Hot off the press!  The new Food Font signs for events are ready to go for the 2013 Summer season.

Last year, There were over 13 public Food Font events, usually at farmer markets or community events where we setup a booth, and invite others to make alphabets out of food and to learn about Food Font.

This year, we added the words “free” and “community project” to the signs, to help clarify that the project is free and collaborative.  They also are fully waterproof, which is an improvement over being water resistant , so we will be ready for the rain if it comes.

Bigger, more waterproofed, and better – Food Font booth signs for 2013!
Links:

www.foodfont.com

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Currently in my house, we have a corner of the basement that is dedicated for things that we want to give away, or put out on garbage day, with the hope that someone will take it instead of the items ending up in a landfill.  This works well for the larger things that people can see from the road, but what about smaller things that are being thrown out?

A new garbage bag design had been created, called a Goedzak, which can be used for items that are being thrown away but are usable.  The way the bag works is that you fill up the bag, and anyone can take the items in the bag. This could include an old vase you don’t want, some pants that don’t fit, or other items that might be useful to someone else.

The bags are easy to spot, with their bright yellow color, and also easy to see what is inside, since half of the bag design is clear.  These especially will be useful for individuals living in cities, who do not have driveway or “tree lawn” garbage or dropoff areas like my neighborhood.

The name Goedzak translates in Dutch to “good guy” or “kind soul,” but is a pun on the words “good bag” or “good thing.”  The bags were designed by the design team called Waarmakers, which was the result of doing a design research project that explored designing for altruism, and making something to benefit others.

50,000 of the bags will be used as a test project in the Netherlands, in coordination with a second hand store.  The bags will be used in one city to start, and will be implemented in up to 20 other Dutch cities as the project develops.

Will the bags be useful, and help encourage reusing things instead of throwing things away?  Check out the progress of the project on the project website, or write to the designers at goedzak@waarmakers.nl.

Image Source:
waarmakers.nl/projects/goedzak/

Links:

waarmakers.nl/projects/goedzak/

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Ever quickly wash a fresh vegetable, and then you find that you missed a little bit o dirt?  Due to my quick lettuce washing technique, I have eaten my share of dirt, but on accident.  Today at the French restaurant called Ne Quittez Pas in Tokyo, you can order southern French cuisine made with seafood, vegetables, and soil, which is the newest fresh ingredient.

A six-course dinner, which features dirt as an ingredient is created by owner and chef Toshio Tanabe for the cost of 10,000 yen or US$110.  The dirt is unique, in that it is chemical-free soil that comes from a supplier in Tokyo. In order to prepare the dirt for cooking and eating, the dirt is lightly cooked in order to release the flavor, and is run through a sieve to remove any sand grains.

Some of the dishes of the 6 course dirt experience include an appetizer of soil soup, a  soil-dusted potato ball with a truffle center, and soil sorbet with sweet dirt gratin.

Rocket News 24, a Japanese-language news blog, has an article written by  Jessica Kozuka who tried the dinner and soil experience, which describes in detail the menu and dirt courses.

An excerpt from her account of trying the dirt dishes reads:

“The first course: a potato starch and dirt soup. It arrived in a shot glass looking so dark brown, it was almost black. It definitely looked like it had dirt in it. A slice of black truffle was balanced on top, and the staff instructed us to take a bite of it and then try the soup. So we did… and it was divine! There wasn’t a dirty flavor at all. Instead, this simple soup went down smoothly with just a hint of potato flavor.

The rim of the shot glass was dusted with salt like a margarita, so after the initial saltiness, your mouth filled with the mild flavor of the soup. The dish impressed us more with the chef’s skill than with the potential of the unusual ingredient, though.

Next up: salad with dirt dressing. As simply as I can describe it, this dish featured fresh vegetables like eggplant, tomato and turnips grilled and served with a dressing made from dirt and a fine powder made from ground popcorn. Here too the surprise wasn’t the dirt, but the deliciousness of the vegetables. The tomatoes had the perfect balance of sweetness and acidity, and the eggplant hadn’t taken on any bitterness from the grilling.

I’d come here to try a dirt course, but the food tasted so little of the earthiness I was expecting that I’d kind of forgotten about that ingredient. According to the staff, the dirt used is a special black soil from Kanuma, Tochigi Prefecture. It’s strictly tested for safety and purity to be used in food, but so far I thought I hadn’t been able to notice a “dirt” flavor in the meal.”

Got dirt?

Image Source:
en.rocketnews24.com

Links:

nequittezpas.com

en.rocketnews24.com

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Ever been somewhere and wanted to take a break, but there was no great place to sit?  Designer Oliver Show decided to create a simple way to put seating into public areas, using yellow drainage pipes that are found sound the city of Hamburg.  The pipes are flexible, cheap, and weather resistant.  The design is simple – find a spot and wrap it in the pipe material.

The result is a bright yellow solution to making benches, recliners, and loungers in any urban location.  The pipes can be wrapped around a bridge trussel, bike rack, or safety rail, and quickly create a place for you to sit.  I haven’t read anything about how comfortable the seats are, but in the pictures the seats look pretty good.

Show, who studied architecture, won a HFBK Leinemann Foundation for the Education and the Arts award for his seating idea.The series is called “Street Furniture,” and you can see a video about the construction online, or see more pictures on the Architizer website.

Image source:
Street Furniture – featured on the Architizer website

Links:

Video about the construction online

Street Furniture – featured on the Architizer website.

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Last Friday I attended a launch event by Evan Marcell where he introduced Superbrushes, a set of new Photoshop brushes that he has created for use to paint and create digital images.  Marcell created the brushes by taking pictures of textures around Cleveland, editing them, and preparing them as brush files to be loaded into Adobe Photoshop. The abstract brush forms provide a unique shape, texture, and pattern that make it easy to make great images and graphics.

Most of the time we use the standard brushes that come with Photoshop, but Superbrushes introduces a new exciting set of brushes to try.  One interesting thing about Superbrushes is that the process of how the brushes were created was through the phenomon of the “butterfly effect,” where one action affects another action.  One brush created another brush.  This new brush was used to make another brush, and so on. Marcell says that the project and process of reusing a brush to make a new brush was inspired by breakbeat music, where beats are cutup and reused to make new beats.

The goal of the project is to enable artists to make more work, and to appreciate the brush.  Marcell writes on the Superbrushes website, “.. artists are possibly the greatest appreciators/would-be art collectors if we didn’t feel obligated to put all of our funds right back into our art. SUPERBRUSHES brushes are beautiful compositions in themselves, enabling artists to fuel their art in appreciation of each gorgeous brush as an artwork in itself.”

At the launch event we were given direction to a webpage where we could download a set of  25 free Superbrushes.  We watched a demo of how to install and setup the brushes, which was followed by a live contest – a Superbrushdown, where the audience members who brought laptops, had about 8 minutes to make an image.  After the time was up, the group voted by clapping, and I am proud to say that I won(!), and got a prize of the full pack of 125 superbrushes, which usually sells for $20.00 off of the Superbrushes site..

Marcell is working to build a Superbrush community.  The website is currently featuring pieces made with Superbrushes on the website.  You can download a set of free 5 superbrushes to try, and then submit your image to be featured in the gallery.  Why use ordinary brushes when you can use Superbrushes?

Image Source
http://evanmarcell.wix.com/superbrushes
Links:

http://evanmarcell.wix.com/superbrushes

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350.org, a group that for several years has been working to battle climate change through organizing, events, and petitions has a new campaign for communities and cities to commit to moving away from Fossil Fools.  The latest update from the campaign is that 11 cities have made a commitment to moving away from spending money on fossil fuels, and there are over 100 petitions active in various cities and states.

The cities that are committing to divestment so far range in size, like Bayfield, Wisconsin, which has just 530 residents, to large cities, like the City of San Francisco, where the Board of Supervisors voted unanimously this past week to push the city’s retirement fund to divest $583 million from the fossil fuel industry.

Citizens who are starting the petitions feel that we are all part of institutions, such as city and state governments, religious institutions, charities and non-profits that do work to do public good.  Most of these institutions invest money in stocks and bonds, and have a responsibility to divest from an industry that’s negatively impacting the environment and our future, and reinvest in solutions to climate change.

You can start a petition to show that there is support for fossil fuel divestment, and there are materials to support you in getting started.  To view the campaigns that are already happening in your area and get ideas of how to promote your petition, check out the website.

If you’re not up for starting a petition, the campaign encourages you to talk to your friends, neighbors, and coworkers about the issue, and see if others are interested in stating a campaign.

Image Source:
http://campaigns.gofossilfree.org/

Links:

http://campaigns.gofossilfree.org/

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Gleaning is a practice that has been around since the beginning of agriculture. The first gleaners were poor peasants who picked up crops that had been left in the fields after the harvest.  Today there are modern gleaners who have created a underground restaurant and grocery store called The Gleaners’ Kitchen where everything served is made from foods that came from dumpsters.

To support the project, founder Maximus Thaler and his collaborator go dumpster-diving behind grocery stores near Boston, getting fruit, vegetables, and packaged food which has been discarded for being past their expiration date.

Once cleaned up and prepared, the food is served and given away for free. The goal of the project is to foster community and support discussion about food and waste.  The project’s website reports studies indicate that up to half of the food produced in the U.S. is ultimately thrown away, and that the National Resources Defense Council estimates that around $2300 dollars worth of food is thrown out by grocery stores nightly.  Due to the variability of what is in the dumpsters, the food served in the Gleaners Kitchen is always changing.

At the last restaurant event the meal included:

Pesto Spaghetti
Curried Cauliflower and Peppers
Roasted Potatoes
Quiche with Cream, Onions, Brussels Sprouts, Cauliflower, Tomatoes and Chives
Roasted Chicken
Fruit Salad with Oranges, Clementines, Grapefruit, Apples, Bananas and Pomegranates
Green Salad with Lettuce, Arugula, Cucumbers, Peppers and Tomatoes
Warm Bread
Fresh Squeezed Apple Cider

The Gleaner’s Kitchen is currently operating out of Thaler’s apartment, but he’s hoping to get support s through Kickstarter to open up a dedicated café where everyone can eat for free.

Images:
www.thegleanerskitchen.org/

Links:

www.thegleanerskitchen.org/

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Want to grow 400 heads of lettuce a week?  Freight Farms is a new solution for growing food in any geographic location, all within a 40’x  8’ freight container.  The units are equipped with growing equipment and the latest harvest technology necessary for commercial scale agriculture.   The setup provides efficient, year-round growing and will help reduce transportation costs.

The systems uses soilless agriculture setups, and uses solar energy.  Freight containers are a water-tight, weather-proof structure that is capable of withstanding the most extreme weather conditions. Their size and structure provide a versatile, durable and cost effective way to grow food.  Freight farms use less water than traditional agriculture and eliminate the need for pesticides or herbicides.

The company behind the units call them “A local solution for the next generation of global food supply.”The units are designed to be used by a wide variety of users, including institutional foodservice providers, schools, restaurants, farmers, grocery stores, disaster relief efforts, wholesale produce distributors and developing communities.

You can read more about their different units and even order one today if you want to get growing at freightfarms.com
Image Source:
freightfarms.com

Links:

freightfarms.com

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We’ve all seen flowers and heard of the “he loves me, he loves me not,” method of pulling off flower petals to predict if someone loves you.  Fong Qi Wei, takes the removal of petals to a new level in his series of photographs of deconstructed flowers.

Wei is a conceptual fine art photographer who is based in Singapore, who views role of artist is to be a communicator what he calls an authentic message.  He writes on his site, “I try to engage my audience by providing a new perspective on familiar subjects or themes. Through my art, I hope to introduce my point of view to my viewer and engage them beyond aesthetics. I wish to provoke them to think further about the familiar and ordinary.”

His series called Exploded flowers presents the beauty and design of flowers by taking flowers and presented them in a manner similar to a dissection.  Each piece is separated and presented next to the other parts. The results is images that show the radial symmetry of flowers, and presents the moment of time in which a flower is still alive and in bloom.

He writes about the series, “… what is interesting to me is how much more expanded some flowers can get when they are disassembled – the relative surface area to size of a rose is so much greater compared to a larger flower like the sunflower.”   The series has been featured in publications that include The Boston Globe and My Modern Met, and can be seen on his website fqwimages.com.

Image Source:
http://fqwimages.com/2011/08/exploded-flowers-3/

Links:

http://fqwimages.com/2011/08/exploded-flowers-3/

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Today at work a colleague of mine asked me, “So when is the Food Font tool going to be ready?”  We talked about the process of developing programs and tools, and I gave him an update of the progress.

So what is the progress?  After months of design work, the  interface and design of the tool is done.  Currently I am creating the Event Action Matrix document, a document comprised of images, text descriptions and directions for how the tool works.  To make this, I create images and screen shots of each element (each button state, each menu, what happens on the canvas, etc.) and explain how each element works and functions.  The work is detailed – but it is exciting to be working on this document that helps the programmer do the work to make the tool work.  I am lucky to have a brother who does this kind of work, so he is consulting on this step of the process.

Here are some images that are used in the document to show stages of the tool, and how it works:

Food Font Tool Panel – Use this to select a Food Font  to use.  Select and find Fonts
by the image, name, location/group, tags, or by general text search.

Background Tool Panel – choose a background.  Don’t like it?  Change it again!

The Stamp Tool – Stamp and Draw with a letter!

Post an Image – Dialogue Window

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