NY400 | POP UP STORY
Artwork, Personal, Social, Urban Planning
For the past year I have been collaborating with the Dutch government, cultural commission Streetlab and curating with My Little Underground to showcase what I have always seen since my first time living in Holland- there’s some damn good design, art and creativity there! Please stop by the Pop Up Story to see the work of very talented friends and have a beer.
OPENING HOURS
Thursday September 10 12 till 5:00PM
Friday September 11 12 till 7:00PM
Saturday September 12 12 till 8:00PM
Sunday September 13 10AM till 12PM
Location
Chelsea Market
75 9th Avenue
New York
Saturday Service- Sponsoring Responsibly
Africa, Personal, Research, Social, Thinking
Every Saturday I do something for someone or some living thing. I find that on Saturday mornings, its a great reason to get out of bed and take a walk looking for my ‘mark’. Its not always an intense thing – like, 3 saturdays ago, I fed some birds. The Saturday after that I dropped off a bunch of bread and jam at the Bowery Mission (who doesn’t like toast and jam?). And a few Saturdays before that I started a year long commitment and have sponsored a child through children.org. This sponsoring business however, needs to be completely re-examined in the digital age, and I plan on looking at all the major children’s charities over the next few months and see which one actually brought the most direct benefit to the children.
Websites like Charity Navigator can give you some idea, but I don’t think anything but your own experience and research can really give you the satisfaction of knowing you are not being fleeced and you are indeed HELPING someone.
So far I’ve received a letter from my (adorable) sponsor child in Ecuador (Guillermo) handwritten in spanish telling me he likes to play soccer and he likes to read. But I wonder if getting him a mobile phone might be a better use of money…and why couldn’t I just do that without the charity?
I love the emerging set of ‘do good’ sites that allow you to see the direct impact of your donation such as Jolkona. Websites like these actually serve to create a lasting connection versus a paper trail. I’ll get back to you with a more blown out point of view as I track this subject over the year.
Knitta, Please…
Architecture, Artwork, Design, Innovation, Research, Social, Thinking, Urban Planning
Nothing makes me appreciate analog more than spending way too many hours immersed in digital executions and products. Several years ago when I was learning Java programming, I also developed an insatiable desire to knit, knot, crochet and otherwise do something with my hands and yarn. I used my render times during edits to make scarves and it staved off carpal tunnel. It was the call of the real. It kept me sane. And now, when I see new forms of knitting come up such as the guerilla knitters from Houston called Knitta Please and their many other cohorts creating fabric based grafitti street art and yarn bombing industrial objects, it simply makes me happy that there is no screen, spray cans or pixels to process. Finally a format that really does shock the streets yet knits into our urban fabric. While it does seem a bit in its early stages tea-cozy-esque – I can’t wait to see who takes this format to the next level.
Bing This, Google That
Clients, Design, Innovation, Interactive, Rebranding, Research, Search, Social Media, Technology, Thinking, Video, Work
Different search engines are good for different things, and the belief that google is the be all, end all of search just doesn’t stand true anymore. I worked on the launch of Microsoft’s Bing search engine (before it had an official name) and I was very impressed with it.
It is hands down the best place to search for travel related things – as they have integrated the ‘farecast’ engine into Bing. The nice thing about that are the predictive fares display based on data from the past 3 years. Google is still great for general things, but for the most part when I need to find something specific to the design world, I end up looking into my own network on Delicious – and that’s where the more intricate search items are found faster. Twitter’s hash tagging is really holding it back from being a helpful tool for search, but perhaps there will be a twitter search engine that allows for community based search. I for one, know that there is nothing better than that especially when you’re searching for obscure art, technology and design references. Sometimes, the echo chamber really is the best place to find what you’re looking for.
Bing.com
Graffiti Research in Action
Design, Innovation, Mobile, Research, Technology, Video
Update: These guys are taking home awards left and right and finally got a website together too: http://www.eyewriter.org
Here’s the situation: Tempt One, the legendary writer has been hospitalized for the past two years with ALS (aka Lou Gehrig’s disease). The muscular atrophy has taken away his ability to write graffiti. Enter the Graffiti Research Lab (and good friends) James Powderly, Evan Roth and Theo Watson and Zachary Lieberman. They were asked to come to Venice, California and find a way to use eye-tracking software (something I remember from James’ thesis project back at ITP) and their L.A.S.E.R tag tools to make the impossible possible again. When they decided to join this project they had little idea if it would actually work, but they worked hard and fast. Theo recently did a guest lecture in my class at the HvA in Amsterdam and shared a bit about the project and the creative technology behind it: openFrameworks. 
Day #8: Introductions from Evan Roth on Vimeo. More Documentation Here: http://fffff.at/tag/tempt1/ Project was facilitated by The Ebeling Group.
