“When is the Bit Bash Festival at the Museum of Science & Industry?” by S.M. O’Connor

The interactive arts festival Bit Bash is coming to the Museum of Science and Industry (M.S.I.) for the first time in 2019. According to Bit Bash’s Organizing Committee, Bit Bash is Chicago’s “Alternative Games Festival” and a “showcase [of] an international collection of lesser known but culturally significant video games.” This is an opportunity to play more than fifty curated indie (independently developed) video games.

The M.S.I. stated this is chance to “Get hands-on in a relaxing and approachable atmosphere for all ages as you experience unique controllers and hardware, the thrill of multiplayer games, and experiences you can’t play at home that push the expansive boundaries of games. Celebrate long into the night with drinks, live events, tournaments and a thousand of your new best friends.”

Bit Bash at M.S.I. will be on the third weekend of August (Saturday, August 17, 2019 and Sunday, August 18, 2019). The event will take place on the Main Level in the West Pavilion from 9:30 a.m. to 12:00 a.m. on Saturday and from 9:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. on Sunday. Tickets will go on sale at 2:00 p.m. on Tuesday, July 16, 2019. Tickets are $20 and cover both Bit Bash and Museum Entry (general admission). A cash bar will open at 6:00 p.m. on Saturday.

Founded on Sunday, April 13, 2014, many of the volunteers at Chicago-based Bit Bash met at the Indie City Games. A co-working space where video games are made and developed, Indie City Collective, founded Bit Bash.

Indie City Collective stated, “Our first venture was establishing the Indie City Co-op in 2013; a co-working space which provides low-cost office space for independent developers giving them the freedom to work outside of home and collaborate.”

Indie City is the umbrella for a number of Chicago-based interactive programmers primarily focusing on educating and promoting independent game development in the Chicagoland area.
Indie City Games organizes monthly meetings which feature educational and cultural talks as well as provide a venue for local developers to showcase their work. Indie City Games also hosts game jams and projects such as the Indie City Arcade, a public free to play arcade machine providing a unique way for developers to expose their games.

According to Bit Bash’s Organizing Committee, “Our goal is to promote games that either can’t be played at home, have unique controllers or experiences, or promote community or an artistic statement. Proceeds go to our fiscal sponsor Chicago Foundation for the Interactive Arts so we can host more rad events, and help us cover entry for kids under 13 and at-risk youth.”

The Website of Bit Bash Chicago is https://BitBashChicago.com. One can follow it on Twitter at @BitBashChicago.

Often stylized as the “Museum of Science and Industry, Chicago” or the “Museum of Science + Industry” the institution is located at the northern end of the Chicago Park District’s Jackson Park, on the south side of 57^th Street, between Lake Shore Drive to the east and Cornell Drive to the west, in the East Hyde Park neighborhood of the Hyde Park Community Area (Community Area #41) on the South Side of Chicago.

Normally, the M.S.I. is open from 9:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. However, it will be open from 9:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. from Saturday, June 22, 2019 through Sunday, June 30, 2019. The address is 5700 South Lake Shore Drive, Chicago, Illinois 60637. The Website is https://www.msichicago.org/ and the phone number is (773) 684-1414.

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The Field Museum of Natural History in March, 2018

The Field Museum of Natural History’s entrance pavilions are at opposite ends of Stanley Field Hall, which has a north-south axis. The two porticos (porches) are each reached by two successive flights of stairs.

Both porticos of The Field Museum of Natural History are flanked by two small porches, which each have two caryatids (columns in the shape of maidens). On the facade, the wings are adorned with a colonnade of attached fluted Ionic columns. The building’s fluted Ionic columns have volutes (spiral-scroll-shaped crowns).

Each portico of The Field Museum is tetrastyle in antis with double-ranked fluted Ionic columns capped by volutes. An entablature crowned by a pediment rests atop the columns. The continuous frieze in each case is relatively plain. The wave-themed acroteria that crown the pediments are borrowed from the Palace of a Fine Arts, which housed The Field Museum until 1920 and now houses the Museum of Science and Industry.

The Field Museum of Natural History isn’t “just” a museum. Visitors can watch scientists at work through windows at the Daniel F. and Ada L. Rice DNA Discovery Center’s Pritzker Laboratory.

Mrs. Charles (Laura) Schweppe, a daughter and co-heiress of John Graves Shedd, the former partner of Marshall Field I who succeeded him as president of Marshall Field & Company, and who, under the guidance of Stanley Field founded the Shedd Aquarium, donated an exhibit of 100 bronze sculptures by Malvina Hoffman to The Field Museum. They represent every race, nation, and tribe in the human family (more or less). On January 9, 1933, the first group, Unity of Man, went on display.

In addition to the four figures Henry Hering (1874-1949) made for the corners of Stanley Field Hall, he also made the twelve plaster round lion head shield escutcheons that line it. These are replicas of the marble round lion head shield escutcheon he made for the pediment of the facade of The Field Museum of Natural History.

Christmas at Chicago’s Union Station

Credit: S.M. O’Connor Caption: This is a POLAR EXPRESS display in the Great Hall of Union Station.

Credit: S.M. O’Connor Caption: This is a closeup of the THE POLAR EXPRESS steam locomotive mock-up in the Great Hall of Chicago’s Union Station.

Credit: S.M. O’Connor Caption: This is the headlamp of THE POLAR EXPRESS steam locomotive mock-up in the Great Hall of Chicago’s Union Station.

Credit: S.M. O’Connor Caption: This Union Station Company rail car loaded with super-size gifts is part of THE POLAR EXPRESS mock-up in the Great Hall of Chicago’s Union Station.

Credit: S.M. O’Connor Caption: This is a Christmas tree in the Great Hall of Chicago’s Union Station.

Credit: S.M. O’Connor Caption: This Christmas tree in the Great Hall of Union Station in downtown Chicago has emblems of Amtrak, Metra, and historic railroad companies whose routes they now operate like Burlington.

Cinemas sculptor Alfonso Iannelli (1888-1965) Helped Design

This is the Pickwick Theatre Building, an Art Deco movie palace and office building erected in downtown Park Ridge, Illinois in 1928.

The architects were Roscoe Harold Zook and William F. McCaughey. Sculptor Alfonso Iannelli, who also worked on the Adler Planetarium, contributed to this building.

In recent years, the Vlahakis family, who’ve owned the building for 50 years, have been able to turn the building into a multiplex by adding smaller theaters around the original auditorium. The latest one, with a screen four times the size of the one in the auditorium, will open in time to screen INFINITY WARS in May, if all goes well.

The Catlow Movie Theater is a cinema that opened in downtown Barrington, Illinois in 1927. The Tudor Revival style of architecture is not confined to the facade of the cinema. As with the Pickwick Theatre in Park Ridge, Illinois, sculptor Alfonso Iannelli (1888-1965) played a role in the design and decoration of The Catlow Movie Theater.