April 2012 – Page 2 – Kristen Baumlier

Month: April 2012

A Park Underground, The Delancey Underground Project

Posted on April 24, 2012 by Kbaumlier

Where can you put another park in Manhatten? In a city where space is at a premium the team behind the Delancey Underground project has the goal to convert an underground unused trolley terminal beneath Delancey Street into a public park that has been nicknamed the “LowLine.”

The location of the new park is the Williamsburg Trolley Terminal that opened in 1903 and was in service until 1948 when streetcar service was discontinued. It has been unused for over 60 years and is next to an existing subway track – so that future park visitors and subway riders will interact daily. The project has been inspired by the success of another unusual park called the High Line, which is a public park built on an historic freight rail line and is elevated above the streets on Manhattan’s West Side.

Plans for the park are to transform the 60,000 square feet (1.5 acres) of terminal space into a park space by using new green. Central to the design is the use of solar technology that uses innovative fiber optics to reflect light underground which saves electricity and reduces carbon emissions. It also creates an environment where plants, trees, and grasses can thrive indoors.

Digital rendering of the space shows a unique space where trees, cobblestone floors, and state of the art fiber optics create a unique environment. Currently the project is seeking funding to develop a demo of the solar technology and to create a model of the community park. The team behind the project did a Kickstarter campaign and raised $155,186 by theirgoal date of April 6^th.

Plans for the park are to have community events in the space including art exhibitions, farmers’ markets, lectures, and events. More images of the project can be seen at the Delancey Underground website and also at the Kickstarter project page.

Image Source:
delanceyunderground.org

Links:

Kickstarter Page – lowline-an-underground-park-on-nycs-lower-east-side

delanceyunderground.org

http://www.thehighline.org

Earth Day: Where Are We Now?

Posted on April 22, 2012April 22, 2012 by Kbaumlier

Today is Earth Day – the day that marks what is considered by many to be the birth of the modern environmental movement. In 1970 cars were big, factories pumped out smoke and sludge, and air pollution was visible in many cities. Earth Day founder Gaylord Nelson, who was a U.S. Senator from Wisconsin, witnessed the ravages of the massive 1969 oil spill in Santa Barbara, California. Inspired by the rising student anti-war movement going on at the time, he realized that a similar type of energy could be applied to developing public consciousness about air and water pollution. Nelson told the national media that there was going to be a national teach-in on the environment worked to assemble a national staff of 85 people to promote Earth Day events across the country.

On April 22, 1970, 20 million Americans went outside to the streets, parks, and auditoriums to demonstrate for the health of our natural environment. There were thousands of colleges and universities that organized protests against the deterioration of the environment. Other groups rallied around issues such as oil spills, polluting factories and power plants, raw sewage, toxic dumps, pesticides, freeways, the loss of wilderness areas, and the extinction of wildlife.

Out of the first Earth Day, the United States Environmental Protection was created. The Clean Air, Clean Water, and Endangered Species Acts were created.

Since 1970, there has been some years when there were campaigns for Earth day which included 1910 when Earth Day went global and mobilized 200 million people in 141 countries to rally around the environment. Earth Day 1990 helped promote recycling efforts worldwide. In 2000, Earth day focused on global warming and used the Internet to organize activists, but also featured a talking drum chain that traveled from village to village in Gabon, Africa while hundreds of thousands of people gathered on the National Mall in Washington, DC.

The environmental moved has shifted from protests and conflict to legislation. I am a member of several environmental groups, and I get a few emails each week that ask me to sign a petition or send a message to my senator or representative.

My students seem to have a “take it or leave it” view about the environment. I have some students that say that they “hate recycling” and that global warming is a made up issue. They have grown up with a barrage of messages about being green, recycling, and the environment and for many of them this has made many of them feel apathetic about these issues.

Where are we now? Fracking is coming to Ohio, one of my students made a anti-recyling video, and I got 2 emails to sign petitions in my inbox.

Image Source:

csudigitalhumanities.org (Image of Cleveland in 1970 and 2012)

Art on Fire – Italian Museum Director Burns Art in Protest

Posted on April 21, 2012April 22, 2012 by Kbaumlier

Earlier this year, artist and curator Antonio Manfredi announced he would set fire to the permanent collection of the Casoria Contemporary Art Museum, located outside of Naples, to protest the lack offunding of the arts in Italy.

Earlier this week he went into action. With live webcams running, he set fire to painting by French artist Séverine Bourguignon, who watched the ceremony via Skype. A second painting was scorched by Neapolitan artist Rosaria Matarese last Wednesday, as the artist again watched via webcam.

Manfredi announced that he intends to burn three paintings a week as a form of protest. He hopes that the actions will bring attention to the lack of support for cultural projects and will get the government to give funds to the museum.

His actions are being criticized for setting up a demand that the Italian government will not be able to respond to, since Italy is currently being challenged with issues around the euro and tax hikes, pension hikes, and an increase in the retirement age has been implemented to help remedy the economic situation.

Will all 1000 paintings in the collection be burned or will funding go to the museum? The museum’s blog has a big image that says “CAM Art War,” – and as of today there are plans to burn paintings next week.

Image Source:
rt.com

Link:

Casoria Contemporary Art Museum Website

Enri¢hed : Cereal Art by Tattfoo Tan

Posted on April 18, 2012April 18, 2012 by Kbaumlier

Crispy flakes, popped rice, “It’s grrrreat!” Over one hundred years ago, pieces of grain started to be part of the American diet in the form of cereal. Today cereal is eaten in more than 80 million bowls each day. The prepared breakfast cereal was part of the early vegetarian movement. Quaker oats and cracked wheat were some of the early forms of cereal that was convenient to eat in the late 1800s. In 1877, John Harvey Kellogg accidentally created wheat flakes, and his brother invented corn flakes from a similar method. They founded the Kellogg Company in 1906.

Kix was the first puffed cereal that was put on the market. General Mills and other companies made cereal into a large market with many of the new cereals having more sugar in it. Eventually cereals got mascots, had toy surprises in the box, and became “fortified” with vitamins and were promoted with health benefits.

Tattfoo Tan’s piece Enri¢hed is a project where participants can design their own fortified box of cereal. The artist will be present and will ask audiences to write down their ideas that will be put into a raffle drum. Other visitors will be asked to randomly draw out these pieces of paper and then draw the packaging for their product with colored markers. The space that the project occurs in is a space that will be “raining” with cereal created by a confetti blower. Enri¢hed will be at the Umami Food and Art Festival this Friday in Brooklyn, NY.

With the piece, the artist Tattfoo Tan is referencing to the term “killing the rat” which is from Robert Choate, an advisor to President Nixon in 1970 analyzed sixty well-known cereal brands for nutritional quality. His conclusion was that rats fed a diet of ground up cereal boxes with sugar, milk and raisins were healthier than rats fed the cereal itself.

Image Source:
www.tattfoo.com

Links:

Umami Food & Art Festival

www.tattfoo.com – Artist Website

Notacon Conference: Creativity, Community, and Technology

Posted on April 17, 2012April 16, 2012 by Kbaumlier

This past weekend I attended my first hacker conference. Notacon is a conference-style event that is for people who like to “build, make, break and hack stuff.” I was able to attend a part of the 3-day event showcases technologies, philosophy and creativity, and learned more about the hacker community.

I’m not a hacker, and it was my first time at a hacker conference. I was impressed with the openness and focus on sharing at the event. Speakers gave talks and shared information about technology in every day life, the creative arts, and social interaction.

I attended a Freeview event on Friday, where speakers gave a 5 minute pitch about their upcoming talks. This event provided a great overview and was a way to hear about new ideas which included topics such as music theory and algorithmic composition, video synthesizers and open source hardware, numbers that are so big you can not write them down, and how Occupy Cleveland is similar to doing agile project development.

One talk that sounded interesting was by Peter Fine, who talked about Telecomix, a volunteer group of activists who have been keeping the Internet running in the Middle East in the face of government censorship. His presentation was called “Hacking for Freedom.”

I attended a session about the upcoming role of the narrative and script writing for video games. This took place in a darkened conference room where 6 people were playing the game Artemis, a game in which players work together to play out a preset narrative that someone else wrote.

The pass for Notacon was unique – it was a circuit board and there was a soldering/make area room where you could work to make your circuit board into a working LED message board, and also add a USB and audio port to your badge.

Chris Sanyk gave a GameMaker software demo that I could not attend, but I was able to visit the A Game – Any Game area that he and some collaborators had setup where people were encouraged to develop a game over the weekend.

I met lots of hackers, makers (people who make electronics and make stuff), and individuals who worked in IT and security. I had a great time – and enjoyed what I found to be a unique atmosphere that focused on sharing and cooperation rather than competition, publishing, and ownership.

Image Source:
www.notacon.org/

Links: