“Super Friends” of Science

Remember all of the fun times with your Science Olympiad team? Programming a robot, perhaps, or building a potato gun or a Rube Goldberg device, free from the sickly cast of a grade or proposal deadline? When nerds are allowed to play together, really cool things can happen.

The people at Syyn Labs are doing just that. This Southern California based collective first came together in the fall of 2008 to achieve a common goal posted on the discussion boards for Mindshare L.A.  Damian Kulash, front man of the band OK Go (you remember the treadmill guys, right?), wanted to feature a giant Rube Goldberg machine in their music video for the song “This Too Shall Pass.” Seven enterprising geeks stepped forward to create a music video for “low dough” over the course of six months, and over 23.5 million YouTube views later, Syyn Labs has become a very popular engineering and art production company.

They’re a little like the “Super Friends” of science; they are trained roboticists, video game entrepreneurs, and fire-juggling rock-and-roller/software engineers. That’s not an exaggerated statement. These guys (and one lady) have mad skillz.

But can they pay their billz? Commissioned installations for Coachella, The Colbert Report, Disney and Google’s science fair certainly suggest that they have the buzz to carve out a niche for themselves. With a total revenue of only $350,000 so far, however, they can’t really afford to pay themselves full-time salaries…yet.

Here’s hoping these crazy kids make it! Check out their great projects at their website and their incredible collaboration with Gary Numan after the jump.

Syyn Labs

Syyn Labs’s League of Extraordinary Nerds

Rad Rendition of Gary Numan playing “Cars” using…cars, by Syyn Labs

Stephanie Wortel

Stephanie Wortel is a Program Director in the Education and Public Programs Department at the New York Academy of Sciences.

I am a bit of a Renaissance nerd. With my Bachelor’s from Colgate University and my Master’s from Lehman College, I have been an astrophysics research assistant, a classroom educator in the high schools of the Bronx, a museum educator at the American Museum of Natural History, and a tutor to many of the wonderful students of New York City. I also have twenty years of stage experience. Therefore I am just as likely to be practicing my C++ or performing as a mermaid off-off-Broadway. I am also stricken with powerful wanderlust, though where ever you find me I’m sure to have a song in my heart and a book in my hand.