NEWS

Making Good: A Book About How to Find Meaning, Money and Community

Making Good: A Book About How to Find Meaning, Money and Community

Posted on by Kbaumlier

As we slowly emerge from the recession, a young generation is searching for practical answers about how to succeed  while also making positive change in the world.  Making Good is a new book that explores how thousands of young people can  find practical ways to succeed financially while making positive change in the world.   The book explores areas such as food, energy, and education and outlines how to find opportunities to earn money and create change

The book outlines each step that is needed in order to achieve financial autonomy and find opportunities, while sharing success stories and sharing skills and advice.

The book is co-authored by Billy Parish and Dev Aulia, two successful change-makers.  Billy Parish,co-founded the Energy Action Coalition, the largest youth advocacy organization in the world working on climate change issues, is co-founder and President of Solar Mosaic, a solar energy marketplace and serves on numerous non-profit and clean-tech boards.  Dev Auila is the Founder of DreamNow, a charitable organization that works with young people to develop, fund and implement social change projects

The book is just part of the Making Good project.  Parish and Aulia have a goal to “help hundreds of thousands of people build careers that make money and change the world. The book, our partnerships and the series of missions are our first step to achieving this goal.”

To support this goal, there are missions and experiments to support new projects and to inspire others to think and live for the future.  On the book’s website, there is a signup area to sign up for a series of missions where individuals can meet others, build skills, and find opportunities to help get a job that makes money and changes the world.

There also is a series of Experiments –which are projects that are being supported that explore new ideas and resources to creative positive change.  Some of the experiments include Gameful, an initiative to support games for change, Doors Wide Open, a new kind of career fair, and Climate Spark Incubator, a program to match environmental ventures.

Wondering how you can live ethical in a economy that seems corrupt?  Want to create a positive shift and make money?  Pick up a copy of the book, and check the website for the Making Good blog, and to sign up for the missions that will soon be posted on the site.

Image Source:
makinggood.org/

Links:

makinggood.org/

Kbaumlier – “DIWO” Talk this Friday at CIA LOF Event

Kbaumlier – “DIWO” Talk this Friday at CIA LOF Event

Posted on by Kbaumlier

This Friday March 9th at  12:15pm I will be talking about my current projects and the idea of  “DIWO”—“Do-It-With-Others” at the Lunch On Friday event in Ohio Bell Auditorium at the Cleveland Institute of Art Gund Building.

I will be kicking the talk off with a theme song -so make sure you are on time to hear it and also to grab some of the free pizza.  I also am bringing out my  live feed kerosene camera, and inviting the audience to participate in some Powerformance live interactions.

As always, free pizza and soda (or pop if you are from Ohio) and BIG ideas.

Image Source:
http://www.cia.edu

Links:

http://www.cia.edu

https://kristenbaumlier.com

Partnered: We Are All Pests, A Responsive Sound Installation with Termites

Partnered: We Are All Pests, A Responsive Sound Installation with Termites

Posted on by Kbaumlier

Artist Brittany Ransom writes,” You are a pest, one of the most expansive, destructive, and wasteful of creatures. Together with your own kind you will run yourselves extinct. Eventually you will run out of clean air, water, space and resources to survive.”

Her piece Partnered: We Are All Pests, explores this idea through a sonic floor installation that is a 9 foot by 9 foot pine floor that houses three termite enclosures. Each of the enclosures is filled with sculpted paper forms that are primarily made from human paper waste products (newspapers, paper cups, plates, phonebooks, copies of the artists electrical and gas bills, etc.) that are structurally similar to termite colony construction.

The termites are housed in these enclosures and naturally eat away at the paper forms. As termites consume paper, they digest them and naturally release hydrogen gas, a process which takes human wastes and transforming and recycling them into usable materials.   This process of the release of this hydrogen gas and its production through the bacteria in the termite’s body is currently being investigated as a potential source of energy by the U.S. Department of Energy.

The viewer is invited to stand, sit, or lay on the custom sonic floor.  By standing on or engaging with the piece, the sound of the termites decomposing the paper waste forms is amplified and heard acoustically by the viewers in real time. The floor becomes a sonic plane.

The piece explores levels of decay, human waste, and explores how humans can collaborate with other species to create renewable energy.   The piece recently got Honorable Mention in the Creative Divergence showcase, an online showcase of experimental creative works.  You  can read more about Ransom’s work on her website, and also see a video on Vimeo where you can hear the termites, and see individuals interacting with the work.

Image Source:
brittanyransom.com

Links:

Partnered: We Are All Pests – Video Documentation

brittanyransom.com

 

Materiality: People as Material – Ben Kinsley and Sarah Paul

Materiality: People as Material – Ben Kinsley and Sarah Paul

Posted on by Kbaumlier

Today I was able to stop by and see an our of the Ben Kinsley + Sarah Paul : Acting Out event at MOCA Cleveland, where Ben and Sarah were part of a dialogue about using people as material in art.

I was a few minutes late to the talk, and I missed an opening performance by Ben and Sarah – which from what I heard later, sounded like a live music experience. When I got there the audience was  being asked to give words for how the performance made them feel.  The words intimate, in love, vulnerable, and connected were given.  (This made me really wonder what I missed!)

The talk is part of a series of talks at MOCA Cleveland called “The Materialists” where artists reflect on process and medium, focusing on how artists dedicate their practices to a special material, process, or method.

Ben and Sarah both talked about using people as material. Sarah talked about how with her public Little Miss Cleveland piece, that she goes to the Indian baseball games as a self-crowned celebrity and interacts with people at the stadium.  These interactions blue art and life, since once the vendors at the stadium began to recognize her – the fans got interested and see her as a local celebrity.

Ben talked about the difference of being a director and an actor, and that he is really a participant in his pieces helping to make it happen.  His work is not about performing, but about setting up situations.  In his past work, Street with a View, which was captured and lives on in Google Map, he had the role of organizing the event, and the day of the event he was a modern day Paul Revere on a bike – going around alerting everyone that the Google car was coming.

Currently Ben is part of the 8501 to 11300 (On Moving) Show.  For his performance in the show, an actor performs at both MOCA’s current and future sites each Sunday for an hour with a sandwich board and a megaphone, with either the message The End is Nigh or A New Beginning is Imminent: on them.  One of the actors was at the talk, and he shared some lively stories about his experiences about interacting with the audience on the street, which varies from surprise, to a police officer telling him to leave, to cars honking at him, to a religious group giving him pamphlets.

The idea of mythology was discussed at the talk, and Sarah talked about how how myths are meant to explain mysterious things and how her work is a mysterious fragmented narrative that might live on as oral history, if people see her or interact with her as Little Miss Cleveland.  Ben similarly talked about the power of stories, and how with the challenge of documenting his work – it often lives on as stories that are passed on.

I had to leave after an hour of the talk – so I missed the end of the talk before the Q and A – but it was interesting dialogue about live performative art and the potential and challenges of working with others (or people) as material.

 

Image Source:

8501 to 11400 (On Moving) Show at MOCA Cleveland and Little Miss Cleveland Website

 

Links:

8501 to 11400 (On Moving) Show at MOCA Cleveland

Ben Kinsley’s website

Little Miss Cleveland Website