Category: Uncategorized

Will you skip meat on Mondays? – Meatless Mondays

Will you skip meat on Mondays? – Meatless Mondays

Posted on by Kbaumlier

During both world wars, Presidents Wilson, Truman and Roosevelt motivated citizens in the United States to support the war effort with voluntary meatless days. The Monday Campaigns, in association with the Johns Hopkins’ Bloomberg School of Public Health, has developed Meatless Monday as a way to bring back skipping meat as a way to mobilize an effort to improve health and improve the environment.

The Meatless Monday campaigns is spreading to schools, campuses, restaurants, and various communities in an effort to improve health, reduce our carbon footprint and contribute to reducing climate change.  Skipping meat for one day a week sounds small, but this one change can reduce your risk of chronic preventable conditions like cancer, cardiovascular disease, diabetes and obesity and reduce your carbon footprint.

I recently checked out the The Monday Campaigns website, where you can get information and recipes to go meatless – either at home, school, or in the workplace.  The goal of the campaign is to get individuals to reduce their meat consumption by 15% in order to improve your personal health and the health of the planet.

Why Monday?  The project’s site answers this question with, “For most Americans the week begins on Monday. On Monday we move from the freedom of the weekend back to the structure of work or school. We set our intentions for the next six days. We plan ahead and evaluate progress.  From an early age we internalize this rhythm. And studies suggest we are more likely to maintain behaviors begun on Monday throughout the week. That makes Monday the perfect day to make a change for your health and the health of our planet.”

The Monday Campaigns catch phrase is “The day all health breaks loose.”  To go meatless, you can download tool kits, pledge sheets, recipes, and resources.  Some of the campaigns are geared to various groups, with Monday health runs, “me time” Monday for caregivers, and “Kids Cook Mondays”

So far the project reports that over 100 Universities, 20 K-12 school districts and many public and private institutions offer Meatless Monday to their students. Michael Pollan, Oprah Winfrey, and Paul McCartney have supported the campaign, and the campaign is going on in over 23 countries.  Why not ditch the meat on Mondays?

Image Source:
www.mondaycampaigns.org/

Links:

www.meatlessmonday.com/

www.mondaycampaigns.org/

The Tactile Dome: A Navigation Experience With Touch

The Tactile Dome: A Navigation Experience With Touch

Posted on by Kbaumlier

The Exploratorim, located in San Francicsco, CA is a hands-on museum of science, art, and human perception.  Today most cities have a science museum where you can interact and touch things, but the Exploratorium is unique because they have artists and scientists working side by side to create the exhibits.  Play and fun are part of the mission, making it a dynamic and changing place since it opened in 1969.

The museum recently moved to a new space, three times larger than their last one, so some new and refurbished older exhibits have been introduced.  One exhibit that on display again is the Tactile Dome, which is an interactive journey through total darkness where you can navigate the space using only your sense of touch and perception.

The Dome was created in 1971, and is a geodesic dome where visitors can enter into a totally dark path full of chambers.  To navigate, visitors bump, slide and crawl through and past hundreds of materials and shapes.  Only a few people are allowed in the exhibit at a time, and it has not been on display for a number of years.

The original press release, written in 1971 describes the exhibit experience:

“The purpose is to disorient the sensory world so that the only sense the visitor can rely on is touch. The sensation is so outside ordinary experience that a few people panic. An attendant in a control panel can reach every part of the ant-hill like maze almost instantly.  Pre-opening visitors have compared the experience to being born again, turning yourself inside out head first, being swallowed by a whale, and inevitably, being enfolded in a giant womb.

Seemingly the tactile equivalent of a light show, the tour is actually a carefully planned and structured succession of shapes, temperatures and textures which require the full range of the touch sense to perceive.”

The Tactile dome was the first commissioned artist-in residence projects, and was created by Dr. August F. Coppola and Carl Day.  The exhibit was designed by Coppola, (Yes, related to the Coppolas who work in film) who became interested in perceptual prejudice while directing interdisciplinary studies as head of California State College’s Honors Program. He believed that philosophy, physics and even psychology have always relied overwhelmingly on visual evidence to interpret the world.

He created the Tactile dome as a way to make others aware of what a complex and under used our sense of touch is. Coppola believed that people are actually prejudiced against the touch sense. “It’s development gets off to a bad start,” he was quoted in the original press release, “for as soon as we’ve stopped chewing our toes, the first commandment in life is given: “Don’t touch”.

You can read more on the Exploraorium’s website, or read an account of visiting the tactile dome last time it was on exhibit.


Image Source:
www.exploratorium.edu/visit/west-gallery/tactile-dome
itotd.com – Article Describing a First Hand Experinece In the Tactile Dome
Links:

www.exploratorium.edu/visit/west-gallery/tactile-dome

itotd.com – Article Describing a First Hand Experinece In the Tactile Dome

 

 

Zeega: A New Web Storytelling Tool

Zeega: A New Web Storytelling Tool

Posted on by Kbaumlier

Every few months, I get an email about a new online storytelling tool.  I have tried some, but few of them seem to provide an experience that is visually interesting.  I’m not exactly sure how I ended up on the Zeega website, but I was immediately drawn in to click on and watch a piece called KOSMO KAT – Silk Water.  This Zeega piece was a combination of music and animations that featured a 3d wireframe cat, sushi, and electronic music that sounded like the band Kraftwork.

So what is Zeega?  It  is a free online website where you can make an account, and use music, gif animations, and movie clips in order to create cinematic experiences comprised of looped clips.   The project promotes itself as, “Make the web you want.”  I recently navigated to the site, and when watching “The Most Insulting and Offensive Pizza in the World,” I was able to click on strange shaped pizza images, and read text about pizza while a rap song about pizza played.  The experience is kind of like an interactive youtube – but the high-quality image, and loops of the videos somehow make it into a new experience.

To make pieces, any media can be used in any cloud or online space, and the entire screen is a canvas to create in.  When navigating Zeega, and playing the featured pieces we are instructed to “Turn up the volume, and use arrows and hotspots to explore.” Currently the website features virtual exhibition the creators’ of the website favorite pieces, which were chosen from 1,000 contributions from 60 countries and 6 continents.   I must not be the only person who has gotten drawn in to playing Zeega pieces, the project was recently featured at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

Some of the pieces featured on the front of the site include The Making of .. Journeys, Ghosts and Thunder, Traveling Man, The Making Of. The City, and Ode au bungalow.   Zeega originates from one of the startups in Matter, a San Francisco-based accelerator for mission-driven companies committed to changing media for good.  The site is made to be used by anyone, and when you goto the website, make sure you have at least a few minutes free, it’s easy to spend time there checking out the pieces.

Image Source:
zeega.com/

Links:

zeega.com/

Butt x Better – Upcycling and “Trashion” in Berlin

Butt x Better – Upcycling and “Trashion” in Berlin

Posted on by Kbaumlier

Ever see someone wearing a cardboard box, a paper outfit, or an acrobat on tightrope wearing a outfit made of upcycled materials?   The fifth Butt x Better will be held on July 7th in Berlin, which is an event for alternative designers, artists, and activists to use creativity and upcycling to bring attention to  some of the negative practices in the fashion world and provide a critique of consumer culture.

The event has a number of events that culminate in a large show that will be in the center of Berlin, at the Friedrichstrasse, which is a major shopping street.  Anyone is invited to participate, and the organizers write, “We want to call on EVERYBODY, to get involved! Friedrichstrasse is open for us, let’s start a parade which will blow off people’s clothes! Fight Fashion-Terror, Present Alternatives -that’s the motto!”

There are tents with upcycled materials, and participants also are invited to exchange clothes with others.  At the event there will be a parade, performances, art installations, music, and a fashion show on a large catwalk structure.  Speechs at the event will talk about issues, facts, and also communicate a call for change in the fashion industry.

The event is open, but the organizers promote several values that include:

– We promote ideas, attitudes and actions directed towards a more sustainable society. That means: We are not a promotion platform for products.
– We especially support unconventional forms of activism. Political correctness may be bent.
– We strongly encourage to irritate rather than affirm stereotypical images (e.g. about gender, ethnicity, bodies, etc.)
– We are against aggressive behavior and violent actions.

I watched a couple of videos of last year’s events that show people wearing amazing wing structures made of paper, stilt walkers wearing a cape made of post-it notes, and a woman wearing a bra that looks like it is made of fried eggs.  I can’t make the event this year, but I am keeping the website in my things to participate in the future folder on my computer – for the future.   Check out the videos, which are pretty interesting to watch (and funny.)

Image Source:
Fashion Circus “But and Better”: beatings on the catwalk Online Article (Translated to English

 

Links:

Fashion Circus “But and Better”: beatings on the catwalk Online Article (Translated to English

Video about the event

Video from the Butt x Better Event 2003

 

 

Street Furniture – Pop Up Public Seating

Street Furniture – Pop Up Public Seating

Posted on by Kbaumlier

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.