The LISA conference will be held in the gorgeous 500-seat Tishman Auditorium at The New School with assistance from the School of Media Studies.  The address is 66 W. 12th Street between Fifth Avenue and 6th Ave. on the south side of the street.  Convenient subway stops are the 1,2,3 train to 14th St. and 7th Ave.; F,M train at 14th St. and 6th Ave.; and the L,N,Q,R,4,5,6 train at 14th St. and Broadway.

The party will be held at a The Wooly, 11 Barclay St. bet Broadway and Church inside the Woolworth Building from 8pm – midnight on Friday.  Tickets are required for entry and will be distributed at the conference earlier in the day.  Subway is 2/3 (Park Place), A/C (Chambers), E (World Trade Center) or R (City Hall).

There are hotels near the conference venue; there are hotels near the party venue; but more importantly, it’s pretty easy to get from anywhere in Manhattan to anywhere else in Manhattan in fairly short order.  You don’t want a car in the city this weekend, so if you drive here, we recommend parking at a commuter rail station and taking the train the rest of the way in.  Your lodging can be anywhere on a good subway line.  If you need help planning your trip, please contact me at isabel at draves dot org.

This is a terrific weekend to visit New York City. The Halloween Parade (celebrating its 40th Anniversary) starts near the conference venue at 7pm on Thursday 10/31 and continues throughout the evening.  Bars will be crowded and streets and subways will be packed with ghoulish and racy characters.  Bring a costume to join in, and don’t plan to travel anywhere quickly.  Enjoy the special atmosphere!  The parade was cancelled last year due to Hurricane Sandy, which had a big impact on New York City, and the heroes and firefighters of Sandy will be flamboyantly celebrated.

The New York City Marathon was also cancelled last year due to Hurricane Sandy, disappointing thousands of people who traveled worldwide to compete and cheer.  This year it is to be run on Sunday, Nov. 3rd.  If you’ve never watched the world’s largest marathon before, it’s a surprisingly thrilling and emotional rush to cheer people on.  Crowds of people will run by you, each trying their hardest to run the 26.2 miles at their personal best.  Many have funny costumes, run in a costumed group, or wear t-shirts saying “go Anne go” so you can cheer people on by name and see them beaming with joy.  We recommend doing some search engine sleuthing to see where the best places to watch the marathon are.

If you’re leaving Sunday morning, expect delays and be sure to leave enough time to get to the airport.  Travel underground if possible as some streets will be closed off due to the marathon.

We recommend you come with a friend on Wednesday night, October 30th. Spend Thursday at our open studios learning about our artists, or make meetings in the city.  Spend Friday with us at the conference; on Satruday, take our workshop on 3D interactive design and learn Blender, Max and Jitter.  Or check out “Soundings: A Contemporary Score” at MoMA featuringTristan Perich, a LISA2012 speaker.  You can catch “TJ Wilcox: In the Air” at the Whitney, “Participatory City: 100 Urban Trends from the BMW Guggenheim Lab Exhibit” at the Guggenheim, “Chris Burden: Extreme Measures” at the New Museum, or “Balthus: Cats and Girls—Paintings and Provocations” at the Met. You could head to the museum of the moving image or the Brooklyn Museum. On Sunday morning, watch the marathon.  Meet some new friends for a late lunch and then head to the airport or train station.  Or, Sunday 11/3 at 3pm, feel free to meet Isabel informally at the Cloisters to experience Janet Cardiff’s 40 part motet all the way up at the northern tip of Manhattan (A train to 190th, then one stop on M4 bus).

We can’t wait to see you!