Technophobiac Lifestyle

Koralie

Opening this Saturday are two exhibitions of new work, Apre?s la Pluie (After the Rain) by Koralie, and Compounded by Robert Hardgrave at Joshua Liner Gallery in NYC.  An exciting fact, these solo shows are both the New York debuts of the artists.  The exhibition runs through June 14th.

I always have a great time at GOOD Magazine events. Here is some green goodness they are putting on in June.

Choose GOOD Farmers Fair
Date: Sat 07 Jun 2008
Time: 05:00PM
Location: Solar One [map], 23rd Street & the East River (2420 FDR Drive, New York, NY 10010) 6 train to 23rd, L train to 1st Ave
RSVP Details: This is a 21+ event and for subscribers only, so please subscribe before you RSVP!

Performers: Jacques Renault, These New Puritans, and David Prince “The Daily Swarm”.

Description:

Food. Drinks. Music. Community.

GOOD, Greenmarket, Solar One and JetBlue team up for a day of local farmers market foods and Greenmarket inspired cocktails.

Live bees, mozzarella making, local farmers, bamboo t-shirts, edible seedlings, a photobooth and much more!

WITH SUPPORT FROM:
Stone Barns, The Tasting Room, The Green Table, The Cleaver Co., Purus, Bluecoat Gin, Flor De Cana, French Rabbit, Red Jacket Orchards, Cereplast, Saxelby, Andrew Cote, Jonathan White, Rick’s Picks, Alive Structures, Media That Matters, LES Ecology Center, NY Sun Works, Transportation Alternatives, Verterra, Tom Cat Bakery, Hope Equity, Greenmarket, CENYC, Solar One and JetBlue

RIDE YOUR BIKE!
Bike valet provided by Transportation Alternatives.

BRING YOUR OLD CELL PHONES, PAGERS & PDAS
Recycle with the Lower East Side Ecology Center.

Kleiner Perkins, the monolith of venture capital, released a 1.2B dollar green fund, and yet, what is the likely result? Clean tech companies getting big, fat, juicy checks. Mind you, one of these clean tech ideas will revolutionize the way energy is produced and therefore help to transform our society, but isn’t there more to “green” than energy generation and storage? The question on my mind is whether VCs are genuinely good for the sustainability movement, outside of the clean tech arena. The answer: probably not. If you’re a clean tech company, possibly. If you have a truly altruistic company that shouldn’t have a 3 year horizon on an investment, emphatic no.

So, given that, where do you go for money if you’re a green company looking for success without VCs? The answer: nowhere. Angels likely won’t "get" your company and finding one that does is often like the proverbial needle in a haystack; most VCs won’t care and you likely don’t have the dough yourself. The result: get a job and leave the green stuff to the big boys.

But, wait, the big boys aren’t getting it done either. When was the last time you were genuinely affected by a newly funded, market-penetrating green company (especially an online play)? Do we simply give up on the sustainability movement like Adam Werbach poignantly alluded to in his seminal “Is Environmentalism Dead?”

For the faint of heart, yes; the forces are against you and the money is tough to find. For those of us not ready to shrug the atlas, seriously, get a job. The founders and visionaries behind green companies are probably best equipped to take the company to success and therefore further the environmental movement by having their own separate source of income. Easier said than done I know, but there are plenty of ways to bring home just enough income to survive and grow your company, dare I say, organically. Do consulting on the side, take a 20 hour a week day job, sell stuff on eBay, do anything…just don’t sell to some nefarious investor who only wants to make a buck off environmentalism. And most likely, they won’t invest anyway and you’ve just wasted your time.

This goes to my next point: why are so many amazing green companies struggling financially? I hear about these big dogs barking about all the money they want to invest in green yet I’m not finding many companies that are in fact funded. It seems like the carrot is too big for anyone to chew. This article in India illustrates that there is supposedly a buffet out there but no hungry patrons.

Why is it that so many amazing green companies are on the brink of financial collapse? What I’ve found is that the green behind green is only interested in already existing revenue streams or some fancy clean tech idea that will “change energy as we know it.” I find it to be a total oxymoron that these guys are claiming they’re raising these funds for “green” yet are obviously in it for the ROI (oh….that “green”). While green companies can and should be profitable, if money is the goal, you’re likely not authentically fostering the movement, but opportunistically taking advantage of it.

This is a call to the VC and investor world in general: really put your money where your mouth is and invest in more than just the obvious, ROI-oriented companies or clean tech. In anywhere from 15-50 years, society as we know it won’t be here to care about the zeros in your bank account if we don’t change course quickly. What we have right now is the split second opportunity to divert the car before hitting the tree. Yet all I really see, for the most part, is greedy investors licking their chops for the next big win. We’re all in the car, people, and your money is not an airbag. Step up to the plate and fund the amazing green companies that need to grow quickly and thoroughly, not so you profit, but so this human species has one final shot at survival.

If you’d like to get in touch with many companies that fit this profile, send me an email.

scott - at - creative citizen

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happy friday morning everyone! are you in the mood for a little camp and schlock? the sequel to the gingerdead man has arrived - below is the trailer for gingerdead man 2: passion of the crust which someone sent my way a couple of weeks ago and thought it looked quite fun - who can pass up a movie about a possessed killer gingerbread man?!? (cookies made in the shape of men have always been a little creepy) you'll notice kvon moezzi who you might remember from amish in the city plus my buddy jon southwell is in the film (pictured below w/ his eyeball hanging out) unfortunately this time around you'll have to do without gary busey voicing 'gingerdead man' - he was too busy being crazy! there was a recent private screening of the 'sacrilicious' film for the cast and crew which i heard went really well (apparently it kicks the first film's ass) soon the flick (via full moon direct) will be available by 'video on demand' as well as DVD on june 5th! i also have two quicktime clips which you can check out here & here (the second one is semi-NSFW) popbytes over & out for now...xxoo

Heli-rafting. How damn awesome does that sound? Makes you want to just stand up and yell out a guttural roar of “I heli-raft therefore I am man.” Read the OARS itinerary overview and you might know what your next big splurge (figuratively and literally) will be.

The Klinaklini is a fresh-water thoroughfare that snakes its way through dense moose, eagle and grizzly habitat. Successfully descended for the first time in 1997 by O.A.R.S.’ Brian McCutcheon, the Klinaklini is many different experiences wrapped into one. First, a dramatic flight over the Coast Ranges to Nimpo Lake and an enchanted evening in gorgeous lakeside cabins. Next, it’s off to the river by seaplane for your adventure indoctrination. After challenging the steep gradient of the upper Klinaklini you’ll be rewarded with an exhilarating day of heli-hiking around an impassible canyon before being transported back in time to the ice age and the scenic splendor of Silverthrone Glacier. The trip ends with sweeping views of a grizzly bear sanctuary and return flight down a 60-mile fjord to the Pacific. This wilderness expedition fits into a week, but your memories will last you a lifetime.

Full itinerary after the jump.

Cost: $6495 @ OARS

• Our Klinaklini heli-rafting adventure begins in Vancouver with an incredible flight north over mountains and glaciers
• Check into our rooms and enjoy the afternoon and evening at the lodge, complemented by award winning Pacific Northwest cuisine
• Following breakfast at the lodge, it’s into the float planes for another spectacular flight to Klinaklini Lake where we make our first camp just below Little Drop of Horrors rapid
• We raft a few Class III rapids before lunching at Nobody Move rapid. The largest drop of the trip, the guides scout the river and determine the best line for running this incredible stretch of whitewater
• Float into the wild. Surrounded by Mt. Waddington and Silverthrone, we are dwarfed by the size and scope of this incredible land of legends
• Heli-hike in alpine meadows and view the enormous Klinaklini glacier. Camp at the foot of the glacier where icebergs calve into our secluded lake
• Take a day to hike the lateral moraine and explore the glacial ice caves
• Raft the West Klinaklini River, which features countless massive wave trains. Sight many of the 200 bird species that call the Klinaklini home
• Float into magical Knight Inlet and a tidal lagoon, famous for its sightings of grizzly bears
• Our trip concludes with a floatplane ride back to Vancouver

Brandon Friend sent us over a preview pic of his upcoming MFA Thesis Exhibition at Queens College, which opens tomorrow, May 17th.  His best work to date, IF YOU’RE NOT ONE OF US, YOU’RE ONE OF THEM is a show that focuses on individual acts of speech and physical gestures that indicate ones trust, commitment and uniformity.

Salvatore Ferragamo has a sharp looking translation of the traditional messenger bag with their Toronto Cafe.

The Toronto Cafe is a crossbody messenger bag that is specifically designed to be worn across the body. Its adjustable woven strap is detailed with the Ferragamo logo and the bag is constructed of Italian leather with a top zip closure, front pocket, interior zip pocket, and a great looking brown canvas lining I had a hard time

Cost: $550 @ Nordstrom

Alternative: Banana Republic Tumbled Leather Messenger Bag | $198 @ BR

Apart from Joshua Davis' talk, the other main highlight of OFFF, the software and visual communication conference which took place last week in Lisbon, was the panel on Data Visualization curated and moderated by the European evangelist of the discipline: Jose-Luis de Vicente.

Lounge at the LX factory where OFFF took place this year

As the abstract of the panel reminds: data visualization is a transversal discipline which harnesses the immense power of visual communication to explain, in an understandable manner, the relationships of meaning, causes and dependency found among great abstract masses of information generated by scientific and social processes.

Aaron Koblin, Manuel Lima, JL de Vicente and Santiago Ortiz (image JL de Vicente)

Interaction designer, information architect and design researcher Manuel Lima discussed the story of the website Visual Complexity and the lessons he learnt since he launched it 3 years back. Visual Complexity is not a blog, it is a collection of (so far) over 570 projects of data viz, it is also a space for people to discuss about what is happening in this area.

The project started while Lima was following an MFA program at Parsons School of Design. While working on his thesis project Blogviz: Mapping the dynamics of information diffusion in Blogspace, he had to research extensively the visualization of complex networks, and found out that there was a need for an integrated and extensive resource on this subject.

Lima's presentation was very very fast with a lot of information crammed in a small amount of time. But here's a few elements from it:

South-East Asia detail from Ptolemy's geography. Redrawn in the 15th century

The transmission of information started with the wall paintings, got more sophisticated with the oldest registry of a written language (the Sumerian cuneiforms) and later with Ptolemy's world map. More key landmarks for data viz can be found in Alfred W. Crosby's essay The Measure of Reality: Quantification and Western Society, 1250-1600.

One first important factor for the development of data viz is computer storage.
Our ability to generate data has by far outpaced our ability to make sense of that data. As someone at Razorfish said, everything that can be digitalized will be. When Lima started Visual Complexity, data viz blogs were just a handful. Today there are dozens of them. Kryder's Law draws from Moore's law and declares that magnetic disk areal storage density doubles every 18 months. In 2001, iPod storage capacity was 5 GB, in 2007 it was 160 GB.

A second key factor for the development of data viz is Open Databases. Data has never been so widely available at minimal cost (not to say free).
See Swivel and IBM's Many Eyes.

A third factor is online social networks.
Not as tools for mapping relationship between people but as instruments which help disclosing patterns within the abundance of shared content. Examples: uncovering music affinities like TuneGlue does; discovering how humans categorize information del.icio.us-like; human curiosity.

Over his three years observing dataviz, Lima spotted a number of trends: mapping blogosphere relationships, visualizing del.icio.us tags, terrorism, air routes, gps data, etc.

Next spoke Santiago Ortiz who started by presenting the spectacular website that Bestiario has put online a few days ago. The website gets a third dimension as you can "twist" and manipulate it in order to see its full length. The nicest feature is the navigation: you can browse Bestiario's projects anti-chronologically of course but also according to the number of hours they spent working on the projects, by keywords, combination or exclusion of keywords, etc.

Bestiario's brand new website

Founded 2 years ago, Bestiario is a small Barcelona/Lisbon-based company with a very impressive portfolio. Combining art and science (Ortiz is also a mathematician) they design interactive information spaces which follow their own moto: 'making the complex comprehensible.'

It wasn't the first time that i got to be impressed by Bestiario's work and Ortiz' thoughts on dataviz. One of Bestiario's project was exhibited recently at LABoral as part of the Emergentes exhibition which closed a few days ago. The imaginary biological universe Mitozoos encodes and creates virtual organisms called "mitozoos" which interact among themselves. You can watch their life in a 3D environment that simulates birth, existence of a genetic code, the quest for food, energy dissipation, reproduction and death. Each variable and parameter of the model has a graphical representation.

Mitozoos

One of Bestiario's latest projects was developed together with Irma Vila and JL de Vicente. The Atlas of Electromagnetic Space is an interactive representation of the services that use our electromagnetic radiospectrum, ranging from 10Khz "radio navigation" to 100Ghz "inter-satellite communication". The activities which unfolds throughout the spectrum (e.g. mobile, satellite, wireless internet, broadcasting) are sorted by electromagnetic frequency. What totally won me over was the features showing the artistic interventions that are commenting on and/or taking place in the spectrum.

City Distances illuminates the strength of relations between cities from searches on google. The main idea is to compare the number of pages on internet where the two cities appear one close to the other, with the number of pages they appear isolated. This proportion indicates some kind of intensity of relation between the cities. The "google proximity" is then divided by its geographical distance. The result indicates the strength of the relation in spite of the real distance, a kind of informational distance between cities.

Finally, Aaron Koblin took the stage to present his own work. Crap! this guy is so talented it's scary. Aaron studied Design and Media Art with Casey Reas at UCLA and used processing a lot in his projects which not only represent huge amounts of data, but are also producing data to raise questions about a series of issues.

Narrative made sense for cultures based on tradition and a small amount of information circulating in a culture - it was a way to make sense of this information and to tie it together (for instance, Greek mythology). Database can be thought of as a new cultural form in a society where a subject deals with huge amounts of information, which constantly keep changing, said Lev Manovich whom Aaron quoted to further ask the audience:

A first answer is that visualization help us understand what it means to have dozens of thousands of planes flying above North America every day. Video demonstrating how Flight Patterns does exactly that:

Data from the U.S. Federal aviation administration is used to create animations of flight traffic patterns and density.

The Sheep Market is one of my favourite projects ever. The very Petit Prince work manages to be critical and poetical at the same time. Thousands of workers on Amazon's Mechanical Turk webservice were paid two cents to "draw a sheep facing to the left." Their sheep drawings were collected over a period of 40 days, selected and printed on stamps. You can also head to the project website and spend the evening counting the animals.
Video showing Aaron Koblin explaining The Sheep Market:

Aside from his purely artistic works, Aaron also works for Yahoo and collaborate on research project. For example, he developed the visualizations for the New York Talk Exchange, a project by the Senseable City Lab at MIT.

Based on a principle similar to The Sheep Market, Ten Thousand Cents has thousands of individuals working in isolation from one another painted a tiny part of of a $100 bill without knowledge of the overall task. Workers were paid one cent each via Amazon's Mechanical Turk distributed labor tool. The total labor cost to create the bill, the artwork being created, and the reproductions available for purchase are all $100. The project, which has been developed in collaboration with Takashi Kawashima, explores the circumstances we live in, a new and uncharted combination of digital labor markets, "crowdsourcing," "virtual economies," and digital reproduction.

Video of Ten Thousand Cents:

The panel ended with JL de Vicente reminding the audience of the Visualizar workshops he periodically organized at Medialab Prado in Madrid. A new call for project proposals will be launched later this year.

Related: Coverage of Visualizar workshop.