Kbaumlier

Author: Kbaumlier

Kristen Baumlier’s work spans the full spectrum of interdisciplinary media, including performance, interactive installation, video and audio works.

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:

www.notacon.org/

Newspaper Wood: Paper Pages Turn into Wood

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

NewspaperWood by Vij5 and Mieke Meijer is a unique example of upcyling materials and flipping the resource to product process. Instead of using wood as a source to make paper, NewspaperWood uses the paper to make wood. The design came out of Meijer’s project at the Design Academy Eindhoven.

For a student design project, Meijer took stacks of newspapers, glued them together, and rolled them into a tight ‘log’ that he left to dry, deform and harden. After they ‘cured, ’ these logs could be used as building blocks that could be cut, carved, routed, and used in place of normal wood.

The NewspaperWood has grains and rings similar to a tree. Each slice has a different cross-section of print with its own visual properties. Years later he collaborated with the Dutch design team Vij5, and he began to roll out real products based on these reconstituted pieces of ‘timber.’ Out of this came a series of practical and experimental that use recycled newspapers in new ways that include lamps, jewelry, and other household objects.

For an exhibit in Milan at Salone, Vij5 invited other designers to create products using the NewspaperWood material and the products can be seen on the vij5.nl website.

Image Source:
www.vij5.nl

Links:

www.vij5.nl

miekemeijer.nl/

Pic Nic Pants – Pants with a Built in Table

Posted on April 15, 2012April 16, 2012 by Kbaumlier

Have you ever wanted to just sit down and eat lunch? A new pair of pants that also acts as a table might be able to help you eat in any location.

The pants were created by an experimental Italian design company called Acquacalda,. The Picnic Pants have a special panel that becomes a flat surface to balance your plate on when you sit down. The panel is made from a special fabric that stretches and becomes taut when you need it – so you can eat off your plate.

On the website, the designers write, “ Fashion imposes forms to whom finding a function seems a must. Pic Nic Pants take advantage of the usual cross-legged position to become a comfortable surface useful for consumption of a meal outdoors. Laterally pants have an orientable pocket for drinks.”

You can read more about where to get the pants on the acquacaldadesign website and then get ready to eat breakfast, lunch, or dinner anywhere you go.

Image Source:
www.acquacaldadesign.it

Links:

www.acquacaldadesign.it/pantalonepicnic_e.htm

No-Idling Laws Lowers Air-Alert Days

Posted on April 14, 2012April 16, 2012 by Kbaumlier

During the summer months, it is not uncommon to see a haze in the sky due to ground-level ozone pollution. This lower ozone pollution is created when emissions from factories, trucks, buses, and construction equipment are exposed to strong sunlight and long hot days. The emissions are linked with increased asthma attacks and shortness of breath which affect children, the elderly and individuals with respiratory illnesses most frequently.

Many cities across the U.S. have enacted No-idling Rules in order to reduce ozone pollution. More than 31 states including Arizona, California, Colorado, and now Ohio have enacted a 5 minute idling regulation. In July of 2012, the EPA released the Cross-State Air Pollution Rule, or transport rule, which will work to reduce smog-causing pollution generated by fossil-fuel-burning power plants. Last year The Diesel Emission Reduction Act was created as a competitive grant program for public and private groups to apply for clean-diesel technology.

At the local level, some cities in Northeast Ohio have taken steps to reduce ozone-forming pollution. They have done this by switching their fleets to cleaner fuels, installing diesel-emission reduction equipment and encouraging public transportation.

In Ohio, cities such as Cleveland, South Euclid, North Olmsted, Highland Hills, Maple Heights and Lakewood have all adopted fuel-conservation ordinances, and a 5-minute idling policy, to help improve air quality. Fuel-conservation ordinances require that vehicles idle no more than five minutes during a 60-minute time period.

In Cleveland, there is a “hazecam” that was installed in 2010 where a new image of the Cleveland skyline is posted on a website every 15 minutes. Is your city on the no-idling list? Check out the list of states and cities that have idling policies in this .pdf file.

If your city is not on the list, you can visit cleanairzone.org for bumper stickers, window decals, and brochures to support running a idle reduction campaign in your community.

Image Source:
www.clevelandhazecam.net

Links:

Make a LEaP. Turn it off Video

cleanairzone.org

www.clevelandhazecam.net

Idling Laws – List of Cities and States .pdf file