Kbaumlier

Author: Kbaumlier

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

Mapping Main Street: A Collaborative Documentary Project

Posted on April 4, 2012April 4, 2012 by Kbaumlier

Hey, did I see you on Main Street the other day? Maybe. Maybe not.

There are more than 10,466 streets named Main in the United States. The collaborative project Mapping Main Street has a goal to get photo, video, and stories to document all the Main Streets that exist. The idea is to collect this in order to tell real stories about Main Street – whether it is an abandoned street, a main thoroughfare, where we work, or where we live.

The project started in 2009 and is still going strong. To start the project some of the team behind the project went on a 12,000 mile road trip to visit Main Streets. Some bands were commissioned to write songs for the project.

Recent posts on the site include some videos made on Main Street in Louisville by 29 student journalists, and on the Flickr photo site there are photos from Main streets in North Carolina and Vermont.

The project is produced supported by Maker’s Quest 2.0, an initiative between the Association of Independents in Radio and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University.

Been to main street? Head on back and contribute a story, photo, or video of the project. To date there are 881 Main streets documented – and over 9,000 to go.

Image Source:
www.mappingmainstreet.org/

Links:

www.mappingmainstreet.org/

The Bay vs. The Bag

Posted on April 3, 2012April 3, 2012 by Kbaumlier

With no snow and lots of wind, at this time of the year it is common to see plastic bags stuck in trees, bushes, and blowing down the road. Some cities like San Francisco have been working to ban plastic bag use. San Francisco has prohibited the use of plastic bags at large supermarkets and chain pharmacies since 2007 and a new law has now expanded this ban on plastic bags to all retailers citywide. Instead of the plastic bag, the stores may distribute BPI certified compostable bags, paper bags made with a minimum 40% post consumer recycled content, or reusable bags.

A video was made by Free Range Studios that used stop motion animation to show how bags can affect natural areas like the San Francisco Bay. The short piece shows a woman who gets overwhelmed by a tidal wave of bags. The video got attention of ABC news and Youtube, who featured it on the front page. The video later was credited as having a huge impact on the bag ban in the Bay area.

Crabs, birds, and an ocean are made of plastic bags in the piece which ends with a call to action of “Stand up to plastic bag pollution.” The video is viewable on Vimeo, and also on Free Range’s website.

Image Source:
Bay vs. The Bag – Video on Vimeo

Links:

Bay vs. The Bag – Video on Vimeo

www.savesfbay.org

The Chicago Seed Archive

Posted on April 2, 2012April 2, 2012 by Kbaumlier

Nance Klehm does work in the area of land politics and land fertility. She is an ecological systems designer, landscaper, horticultural consultant, and permacultural grower, speaker, and teacher

One of her ongoing projects is the public seed archive based in Chicago, which started in 1993. The seed archive allows anyone to borrow seeds to grow plants, as long as you send back double what you receive. The seed archive library includes many medicinal, herbal, and food varieties.

The seeds are carefully stored, and Klehm’s interest especially in seed that is for food or medicinals, habitat creating as well as soil building. The archive only accepts, stores and loans viable, well-identified seeds. Some of the seeds come from older heirloom varieties that have been grown and handed down for centuries. Over the years her personal collection has grown into a cataloged library of over 350 varieties of seeds, with a focus on foods of the Americas with many corn, beans, squash seeds.

There is a searchable database that you can review, and anyone can ask for seeds as long as you give back twice as much. Occasionally there is a ‘swap n’ store’ event, which is a event where individuals come together to share stories, process seed, ask questions, share stories and food, swap seeds and donate seeds to the archive. The ‘swap n’ share’ happens 4 times a year.

Interested in getting involved in the seed archive? You can send an e-mail to nettlesting@yahoo.com to get more information. Klehm’s workshops are listed on her site which is located at spontaneousvegetation.net

Image Source:
www.otherworldsarepossible.org

Links:

http://spontaneousvegetation.net – Nancy Klehm’s website

Article about the Seed Archive – www.otherworldsarepossible.org

Hand + Heart is a Finalist in the Where Do You Give? Design Contest

Posted on April 1, 2012April 2, 2012 by Kbaumlier

Last month I submitted an entry to the Where Do You Give? Design contest that explored how the Jewish tradition of giving to others (called Tzedakah) could be done in a creative and contemporary way.

My entry called Hand + Heart is a game and website concept, where people play games and earn points that turn into money to give to a charity of your choice. The design was a semi-finalist in the Web / Interactive category. For the past two weeks, individuals could vote for their favorite design, and the winner of the crowd voting would become one of the three finalists in their category of the contest.

I just learned today that my design called Hand + Heart won and is now a finalist in the contest. Judges will select 2 more entries to be finalists, then one of the 3 will be the Grand Prize winner, winning some money and a chance to travel with the American Jewish World Service this summer.

The winners will be announced by April 20th. Check out my design on the site by going to the Submission Gallery in the Web Interactive category, and look for the blue design called Hand + Heart by kbaumlier-faber.

Image Source:
wheredoyougive.org

Links:

wheredoyougive.org

Submission Gallery – Where Do You Give? contest

Social Media – More Pinning and Gaming

Posted on March 31, 2012April 2, 2012 by Kbaumlier

I recently heard that a few days ago President Obama joined Pinterest, the latest cool social networking platform. Pinterest which calls itself “an online pinboard where you can organize and share things you love” With pinterest, you can put up photos, videos, text on a bulliton board type of space. Since the site started in September 2009, the site has seen close to 900 percent increase in unique visitors. The Huffington post reported that there were 17.8 million unique monthly views in February, up from 11.7 million one month earlier. What makes it so popular? It’s exclusive and you can’t just join. You have to be invited, and there is a waiting list. It is a clean design and is a break from the networking part of facebook and twitter. You get to escape into your bulliton board – and put up. It is easy to get to see interesting content. Want to see a page of animals hugging? Or antique doorknobs? There are pages for that.

Another growing trend in social media is the increase in games in social media. A visiting game designer who came to school last month told us that gaming is moving towards more games being made for social media platforms rather than for console. Right now, the hot games are delivered on the canvas in Facebook. Facebook has become a major part of the gaming industry. 60 million people use games every month through Facebook. Facebook paid $1.4 billion to developers in 2011.

Where is social media going next? Hard to say. I recently have found it difficult to balance my teaching, art projects, and keeping up with my social media. I have consistently been up 5 posts a week, but dipped down to only 4 posts last week. I put out about 10 tweets a week, and use bitly to help shorten and track my links. I have resisted signing up with Google+, but the new commercials that show groups of people videochatting with friends made me want to join. I got an invitation to join Pinterest 4 months ago, but never signed up.

Today I checked out Flowtown, a social marketing blog that already helped me find a new service to help me with getting more attention in Twitter. I joined Timely, a free service that is supposed to help me get more retweets and replies. I also confirmed my account for Pinterest and will be making my first board related to a current project I am working on. What is the future of social media ? For me it seems like I will be joining more networks and expanding my social media.

Image Source:
wheredoyougive.org/blog/

Links:

Flowtown – a Social Marketing Blog

It’s All Games Now (Cnvergence of Games and Social Media) talk by Raph Koster of Playdom at GDC