Juan Tallo

"Transmedia for Change" panelists, left to right: Moderator Henry Jenkins, Katie Elmore Mota of Pranja Productions, writer/producer Mahyad Tousi, Creative Director of Sandpit Sam Haren & documentary filmmaker Katerina Cizek

I was a little nervous about attending USC and UCLA's joint annual Transmedia Hollywood Conference, whose focus this year was on how social media and storytelling are changing the face of digital marketing and philanthropy. Sure, I'm interested in web entertainment, but am I eight-hours-of-panels interested? I didn't want to fall asleep and embarrass myself. Especially not wearing a press pass.

The minute the moderator introduced the panelists to the packed UCLA auditorium by means of video clips and more humorous slides, I knew we were in good hands. For the rest of the day, the audience of professors, students, movie studio execs, digital consultants, filmmakers and I were treated to a fast paced crash course on how the companies and technologies we interact with every day are transforming the way they market and how that affects us as consumers and as potential employees. Who knew your Instagram account might be part of your next job application? Or that MTV's 16 and Pregnant is acting as a vehicle for social change and was pitched as such?

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Courtesy the artist

A still from Kelly Sears's film Once It Started It Could Not End Otherwise (2011)

This week, haunting films about cold-war America play for 15 hours straight on Alvarado and an artist sells cellphone holders that make your phone as unwieldy as one from landline days.

5. Holes in the walls
Urs Fischer, the Swiss artist who stuck a fake tongue out of a hole in the New Museum's wall five years ago, does iconoclastic things in an almost-too-smooth way. He will cut into the Geffen Contemporary's walls for his new show at MOCA and display rough clay sculptures made onsite with the help of about 1,000 local volunteers. The show's opening day will be a multipart affair. Curator Jessica Morgan will speak about working with Fischer, KCHUNG radio will broadcast live and artist Morrisa Maltz, a kind of smooth iconoclast herself, will invite people to have "Mofone Emotional Moments." She'll let them call family or friends using her "Mofones," smartphone holders that look like old-school rotary phone handsets, seashells or tree trunks. 152 N. Central Ave.; Sunday, April 21, noon-5 p.m. (213) 626-6222, moca.org.

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To celebrate the release of L.A. Weekly's annual People issue in May, we're inviting all our favorite people to come party with us as we transform Chinatown Central Plaza into (drum roll!) Artopia.

During this first-ever event on Thursday, May 16, drinks are on us all night, with a hosted bar from 6 p.m. - 11 p.m. and a parade of food trucks to choose from when you're hungry. You'll want to stay fueled up for the massive art installation curated by nomadic art gallerists Mastodon Mesa. Works from L.A. artists include Alia Penner's children's bouncy castle-turned-psychedelic-sculpture, Jacqueline Elaine Gomez's site-specific altars of fresh flowers, Albert Reyes' immersive dioramas, Isaiah Frizzell's "flavor-tripping" taste tests and more.

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Courtesy Richard Telles Fine Art

Dan Finsel's E-thay Inward-Yay Ourney-Jay

See also:
*Getty's Pacific Standard Time Series on L.A. Architecture: A Preview
*Our Calendar Section, Listing More Great Things to Do in L.A.

This week, a panel of architects and a performance at a science fiction conference imagine a high-tech future L.A. and an artist uses Pig Latin to title the work in his half-biographical, half-fantastical show.

5. Home for a wayward shopping cart
The lot on Traction between Third and Fourth Street, in Little Tokyo, used to be a gas station. Recently, it has become a pop-up art spot for street artists. Right now, there's a reshaped shopping cart angling up off a concrete slab at the center of the triangle and an eagle at the top of a found-object totem pole along the outskirts. Traction Avenue, between Third and Fourth streets.

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Courtesy Night Gallery

"Made in Space" at Night Gallery

See also:
*Getty's Pacific Standard Time Series on L.A. Architecture: A Preview
*Our Calendar Section, Listing More Great Things to Do in L.A.

This week, the painter who pushed for a "superflat" aesthetic brings his formerly 2-D monsters to the big screen, three artists clean an alt space from floor to ceiling, and a group show makes Night Gallery's big new space feel maze-like in a good way.

5. Mr. Clean as a conceptualist
Starting the morning of April 5, Human Resources, the vintage Chinatown theater-turned-art space, will be cleaned. The designated cleaners, who will use designated cleaning supplies (the press release mentions Mr. Clean), include Hailey Loman, whose wearable sculpture includes a blanket with a plastic sleeping compartment in the middle of it. Sleeping "wearers" of this sculpture look shrink-wrapped, safe in a sterile way. Cleaners also include Gaea Woods, who photographs objects of beauty, and Lucy Campana, who appeared in Opening Ceremony's ethereally clean "Spa Heaven" videos. Cleaning has been an art act before, but often to bring attention to labor hierarchies or gender roles. This time, the primary subject is the elusiveness of being perfectly clean. You can come to watch or help. 410 Cottage Home St.; Sat., April 5-7, starting 11 a.m.; free. (213) 290-4752; humanresourcesla.com.

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Ryan Forbes

Legendary Bingo's Jeffery Bowman with hostesses Calpernia Addams, Willam Belli, Roxy Wood and Porsha Hayy

See also:
*10 Best Gay Bars in L.A.
*10 Best Drag Clubs in L.A.

"I just touched your boob." When was the last time you heard a bingo caller say that at a bingo game? When was the last time you played bingo?

If you have recently, and you're not on social security, you were probably at Legendary Bingo at Hamburger Mary's in West Hollywood. The irreverent twist on the old-fashioned game, held four times a week (and once a month at the Magnolia Lounge in Pasadena), turns 15 this year -- that's 30 in drag queen years.

To help celebrate, founder and producer Jeffery Bowman is hosting a three-day party, which kicks off at Magnolia Lounge April 8 and continues at the WeHo hotspot April 9 and 10 with bingo games, a champagne toast, drag and burlesque performances and celebrity guests, including the casts of ABC's Suburgatory, CBS' Golden Boy , Sheryl Lee Ralph from Smash and others.

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Courtesy of LACMA

View into the second gallery of "Ends and Exits"

This week, it's all about looking back: One artist revisits 1993 L.A., another borrows the palette of teen pop from 20-some years ago and a museum show features graphically bold, grittily political art of the '80s.

5. What art even is
When the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston changed its name from Institute of Modern Art in 1948, controversy erupted. One publication said the name change signaled the institute's rejection of the "cult of bewilderment" that abstract modernism represented. A group of artists, the iconic Jackson Pollock among them, went to New York to protest the institute soon after. Art historian Richard Meyer tells this story and others about the birth of "contemporary art," a designation no less bewildering than "modern art" ever was, in his new book What Was Contemporary Art? He'll talk about the book and that question with MOCA director Jeffrey Deitch in the museum's Ahmanson Auditorium. 250 S. Grand Ave., dwntwn.; Sat., March 30, 3 p.m.; free. (213) 626-6222, moca.org.

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Courtesy Roberts & Tilton

A view of Noah Davis' Stacked Cubicles (2013)

This week, another painted portrait of Kate Middleton debuts, an aesthetic terroist talks about fashion and tea time happens ten days in a row in Chinatown.

5. Man and the machine
Llyn Foulkes, the rash, visceral artist who has a solo show at the Hammer Museum now, also plays what he calls The Machine. It's a multi-part instrument that surrounds him when he performs, sitting amidst bass drum, symbols, xylophone and other brass and rubber horns. Filmmakers Tamar Halpern and Christopher Quilty have been making a documentary about Foulkes called One Man Band, a name inspired by the artist's Machine. They'll screen it as a work-in-progress at the Hammer and answer questions afterward. 10899 Wilshire Blvd., Wstwd.; Thurs., March 21, 7:30 p.m. (310) 443-7000, hammer.ucla.edu.

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Liz Ohanesian

Miles Taber of Geeks Who Drink

Tuesday night, Geeks Who Drink, a pub trivia night, launched at Complex in Glendale. The night served up lots of alcohol and some really tough trivia questions on topics ranging from geography to comic books. I went down to the event thinking that, as a pretty nerdy lady, I could probably do well at this. But this crowd blew me away.

Geeks Who Drink is a Denver-based company that holds weekly trivia matches across the country. There are already several Geeks Who Drink events in the L.A. area. Our host for the evening, Miles Taber, is actually the quizmaster at the Auld Dubliner in Long Beach. An actor and puppeteer by day, Taber has been running these quizzes for over two years. He frequently helps the company launch new nights at bars across Southern California (and, sometimes, his hometown of Sacramento). That's what he's doing at Complex right now. Taber will be hosting the event for the next few weeks, until they find a permanent fixture for the club's trivia stage.

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Courtesy Overduin and Kite

Will Benedict, 1 800 Bad Drug (2013)

See also:
*Asshole Festival 2013: Artists Yell at the Assholes of Los Angeles From a Street Corner in Chinatown
*Our Calendar Section, Listing More Great Things to Do in L.A.

This week, a designer explains happiness in West Hollywood, a fact-blurring foreign correspondent's office opens in Highland Park and a single tear rolls down one cheek in Culver City.

5. High-tech domesticity
T. Kelly Mason's Typology of Glasses shows a line of casual-looking glassware painted against a baby blue background. The painting is inside a light box, backlit by gels and covered with glass. Above that glass, Mason has outlined his glassware in marker, so that the drawing begins to seem almost dimensional. This mix of high-tech and low recurs throughout his current show at Cherry and Martin gallery, and makes idiosyncratic domestic scenes flashy in a funny way. 2712 S. La Cienega Blvd.; through April 27. (310) 559-0100, cherryandmartin.com.

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