a newsletter subscriber, click here. Also, please support us by forwarding this email to your friends who enjoy things like listening to music and thinking about leaving the house (but definitely not doing it). —Leila + Brian https://liteandbriteatx.com/DJ StuffNo Lights No Lycra, our weekly dance party in the dark, has moved to an online home for the duration of the Covid-19 crisis. DJ Brian Blackout will be on Twitch, broadcasting his signature mix of indie, electropop, synthpop, disco, dusty rock + R&B records, regular funk, future funk, synthwave, new wave, many other waves, and much more live from his living room. Turn off the lights in your home (or don’t), stop checking Twitter for one hour, and dance like no one’s watching, because truly, no one can see you. Join us here tonight and every upcoming Monday from 8pm-9:30pm CST. Put it as a recurring event on your calendar or RSVP to the facebook event to get reminders, because we have all lost any sense of time and it’s hard to remember when it’s a Monday at 8pm CT versus when it is literally any other time or day at all. If you can’t make it to the party live, don’t worry about it: you can listen to last week’s playlist on YouTube here and read the tracklisting at the bottom of this email. If you want more Brian Blackout in your life, he’s now doing an online radio show on KPISS‘s “Channel 2” every Thursday night at 10pm CST. The show is called No Humans Allowed and it’s dedicated to music for robots, cyborgs, androids, mandroids, cylons, skinjobs, etc. You can tune in live or stream old episodes of the show here. What is No Lights No Lycra? Austin’s weekly judgment-free, substance-free, high-impact dance thing in the dark. It’s a DJ night that’s not at the club, a workout that’s not at the gym, a personal meditation that’s anything but silent. Read more about us in the Austin Chronicle. Want to hear what No Lights No Lycra sounds like? We’ve got a ton of recordings of our resident DJ Brian Blackout’s sets up on Mixcloud you can listen to, and we’re regularly adding more.The Austinites Behind the CurtainPreviously in this series: Mouthfeel and Erica Lies. In this series, we’ll be getting to know some of the Austinites who produce our favorite local events. This week, we’re honored to be talking to Mike Stefanik. You’ve probably seen Mike’s work around, even if you don’t know his name: for the past 15 years, he’s been creating the annual Austin Events Wall Calendar. What you may not know is that Mike has also turned part of his house into a permanent work of interactive installation art called the Eureka Room, and that he does a newsletter of his own in which he presents ‘secret events’ that are sort of like absurdist, anarchic summer camp evening activities. We talked to him about all this and more. Lite + Brite: The events you produce are so clever and high-concept: a standing-still 5k race, giant cornhole, “let’s see how many extension cords we can fit together,” etc. How do you come up with these ideas? What (if anything) do you think unifies them?   Mike Stefanik: For me, the secret is to come up with a whole lot of bad ideas and hope there’s some good ones in there. There’s a common misconception that some people have good ideas and some don’t, but I’m pretty sure the reality is that some people only bother to think up a few ideas, and others spend a lot of time generating ideas and then pick only the best ones. And those best ones are usually a little more solid due to the Darwinism of the process.   So how do I think up a bunch of bad ideas? Some tricks: —ask myself, “What is the worst idea I could think of?” —think of a few possible ideas and then change the size, duration, shape, or some other variable and see what that looks like —don’t just do it in one sitting —walking! that is where most of the good ideas are —taking things from different domains and trying to merge them to see what I come up with —having a bunch of creative friends that I bounce ideas off of. Even just one reaction from them can lead me in a whole new direction I hadn’t thought of.   For some of my events I brainstorm “What is a ridiculous event name I couldn’t resist clicking on?” But unlike clickbait, I intend to deliver on the promise. During the brainstorming process I find myself thinking about what feeling I want to give the participants. Usually it’s something in the vein of surprise, delight, awkwardness, connection, absurdity, and joy. What’s going to make people go THAT WAS F***ING AWESOME?  I’m less concerned with the technical aspects or (you can ask anyone that has worked with me) the feasibility. The worst thing you can do is start with “Well, what’s possible?” Instead, ask “What do I want?” then figure out how to get it. Concerning yourself with what’s possible in the brainstorming part of things is just an idea-killer. If you can think up an impossible idea and fall in love with it, you often can find ways to make it happen with a few compromises. L+B: Do you have a personal favorite out of all your events?   Mike Stefanik: Some years back I did this event called “Slackathon.” It was a “Decathlon for the rest of us” and involved nine events like “breakfast tacos,” “the one-meter swim,” and “margaritas”. It was meant to be a lazy couple hours with friends, but turns out that even nine easy events take many hours to do and get tiring. So we all got tricked into an actually tiring day. L+B: What’s the most memorable or unexpected thing that’s ever happened at an event you produced?   Mike Stefanik: I did a few parties at the Cathedral of Junk to promote calendars. As with most ideas, I went overboard. We had giant piles of cupcakes and chocolate and all this beer we got donated from Independence Brewing. But instead of kegs we got bottles. So we had tons of bottles. And a mariachi group and some bands and some projectionist and a guy who just wanted to dress like a pirate and run the yard games. Plus a popcorn cart, hula hoopers, and God knows what else. We made it a couple hours until the cops showed up and shut it down. It was literally the most ineffective way to sell calendars I could ever imagine, but it was fun.  [Editor’s note: You are describing my dream afternoon.] L+B: Do you have a pie-in-the-sky dream event that you would want to do if you had no logistical concerns? Mike Stefanik: I’d love to go on tour and play the best Atlas Obscura sites in the world with the ~20 bandmates I have in Ouiness. We’re an improv band, so wed could pick up local people to jam with us wherever we go. L+B: Let’s talk about the Eureka Room. We love it, but we never know how to describe it to people, so we always just wind up telling them they have to see it for themselves. How do you describe it? What’s been the most challenging part about implementing it?   Mike Stefanik: “The less you know, the better” is how I like to describe it. The mission is charming absurdity. It involves a bit of awkwardness with strangers in a tight space filled with thousands of LEDs.    The hardest part is just figuring out what it is and what it isn’t. Because it’s not really a type of anything that already exists, so I had to sort of feel it out. I’ve had some spectacular crashes along the way. But through some awesome visitors and friends with great feedback I think I have figured out what it is. L+B: What are some of your favorite Austin events to attend that you don’t produce? Mike Stefanik: I’ve been to all kinds of events in Austin over the 20 years I’ve lived here. These days I like the smaller, weird ones that are made by people just because they want to see it happen. There’s also something about free events that I like. I understand why events charge, but free events bring out a wider demographic and it feels more like a community gathering than an entertainment sort of thing. For specifics… Eeyore’s, Creek Show, Full Moon Swim, HonkTX and Fusebox Festival. L+B: How can people support you during this time when we can’t go to events? Mike Stefanik: I’m working on a new project that I can’t say much about yet, but if you sign up for the Eureka Room newsletter I’ll be sure to announce it there if it happens.NLNL 058 PlaylistHere’s what we played at last week’s living room edition of No Lights No Lycra. As per usual it was a freewheeling mix: disco, freestyle, indie, new wave, power pop, hip house, and british invasion. If you missed our streaming session last Monday, you can listen to the playlist on YouTube here and join us for this week’s party here. Andromeda – Gorillaz Remind Me of U – Nude Disco I Crave Paris – Aeroplane vs Friendly Fires vs Flight Facilities Wine Glass Woman (Aeroplane Remix) – Mayer Hawthorne Sunset – the Midnight Lucky Star – Madonna Casanova Brown (Midnight Surfer Edit) – Gloria Gaynor Temptation – Corina Think (About It) – Lyn Collins Come into My House – Queen Latifah Hungry Child – Hot Chip All the Rest Is Noise – Formation Beat Connection – LCD Soundsystem Alone in My Room – Walker Kong Just Like Heaven – the Cure Nobody But Me (Pilooski Edit) – the Human Beinz Everybody Wants to Work – Uncanny X-Men I Will Dare – the Replacements Tenderness – General Public Photographs – Soviet I’m Every Woman – Whitney Houston I Want It to Be Real – John Rocca Fantasy Park (Moullinex Remix) – College Perfect Kiss – New Order All at Once – Home Who are we? We make this newsletter. We put on No Lights No Lycra each week. We do some other stuff here and there. We love going out to creative events in Austin, and we want you to join us. Visit us at https://liteandbriteatx.com/

SEE YOU NEXT WEEK, CHAMPIONS.