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divineknowing2021 · 3 years

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viewing guide

At its core, divine knowing is an exhibition about knowledge, power, and agency. It’s become a more common understanding that governments, institutions, and algorithms will manipulate the public with what information they frame as fact, fiction, or worthy of attention. Though I am early in researching this topic, I've only come across a minimal amount of mainstream discourse on how the initial threat limiting our scope of knowledge is a refusal to listen to ourselves.

In a world faced with so many threats - humans being violent toward each other, toward animals, toward the earth - it can be a bit unsettling to release the reins and allow ourselves to bear witness for a moment, as we slowly develop a deeper awareness of surrounding phenomena and happenings.

divine knowing includes works by formally trained and self-taught artists. A majority of the artists are bisexual, non-binary, or transgender. Regardless of degree-status, gender, or sexuality, these artists have tapped into the autonomous well of self-knowing. Their artworks speak to tactics for opening up to a more perceptive mode of being. They unravel dependencies on external sources for knowledge and what we might recognize, connect with, or achieve once we do.

The installation Femme Digitale by Sierra Bagish originates from a series she began in 2017 by converting photographs of women that were taken and distributed online without the subject’s consent into paintings. Her practice at the time was concerned with female abjection. Sourcing images found via simple keywords and phrases (e.g., passed out, passed out drunk) she swathes a mass-circulated canon of internet detritus that articulates and produces aggression towards women. With her paintings, she circumvents the images’ original framing mechanisms and subverts these proliferated images through a sincere and personal lens.

These paintings divulge the blurred space between idolatry and denigration these online photos occupy, asking whose desires these images fulfill and what their propagation reveals about the culture producing them. While Bagish's work contends with political motivations, she also remains keenly observant of form and the varying utilities of different media.

“I use the expressive potential of paint as a vehicle to intervene and challenge ideas about photography as a harbinger of the real and everyday.”

Chariot Birthday Wish is an artist and angel living in Brooklyn. They have seen The Matrix 28 times in 2 years and love horses. The tarot series included in divine knowing is their most intuitive project, something they revisit when unsure of what to work on next. The Major Arcana are composed of digital collages made from sourced images, the Minor Arcana are represented by short, poetic, interpretative texts about the cards. The series is played on shuffle, creating a unique reading for each viewer. This is a work in progress that will eventually finalize as a completed deck of digital collages available for purchase.

Chariot's work emerges from a constant consideration of apocalypse and connection. They reference technology in tandem with nature and a desire for unity. Underneath their work's surface conversation on beauty, care, and relationship exists an agenda to subtly evoke a conspiratorial anti-state mindset. Through a collective imagining of how good things could be and how good we want them to be, we might be able to reckon with how bad things are in contrast.

“I think about texting my friends from the middle of the woods...

Humans are a part of nature and we created these things. There's this Bjork quote where she says that "You can use pro tools and still be pagan." I'm really into the idea of using technology as a tool for divination and holy connection with nature. I imagine a scene; being in moss, it's absolute bliss, and then the connection of texting, sharing an image of moss with a friend, sharing that moment through cellular towers.”

The album "adding up" by thanks for coming is composed of songs Rachel Brown wrote during what they believe to be the most challenging year of their life. Rachel now looks back on this time in appreciation, recognizing they grew in ways they had never imagined. The entire year, they were committed to following their feelings to wherever it may lead.

“If I hadn't been open to following the almost indiscernible signs I was being sent, then I would have missed out on some of the most important moments in my life.”

Kimberly Consroe holds a Masters in Anthropology along with degrees in Archaeology, Literature, and History. She is currently a Research Analyst at the US Department of Commerce. Her artwork is a passionate escape from a hectic professional life and touches on themes of feminism and nature.

Her works begin as general ideas; their narrative complexity growing with the amount of time she invests in making each one. Her decoupage process starts with cutting hundreds, if not thousands, pieces of paper. The accumulation of clippings sourced from vintage and current-day magazines overlap to tell a story. In Domestication, Kimberly borrows submissive female figures from found images of Ryan Mcguinness's work and places them in a position of power.

“I believe intuition is associated with emotion and experience. It is wisdom and fear, empathy and outrage, distrust and familiarity. It is what we know before we know it. This relates to my artwork in that, from beginning to end, there is never one complete idea concerning the outcome: it is a personal journey. It emerges from an ephemeral narrative that coalesces into a definitive story.”

Anabelle DeClement is a photographer who primarily works with film and is interested in relationships as they exist within a frame. She is drawn to the mystery of the mundane. Intuition exists in her practice as a feeling of urgency and the decision to act on it --- a drive often used to describe street photography where the camera catches unexpected moments in an urban environment. Anabelle tends to photograph individuals with whom she has established personal relationships in a slow domestic setting. Her sense of urgency lies in capturing moments of peak intimacy, preserving a memory's informal beauty that otherwise may have been forgotten or overlooked.

Gla5 is a visual artist, poet, bookmaker, production designer, and educator. Play is at the center of their practice. Their process is an experimental one embracing impulse and adventure. Their compositions are informed by relationships among bodies of varying shapes, materials, and densities. Interests that come up in their work include a discernment between symbols and non-symbols, dream states, the portrayal of energy in action, and a fixation on forms such as cups, tables, and spoons.

“I generally think of my work as depicting a layer of life that exists underneath what we see in our everyday lives.”

Gladys Harlow is a sound-based performance artist, comedian, and activist who experiments with found objects, contact mics, textures, range, analog formats, present moments, and emotions. Through raw, avant-garbage performance art, they aim to breakdown societal barriers, abolish oppressive systems, and empower communities. Gladys was born in Queens, NY, raised in Miami, FL and has deep roots in Venezuela. Currently haunting in Philadelphia, PA, Gladys is a founding member of Sound Museum Collective. SMC holds space for reconstructing our relationships to sounds by creating a platform for women, nonbinary, and trans sound artists and engineers.

Street Rat is a visceral exploration of the mysteries of life. Attempting to bring heavy concepts to your reality, it is the eye on the ground that sees and translates all intersecting issues as they merge, explode, dissolve, and implode. Street Rat is Gladys Harlow's way of comprehending, coping, feeling, taking action, disrupting the status quo, and rebuilding our path.

All Power To The People originated as a recorded performance intended to demystify sound by revealing the tools, wires, and movements used to create it. All Power To The People evolved into an installation conceived specifically for this exhibition. The installation includes a theremin and oscillator built by Gladys, a tarot deck they made by hand, and books from the artist's personal collection, amongst other elements. Gladys has created a structure of comfort and exploration. They welcome all visitors of divine knowing to play with the instrument, flip freely through the books, and pull a tarot card to take home.

Phoebe Hart is an experimental animator and filmmaker. A majority of her work is centered around mental illness and the line between dreams and reality. Merry Go Round is a sculptural zoetrope that changes in shape and color as it spins. Its form is inspired by nature and its color by the circus. The video’s sound was produced by Hayden Waggener. It consists of reverbing chimes which are in rhythm with the stop animation’s movement; both oscillate seamlessly between serene and anxious states.

“I often don't plan the sculptures or objects I am fabricating, there is a vague image in my mind, and my hands take care of the rest. I find that sometimes overthinking is what can get me and other artists stuck. If I just abandon my judgments and ego, I can really let go and create work that feels like it came inherently from me.”

Powerviolets is the solo project of multi-instrumentalist Violet Hetson who is currently based in New York. After experiencing several false starts while bouncing coast to coast, recording and performing with several lineups, Hetson has finally released her debut album. ~No Boys~ namesake is a sarcastic sign she hung on her suburban CT teenage bedroom door. Violet Hetson grew up primarily listening to punk and hardcore. She parses elements of these genres with influences from bands such as X and Suburban Lawns. ~No Boys~ takes a softer, melodic approach to Hetson's punk roots. Powerviolets' music is linear, unconventional, dark, and airy with a sense of humor.

Mary Hunt is a fiber artist specializing in chain stitch embroidery. This traditional form of embroidery uses vintage machinery and thick thread to create fibrous art and embellishments. They use an approach called "thread painting," which requires each stitch to be hand guided by the turn of a knob underneath the table while the speed of movement is controlled by a foot pedal. Chainstitch works can take anywhere from 20 minutes to 200 hours, encouraging a slow and thoughtful process. Mary uses a Cornely A machine, made in Paris more than 100 years ago.

“I think we are sent messages and guidance constantly. Our intuition is simply our ability to clear the path for those messages. The largest obstacles on my artistic path are usually self-imposed negative thoughts. I simply do things to take care of my spiritual well-being, first and foremost, and the rest follows. If I can trust the universe, trust the process, then I am much more likely to listen to the messages sent my way.”

Jes the Jem is a multi-media artist working with acrylic, watercolor, mold clay, and whatever else she can get her hands on. She uses vivid color to bring joy into the lives of those who view her art. Jes the Jem has experienced a great deal of pain in her life. Through that unique displeasure, she has been gifted a nuanced perspective. She aims to energize the present while paying homage to the past events that shape us. In her art, her life, and her interpersonal relationships, Jes the Jem appreciates the gift of all of life's experiences.

“The pursuit of happiness and understanding is instinct.”

Pamela Kivi pieces together visual scraps she has saved over the years, choosing to fuse them at whatever present moment she sees fit. Her work reflects on creative mania, fleeting emotions, and memories. Pamela's collages are a compilation of unexpected elements that include: old notebooks, cut-outs, text messages or Facebook message conversations, nostalgic cellphone photos, and visual materials she has chosen to hold onto. She prints out, cuts up, scans, edits, repeats. Pamela's artistic practice is deeply personal. It is a submittal to the process of dusting things off until a reflection can be seen, all enacted without an attachment to the end result.

“I rely on intuition and whatever state of mind I am in to whisk me away. In life, I often confuse intuition with anxiety- when it comes to creative work, I can decipher the two.”

Through sobriety, Kendall Kolenik's focus has shifted toward self-discovery and shedding old adaptive patterns, a process that led her to a passion for helping others heal themselves too. In autumn, she will begin her Masters in Social Work at Columbia University.

“I love how when I'm painting my self-doubt becomes so apparent. Painting shows me exactly where my doubt lies, which guides me towards overriding it. When I paint something and lean into doubt, I don't like what comes out. When I take note of the resistance and go with my gut more freely, I love it. This reminds me of my yoga practice. What you practice on the mat is a metaphor for how you show up in life. By breathing through the uncomfortable poses on the mat, you learn to breathe through challenging life moments.

I think we all grow up learning to numb and edit ourselves. We are taught not to trust our feelings; we are told to look outside ourselves for answers when we already have a perfectly good compass within. Painting is an archway back to that for me - rediscovering self-reliance and faith in my first instinct. When I'm creating these rainbow squares, sometimes I move so fast it's like something else is carrying me. I sort of leave myself and enter a trance. Like how you don't have to tell the heart to beat or the lungs to breathe - thinking goes away and I can get so close to my knowing that I become it. I love how art allows me to access my love for ambiguity, interpretation, and an interpretation that feels closer to Truth. I find no greater purpose than guiding people back to safety and reconnecting them with themselves. The most important thing to ever happen in my life was when I stopped trying to deny my reality - listening to your intuition can be like a freefall - no one but you can ever know or tell you - it is a deep trust without any outside proof.”

Lucille Loffredo is a music school dropout, Jewish trans lesbian, and veterinary assistant doing her best to make sure each day is better than the last. Lucille tries to find the music rather than make it. She lets it tell her what it wants to do and what it wants to be. The Wandering EP was in part written as a way to come out to herself. She asks all listeners to please be gentle.

“Change will come, and it will be good. You are who you think you are, no matter how far it seems.”

Whitney Lorenze generally works without reference, making thick, graphic pictures with precise forms conceived almost entirely from her imagination. Images like a slowly rolling car crackling out of a driveway, afternoon sun rays shining through a cloud of humidity, or headlights throwing a lined shadow across a black bedroom inspire her.

“As it concerns my own practice and the creation of artworks generally, I would define intuition as the ability to succumb to some primal creative impulse. Of course, this implies also the ability to resist the temptations of producing a calculated or contrived output.”

Ellie Mesa began teaching herself to paint at the age of 15, exploring landscapes and portraiture. Her work has evolved into a style of painting influenced by surrealism where teddy bears will morph into demons and vice versa. Her work speaks to cuteness, the grotesque, and mystical beings. The painting "Kali" is an homage to the Hindu goddess of creation, destruction, life and death. This was Ellie's first painting after becoming sober and is an expression of the aforementioned forces in her own life. Through meditations on Kali, Elli has been able to find beauty in the cycle of love and loss.

“To me, intuition means doing the thing that feels right whether or not it's what you want it to be. When I'm painting or making a sculpture, I give myself the freedom to follow what feels right, even if that means starting over or changing it completely. I allow the piece to present itself to me instead of forcing something that doesn't want to be.”

Mari Ogihara is a sculptor exploring duality, resilience, beauty, and serenity as experienced through the female gaze. Her work is informed by the duality of womanhood and the contradictions of femininity. In particular, the multitude of roles we inhabit as friend, lover, sister, and mother and their complex associations to the feminine perspective.

“Intuition is an innate, immediate reaction to an experience. While making art, I try to balance intuition, logic, and craftsmanship.”

All Of Me Is War by Ames Valaitis addresses the subconscious rifts society initiates between women, estranging them from each other and themselves.

“It is an unspoken, quick, and quiet battle within me as the feeling of intuition purely, and when I am making a drawing. I am immediately drawn to poses and subject matter that reflect the emotion inside myself, whether it is loud or under the surface. If a line or figure doesn't move me, after working on it for a few minutes, I get rid of it. If something looks right to me immediately, I keep it; nurture it. I try to let go of my vision, let my instinct take hold. I mirror this in my life as I get older, choosing who and what to put my energy into. The feeling is rarely wrong; I'd say we all know inherently when it is time to continue or tap out.”

Chardel Williams is a self-taught artist currently living in Bridgeport. Her biggest inspiration is her birthplace of Jamaica. Chardel views painting as a method for blocking out chaos. Her attraction to the medium springs from its coalescence of freedom, meditative qualities, and the connection it engenders. rears.

“Intuition for me is going where my art flows. I implement it in my practice by simply creating space and time to listen. There are times when what I'm painting is done in everyone else's eyes, but I just keep picking at it. Sometimes I would stop painting a piece and go months without touching it. Then, out of nowhere, be obsessed with finishing. I used to get frustrated with that process, but now I go with it. I stopped calling it a block and just flow with it. I listen because my work talks.”

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shadowfromthestarlight · 3 years

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The moment a group of people stormed the Capitol building last Wednesday, news companies began the process of sorting and commoditizing information that long ago became standard in American media.

Media firms work backward. They first ask, “How does our target demographic want to understand what’s just unfolded?” Then they pick both the words and the facts they want to emphasize.

It’s why Fox News uses the term, “Pro-Trump protesters,” while New York and The Atlantic use “Insurrectionists.” It’s why conservative media today is stressing how Apple, Google, and Amazon shut down the “Free Speech” platform Parler over the weekend, while mainstream outlets are emphasizing a new round of potentially armed protests reportedly planned for January 19th or 20th.

What happened last Wednesday was the apotheosis of the Hate Inc. era, when this audience-first model became the primary means of communicating facts to the population. For a hundred reasons dating back to the mid-eighties, from the advent of the Internet to the development of the 24-hour news cycle to the end of the Fairness Doctrine and the Fox-led discovery that news can be sold as character-driven, episodic TV in the manner of soap operas, the concept of a “Just the facts” newscast designed to be consumed by everyone died out.

News companies now clean world events like whalers, using every part of the animal, funneling different facts to different consumers based upon calculations about what will bring back the biggest engagement kick. The Migrant Caravan? Fox slices off comments from a Homeland Security official describing most of the border-crossers as single adults coming for “economic reasons.” The New York Times counters by running a story about how the caravan was deployed as a political issue by a Trump White House staring at poor results in midterm elections.

Repeat this info-sifting process a few billion times and this is how we became, as none other than Mitch McConnell put it last week, a country:

Drifting apart into two separate tribes, with a separate set of facts and separate realities, with nothing in common except our hostility towards each other and mistrust for the few national institutions that we all still share.

The flaw in the system is that even the biggest news companies now operate under the assumption that at least half their potential audience isn’t listening. This leads to all sorts of problems, and the fact that the easiest way to keep your own demographic is to feed it negative stories about others is only the most obvious. On all sides, we now lean into inflammatory caricatures, because the financial incentives encourage it.

Everyone monetized Trump. The Fox wing surrendered to the Trump phenomenon from the start, abandoning its supposed fealty to “family values” from the Megyn Kelly incident on. Without a thought, Rupert Murdoch sacrificed the paper-thin veneer of pseudo-respectability Fox had always maintained up to a point (that point being the moment advertisers started to bail in horror, as they did with Glenn Beck). He reinvented Fox as a platform for Trump’s conspiratorial brand of cartoon populism, rather than let some more-Fox-than-Fox imitator like OAN sell the ads to Trump’s voters for four years.

In between its titillating quasi-porn headlines (“Lesbian Prison Gangs Waiting To Get Hands on Lindsay Lohan, Inmate Says” is one from years ago that stuck in my mind), Fox’s business model has long been based on scaring the crap out of aging Silent Majority viewers with a parade of anything-but-the-truth explanations for America’s decline. It villainized immigrants, Muslims, the new Black Panthers, environmentalists — anyone but ADM, Wal-Mart, Countrywide, JP Morgan Chase, and other sponsors of Fortress America. Donald Trump was one of the people who got hooked on Fox’s narrative.

The rival media ecosystem chose cash over truth also. It could have responded to the last election by looking harder at the tensions they didn’t see coming in Trump’s America, which might have meant a more intense examination of the problems that gave Trump his opening: the jobs that never came back after bankers and retailers decided to move them to unfree labor zones in places like China, the severe debt and addiction crises, the ridiculous contradiction of an expanding international military garrison manned by a population fast losing belief in the mission, etc., etc.

Instead, outlets like CNN and MSNBC took a Fox-like approach, downplaying issues in favor of shoving Trump’s agitating personality in the faces of audiences over and over, to the point where many people could no longer think about anything else. To juice ratings, the Trump story — which didn’t need the slightest exaggeration to be fantastic — was more or less constantly distorted.

Trump began to be described as a cause of America’s problems, rather than a symptom, and his followers, every last one, were demonized right along with him, in caricatures that tickled the urbane audiences of channels like CNN but made conservatives want to reach for something sharp. This technique was borrowed from Fox, which learned in the Bush years that you could boost ratings by selling audiences on the idea that their liberal neighbors were terrorist traitors. Such messaging worked better by far than bashing al-Qaeda, because this enemy was closer, making the hate more real.

I came into the news business convinced that the traditional “objective” style of reporting was boring, deceptive, and deserving of mockery. I used to laugh at the parade of “above the fray” columnists and stone-dull house editorials that took no position on anything and always ended, “Only one thing’s for sure: time will tell.” As a teenager I was struck by a passage in Tim Crouse’s book about the 1972 presidential campaign, The Boys in the Bus, describing the work of Hunter Thompson:

Thompson had the freedom to describe the campaign as he actually experienced it: the crummy hotels, the tedium of the press bus, the calculated lies of the press secretaries, the agony of writing about the campaign when it seemed dull and meaningless, the hopeless fatigue. When other reporters went home, their wives asked them, “What was it really like?” Thompson’s wife knew from reading his pieces.

What Rolling Stone did in giving a political reporter the freedom to write about the banalities of the system was revolutionary at the time. They also allowed their writer to be a sides-taker and a rooter, which seemed natural and appropriate because biases end up in media anyway. They were just hidden in the traditional dull “objective” format.

The problem is that the pendulum has swung so far in the opposite direction of politicized hot-taking that reporters now lack freedom in the opposite direction, i.e. the freedom to mitigate.

If you work in conservative media, you probably felt tremendous pressure all November to stay away from information suggesting Trump lost the election. If you work in the other ecosystem, you probably feel right now that even suggesting what happened last Wednesday was not a coup in the literal sense of the word (e.g. an attempt at seizing power with an actual chance of success) not only wouldn’t clear an editor, but might make you suspect in the eyes of co-workers, a potentially job-imperiling problem in this environment.

We need a new media channel, the press version of a third party, where those financial pressures to maintain audience are absent. Ideally, it would:

not be aligned with either Democrats or Republicans;

employ a Fairness Doctrine-inspired approach that discourages groupthink and requires at least occasional explorations of alternative points of view;

embrace a utilitarian mission stressing credibility over ratings, including by;

operating on a distribution model that as much as possible doesn’t depend upon the indulgence of Apple, Google, and Amazon.

Innovations like Substack are great for opinionated individual voices like me, but what’s desperately needed is an institutional reporting mechanism that has credibility with the whole population. That means a channel that sees its mission as something separate from politics, or at least as separate from politics as possible.

The media used to derive its institutional power from this perception of separateness. Politicians feared investigation by the news media precisely because they knew audiences perceived them as neutral arbiters.

Now there are no major commercial outlets not firmly associated with one or the other political party. Criticism of Republicans is as baked into New York Times coverage as the lambasting of Democrats is at Fox, and politicians don’t fear them as much because they know their constituents do not consider rival media sources credible. Probably, they don’t even read them. Echo chambers have limited utility in changing minds.

Media companies need to get out of the audience-stroking business, and by extension the politics business. They’d then be more likely to be believed when making pronouncements about elections or masks or anything else, for that matter. Creating that kind of outlet also has a much better shot of restoring sanity to the country than the current strategy, which seems based on stamping out access to “wrong” information.

What we’ve been watching for four years, and what we saw explode last week, is a paradox: a political and informational system that profits from division and conflict, and uses a factory-style process to stimulate it, but professes shock and horror when real conflict happens. It’s time to admit this is a failed system. You can’t sell hatred and seriously expect it to end.

Matt Taibbi is one of the only people I subscribe to. He’s one of the few journalists I like because I actually believe he’s genuine.

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luciaspelsprojdiary · 3 years

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The Street

How does the street speak and what does it say?

I started looking at the street because I had been looking at schools and childhood and discovered a subsection of human geography; children’s geographies, the study of the spaces and places of children. From there I began looking at children’s street culture, in particular the act of play on the street. In looking at collection I began to think about collections of objects in public spaces, in particular somewhat ephemeral collections that go undocumented.

What is the value of the street? How can we capitalise on this value by transforming or celebrating our treatment of the street? How has this piece of infrastructure formed how we behave in an urban environment? This is a space where we meet each other, greet each other, pass each other indifferently or protest together. Arguably our most important urban spaces; where we encounter others the most.

The narrative of the street is not as straightforward as destruction over preservation - it’s really much more organic than that and informed by the people who walk the streets. Look at what the street has already done for us in order to explore what we can do for it?

Starting points;

The street as a subdivision of space - I have been looking at smaller spaces within larger spaces for several recent briefs ;I created a matchbox container park whilst mapping Rankin Inlet and interrogated cabinets during the Legs brief. The street is a cabinet of space within a city - containing the fundamentals of that particular street. I think it would be interesting to think of the street as a drawer containing objects specific to its “category” and collect typologies of streets - what constitutes a neighbourhood street, a high street, the street market, what do we expect to see on these streets and what do we not expect to see? Also what ultimately forms a street? Yes tarmac is poured to create space for cars but do rows of buildings or a path frequently walked but unmarked precede this? Is there in fact a system of organisation where we might not immediately identify one? Can you decide what is the highstreetiest high street (Mostest) by way of comparison plus interrogation of key features? Art as a means of containing large scale of thought and of the physical realm into a small space.

Physical Education - Andrew Cranston. Inner scale - how much can a small space contain if the objects within it have a lot of symbolic value? “small paintings can be describing large or even vast space.” Child’s distortion of scale.

Can a cabinet be a street in a city?

Matchbox museum - Rankin Inlet

Examples of street typologies/ street “furniture” typologies

Street Furniture - interrogating objects specific to that typology of street. I found street furniture; what could be seen on the street and the treatment of these objects to be a key insight into the small community of Rankin Inlet. The necessity for above ground sewage pipes communicated adaptation to the harsh climate, the shipping containers evidenced their lack of subsistence and the abandoned mine structures tagged with “we got left behind” communicated their emotional relationship to being a post industrial society. (https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/33556794.pdf paper on mining in Rankin Inlet references “memoryscapes” the industrial ruins provide resources for place identity and community memories: the role of memory in “articulating the relationship between community and landscape, or between landscape and an individual.”)

Children’s street culture - I am interested in looking at the games children play communally on the street (mostly pre - introduction of cars.) How does the street as a structure inform urban children’s play? I find this particularly fascinating because often games are merely words and movements and rules born of the mind and acted out momentarily. What of these has survived and why? How valuable are these games to the developing child? What are the remnants of play on the streets? What objects are borrowed from the environment, which ones are additions to the environment? Which ones can only be used in the urban environment? I.e a game of marbles can only be played on a hard surface.

Archives:

https://www.opiearchive.org/ (games/ street culture are largely documented in personal archives/ initiatives)

From the Opie collection:

Dan Jones:

https://spitalfieldslife.com/2020/09/21/chris-kelly-dan-jones-in-the-playground-x/

https://spitalfieldslife.com/2010/04/17/dan-jones-rhyme-collector/

Dan’s painting of Christ Church School, Brick Lane in 1982, as reproduced in “Inky, Pinky, Ponky”, a book of playground rhymes.

Chris Kelly - photographs of East London schools

https://www.londonplay.org.uk/content/29934/our_work/recent_work/play_streets/the_history_of_play_streets

Sound and Film:

https://belfastfilmfestival.org/films/dusty-bluebells

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/topics/Children%27s_street_culture (time to listen to children’s street culture)

https://movingimage.nls.uk/film/0799

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nBCJhNiKhFE

Where do the Children Play? Animated music video

In and Out the Dusty Bluebells - Children’s street games performed by the pupils of St Mary’s Primary School Belfast. (film still)

Whilst looking at alphabetisation for The Best Thing Since Sliced Bread I explored language, in particular the categorisation and organisation of language, as a means of encouraging division and exerting power. I looked at the Tower of Babel and how the creation of cities and “scattering of people across the earth” is in religious text attributed to the introduction of different languages, leading people to seek separate spaces to live due to a loss of understanding and empathy.

The language and lore of children’s games are a means of construction, imaginary and physical, and categorisation as a response to the world (street) around them. To create rules that others follow based on spaces around you and use spaces around you to implement them.

(Control of the child - children are forced off the streets for means of protection?, categorisation of childhood as a stage of life.)

Tower of Babel is a city in the sky (link to Robinhood Gardens streets in the sky) - aspirational building, overcoming social oppression.

https://jhna.org/articles/come-let-us-make-a-city-and-a-tower-pieter-bruegel-the-elder-tower-of-babel-creation-harmonious-community-antwerp/ (particular painting of Tower of Babel being created in tandem with the unification and urbanisation of a community in Antwerp)

Documentation of the street Mapping is of course fundamental to understanding the street but I think it would be interesting to look at and create maps of lesser documented aspects of the street (smaller movements.)

During my project on Rankin Inlet I “mapped” the route that number 1 would have to take to visit number 8, so few were the residents.

I mapped my mum explaining how she curated her display cabinet during my cabinets project through collage and language/ typography. Mapping children’s lore is a means of documenting their way of organising and categorising the world. I.e. mapping the movements of children playing games in films - how do they use the space of the street and how does it inform the structure of their games, the words they use?

Often in films you have a cut to children playing on a street - a familiar sight.

(in Das Leben Der Anderen the Lives of Others) we see the main character play with children on a street, a light and playful scene which contrasts the darker tones and nature of the other scenes- the street is where we encounter the lives of others.)

I have been documenting streets for quite a few years myself and have a large personal archive of street photography on my phone. What is discarded in these spaces vs what is deliberately placed in them? Patterns which can be identified and organised through photography.

Photography is a key source as the street is incredibly ephemeral and in constant flux. I think streets are largely documented through a very personal lense, a particular street walked by a particular person on a particular day or that is of significance to them. Or the streets which happened to be around at the time of the making of a film.

Street photographers - Roger Mayne in particular focused on children on the streets of London

https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2014/jun/13/roger-mayne

http://www.massobs.org.uk/ The Mass Observation archive - initiative to observe and record everyday British life

Exhausting a street?

Street and childhood - both defined by personal experiences of them/ personal methods of documentation - therefore personal accounts are fundamental to look at.

“Childhood is an interesting zone, an interior space,” (street as a space, stage of life as a space) - other accounts of childhood experiences and games will exist in peoples personal biographies and memoirs

i.e the personal accounts of Andrew Cranston and Stevie Smith below

The street as a space to protest as well as communicate pride in the place/space you feel you belong to/ feel belongs to you (taking to the streets). The desire to create an environment is perhaps more present in children, whilst the desire to control and order an existing environment is more manifest in adults. Patriotism and nationalism. The post colonial era, British people wanting who they feel does not belong on their streets off their streets - this is solely based on visual assessment of individuals . Streets as a territorial space, our streets (tags.)

The street can be a space to be brutally honest about what isn’t working, your audience is unbounded.

https://www.huckmag.com/art-and-culture/art-2/meet-chicago-artist-running-protest-banner-library/

https://www.independentcinemaoffice.org.uk/films/britain-on-film-protest/

stills:

International comparison - During A levels I looked at whether or not Germany is actually as organised as everyone says it is. In particular the Ordnungsamt in Germany - essentially the Order Police and whether or not the stereotypes surrounding this nationality are present in the furniture, format and treatment of the street. The Ordnungsamt might call someone out for not having their door number at the right height. I think looking at a contrasting culture and making comparison is very important to fully understanding behaviour on the street and how it is informed by the visual language and structure of the street. I have also extensively documented the streets of Berlin through photography. Is order more inherent in the German street? How can we tell? Is it in how people behave in the street or how the street itself is structured or does one inform the other? German proverbs “Ordnung muss sein” There must be order.

https://www.goethe.de/ins/pl/de/kul/mag/22109580.html (is there really order in Germany?)

https://www.easygerman.org/podcast/episodes/3 (podcast on order in Germany)

Streets in the sky - social housing utopia - I briefly explored the RobinHood Gardens estate for IB Art in connection with the idea of glamorising childhood. What did the concept of streets in the sky refer to? It sounds so magical but also kind of dangerous and ultimately it fell apart. This is an estate I have also extensively documented through photography, particularly as it was about to be pulled down.

Stills from film Streets in the sky documenting the structure of Robinhood Gardens Estate https://filmfreeway.com/452396

There are extensive articles/ essays discussing the failure of this architectural initiative with many making references to propaganda for this (failed) utopian future ^^^

https://www.architectural-review.com/archive/notopia-archive/notopia-the-fall-of-streets-in-the-sky

Walking_on_streets-in-the-sky_structures_for_democ.pdf

https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2016/oct/22/lived-brutalism-portraits-from-robin-hood-gardens-housing-estate-in-pictures (looks at individuals who lived in the estates)

Conveying layers of past in space - links to Eastside Projects - layers of Birmingham https://eastsideprojects.org/about/users-manual/

The New York High Line is a Street in the sky. The redevelopment of obselete infrastructure as public space. (links to idea of Landscape Urbanism. The imaginary)

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avegurdotcom-blog · 5 years

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Modern Interior Design Styles

The love of aesthetics/beauty and creativity is part of human nature. It is one of the very attributes that differentiate us from other animal groups, and this practice has been going on for ages. Even when our primary task was to look out for food and shelter, but we felt a desire to make improvements in the environments that we inhabited. No conclusion has been made on if this was to satisfy some deep spiritual mission or a method of transferring on vital knowledge to fellow group members, or whether it was simply a way for an individual to satisfy an urge to leave his legacy for future generations, we’re yet to find out. For the long time being, people have turned inquisitive minds to innovative ways of solving problems and also dealt with the issues that have challenged them in the struggle to survive: problems such as how to work more efficiently, how to live more comfortably and how to guarantee their safety from danger. There comes the quest for Modern Interior Design styles.

As we have gained more affluence and get blessed with more leisure taste, the Modern Interior Design styles has become more important to us and is something with which we want to imbue our homes with. As proven, ‘style’ is a very personal notion, so why should anyone look to employ someone else, an interior designer, to advise them what is right when it comes to style? What justified reason should a designer presume to impose his ideas upon a space that doesn’t belong to him? The answer is this; interior design is much deeper than ‘what looks right’ or satisfying. It is about taking a holistic view of the way that individuals use and enjoy the spaces that they inhabit. It is about finding and creating a cohesive solution to a set of problems and working the solution in order to unify and strengthen our experience of the space. Many people understand this only that they lack the necessary skills to face the job themselves. And so there is the need for professional interior designers to execute their mastery.

Well crafted interior design changes the atmosphere in a space. It does increase our efficiency in the way we work our daily routines and add depth, understanding, and meaning to the built environment. A well thoughtful and well-crafted design makes a space easier to understand and experiencing such a space lightens the spirit. It is, therefore, not just about the aesthetic; it is skilful and philosophical. Beautiful spaces portray the truth on the new and exciting ways to individuals life is lead. It promotes the loved one has for his/her immediate beautiful environment.

There is always some conflict between the meaning of the terms like ‘interior architecture’, ‘interior design’ and ‘interior decoration’. There arises the distinction between the different professions? In truth, the distinctions are not absolute. There are several factors where the supposed boundaries lie. Talking about professional aspects, it always a matter of which country the designer is working in (or perhaps more properly, which regulatory system the designer is working under), though those factors are not definitive. Interior decorators generally work with existing spaces that do not require physical alteration. With the application of matching color, light, and surface finish combination, they will transform the look of a space, perhaps making it suitable to function in a different way from that for which it was originally designed, but with very little or no change to the structure of the building Modern Interior Design styles is achieved, Interior designers span the ground between interior architects and interior decorators. Surely, the scope of the projects undertaken varies from the purely decorative, to ones where a great deal of structural change is required to meet up with the brief requirements. An interior designer will competently handle the space planning and creation of decorative schemes at the same time as considering major structural changes.

In Modern Interior Design styles, none of the professionals will necessarily be experts in all aspects of a project and will call on other specialists (such as structural engineers or lighting designers) to help fully realize their ideas.

TYPES OF INTERIOR DESIGNS AND DECORATIONS ARE:

MODERN:

Modern is a broad design term that typically refers to a home with clean, crisp lines, a simple color palette and the use of materials that can include metal, glass, and steel. Currently, the modern design uses a great sense of simplicity in every involved element, including furniture placing and layout. Another word that’s commonly used to describe modern style is sleek, and this doesn’t require a lot of clutter or accessories to produce modern style designs. Interestingly, genuine materials to achieve sleek style can be best recognized by experienced designers.

CONTEMPORARY:

Modern and contemporary are two styles that are frequently used interchangeably. Actually, contemporary is quite different from modern because it describes design based on the here and now. The most notable difference separating modern and contemporary design style is that modern tends to describe designs that started in the 20th century. While contemporary on the other hand is more substantial and with emphasis on the present and doesn’t really adhere to any style in particular. For clarity sake, contemporary style makes use of curving lines, whereas modern design doesn’t use it. For more understanding, we encourage our readers to refer to modern vs contemporary article for more information.

MINIMALIST:

The minimalist concept is one that’s popular in Australia and in a few European countries but rarely applied here in Nigeria, unless on special brief request. It takes notions of modern design and it does more to simplifies them further. It’s color palettes are neutral and airy; the furnishings are simple and streamlined, and there’s nothing is excessive or flamboyant in accessories or décor. The concept of minimalism is ultimately defined by a sense of functionality and ultra-clean lines.

INDUSTRIAL:

Industrial style as the name implies it draws inspiration from a warehouse or an urban loft. There’s a sense of unfinished rawness in many of the elements for this style, and it’s not uncommon to see exposed brick, ductwork, and wood. An iconic home with an industrial design theme would be a renovated loft from a former industrial building. Always appear with high ceilings, old and rusty timber and dangling metal light fixtures with sparse functional furniture. There may possibly be few pieces of abstract art or photography to add a dash of color to an otherwise neutral color scheme derived from the primary materials of wood and metals. The deliberate idea behind these rough disposition is as a result of industrial activities that sooth this type of design and decoration.

MID-CENTURY MODERN:

Mid-century modern is a reversion to the design style of the mid-1900s—primarily the 1950s and 60s. There’s a retro nostalgia present in Mid-Century Modern Design, and also some elements of minimalism. Functionality ideas or “fussy-free” was the main theme for Mid-century design. It emphasizes pared-down forms, natural or organic shapes such as “egg-shaped” chair, easy-to-use contemporary designs and simple fabrications. It easily complements any interior and also helps with the coherent transition from interior to exterior.

SCANDINAVIAN:

The Scandinavian design pays homage to the simplicity of life demonstrated in Nordic countries. Scandinavian furniture design often feels like a work of art, although it is simple and understated. There’s functionality in the furniture along with some interesting lines, many of which have a sculptural influence. Other common characteristics include all-white color palettes and the incorporation of natural elements like form-pressed wood, bright plastics, and enamelled aluminum, steel, and wide plank flooring. If there are pops of color it often comes from the use of art, natural fibre throws or furs, or a single piece of furniture. Spacious, natural lighting, fewer accessories and functional furniture characterizes Scandinavian designs.

TRADITIONAL:

Traditional design style offers classic details, sumptuous furnishings, and an abundance of accessories. It is rooted in European sensibilities. Traditional homes often feature dark, finished wood, rich color palettes, and a variety of textures and curved lines. Furnishings have elaborate and ornate details and fabrics, like velvet, silk, and brocade, which may include a variety of patterns and textures. There’s depth, layering, and dimensionality within most traditional designs.

TRANSITIONAL:

Transitional is a very popular style because it borrows from both traditional and modern design to facilitate a space that’s not “too much,” in terms of one style or another. There’s a sense of balance that’s appealing and unexpected. A transitional design may incorporate modern materials, such as steel and glass, and then unite them with plush furnishings. The transitional design also includes relatively neutral color palettes, creating a calming and relaxed space that manages to feel both stylish and sleek, as well as warm and inviting.

FRENCH COUNTRY:

Warm, earthy colors are indicative of a French Country design style, as are worn and ornamental wooden furnishing. The style has an overarching farmhouse inspiration. French Country design may include soft and warm tones of red, yellow or gold and natural materials like stone and brick. French Country design can include collections of ornate porcelain dishes and heavy linens and bed coverings.

BOHEMIAN

Bohemian is a popular style for home design and fashion. It reflects a carefree lifestyle with little rules, except to follow your heart’s desire. Bohemian homes may include vintage furniture and light fixtures, globally inspired textiles and rugs, displays of collections, and items found in widely varied sources including flea markets and during one’s travels. It’s not uncommon to spot floor pillows and comfortable seating spaces when incorporating the bohemian style. This eclectic style can incorporate an ultra-glam chandelier paired with a well-worn rug and a mid-century chair. Within the Bohemian style, there’s a laissez-faire attitude where anything goes as long as you love it.

RUSTIC

Rustic design is drawn from natural inspiration, using raw and often unfinished elements including wood and stone. The rustic design may incorporate accessories from the outdoors with warmth emulating from the design and architectural details that may include features like vaulted ceilings adorned with wood beams or reclaimed wood floors. Many designs now integrate rustic design with more modern furnishings and accessories.

SHABBY CHIC

Shabby chic is vintage-inspired style, but compared to Bohemian and other styles, tends to be more feminine in finishing, soft and delicate. Shabby chic furnishings are often either distressed or appear that way; its paint tends to have antique-style finishes. The Shabby Chic color palettes include white, cream and pastels. Light fixture and wall hangings are part of its featured ornate and continue the feminine vibe of shabby chic design.

HOLLYWOOD GLAM

This very style is also referred to as Hollywood Regency, Hollywood Glam is a design style that tends to be luxurious and quite appealing, over-the-top and opulent. It’s a dramatic design style with exciting features, perfect for a homeowner who enjoys making a statement. This design style can incorporate some features of the Victorian design, including plush, velvet furnishings, tufting, and antiques. The dominant color palettes are particularly bold—think purples, reds, and turquoise.

COASTAL/HAMPTONS:

The coastal style also is known as dubbed Hamptons style hails from the iconic U.S. beachside area. Common features include light, airy color palettes with cool neutral shades paired with blues and greens. Furnishings are often white or beige. The room can contain elements of wood and accessories are often inspired by the sea. Blue and white striped patterns for pillows, large windows, white plush sofas, and painted white wood are also common fixtures of the classic Coastal/Hampton style. The intention is to create a relaxed and comfortable environment that is inspired by the beach and ocean. Interestingly, here in Nigeria many of our clients appreciate these decorations stills by our decorating team. Avegur Decorating makes the acquisition of materials for each of the selected styles, and we guarantee the best.

WORK APPROACH:

For functionality sake, no design for space should ignore the existing building into which it is being integrated. A good understanding of what exists is fundamental to deciding what needs to be done if the space is to fit and serve the functions of which it was placed there.

None of this means that your design should be a pastiche of the existing style references of the building. The best designs respect the existing building and will reference it in some way in their execution, through materials, methods of construction, craftsmanship, pattern, form. All of the preceding research should bring you to a point where you understand the essential points that will have an impact on the design: –What structure exists. –What functions and activities will take place, –and how these will be addressed practically (for example, what furniture is required). – What is possible in the space –(and just as importantly, what is not possible, due to time, technical or budget limitations). – How the space functions and interacts with others –around it. What emotional response the client wants that space –to generate in the user and what aesthetic style is desired. This is necessary, but for the design to feel considered and complete, rather than being a random collection of elements, there is a need to find a unifying idea that will hold the disparate parts of the design together. This a single idea will be one that sets the stylistic tone of the design. It is this single idea that is the concept.

BUDGETS AND CHARGE:

How designers should charge for their services is one of the questions that new clients and customers are usually anxious about. Over time, three main models for charging (with many variations on them) have appeared and can be summarised as: –Charging a percentage of the overall project value. –Charging only for items supplied by the designer –(such as furniture) with a markup fee. –Charging a design fee based on an assessment –or projection of hours worked on the project. Arguably the most appropriate method of charging is that which sees the designer charging a design fee. This means that the client can see what is being paid for directly, without fees being ‘hidden’ in other charges, as is the case when a markup is added to goods supplied. It also means that payment is made within a reasonable amount of time of the work being done and that financial commitments on the client are kept to a minimum as charges for each stage of the project are agreed before work is undertaken. However, the designer decides to charge, an open and transparent system will be to the benefit of all. While it is helpful if the relationship between designer and client is a friendly one, it is important that there is a written contract or form of agreement between both parties for the legal protection of both sides. This will define the type of services provided and their scope, the fee structure, dispute resolution, copyright issues, and what is expected of both the designer and client. Trade associations in many countries will have standard documents that can be used in these cases, but even if this is not so in some countries, contracts can be drawn up with the assistance of a professional that will protect the interests of all concerned.

GALLERY:

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bangays · 6 years

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Okay y’all, here’s a bunch of stuff I’ve learned about sustainable living and urban farming. Keep in mind, I’m no expert and I’m always learning, but what better way to share my knowledge and learn more than to make a giant post? I’m going to put this under a read more so when I update this I don’t have old versions floating around and so it’s not a super long post. Also, i’m more than happy to answer any questions or add in any knowledge you may have!

This is version 1.0, updated 4/24/18

Anyways, I’m going to do this in three main parts: “I have no yard but I still wanna grow my own shit” “I have a yard and wanna grow shit” and “I don’t wanna grow shit, what else can I do?” Keep in mind that tips for each area could be modified or used if you fit in another category, so reading through the whole thing could be worthwhile! For example, the “I don’t want to grow” category has a lot of tips for sustainable living outside of growing produce. Also, I’ve lived in northeast Ohio my entire life so this specific growing zone (6a / 6b) is what I’m basing everything off of and have experience in. This is a link to GROWING ZONES, which tell you how hardy a plant has to be to grow in your specific location. Most plants on their seed packet will say where they are best for growing.

But first! Good tips for everyone:

Keep all food prep waste and food that’s started to rot for compost! If it came from the ground, it can go back into the ground! Composting is an extremely easy way to reduce your waste and it’s literally free (and fertilizer is so crazy expensive) Here’s a wikihow article about composting!

If you’re going to throw something away, try to think of ways you can use it! I’m not saying keep the button that fell off your pants that you’re never going to sew back on bc you’ll just become a hoarder, but if you have old containers, or something antique looking, see how it could be reused! This is called upcycling! This helps stop waste, reuses perfectly good items, and keeps plastics out of landfills! This is a cute article about upcycling for examples!

Look into specific laws for your community! Some municipalities do not allow for farming on the tree lawn or do not allow for tall trees, fruit bearing trees, etc. If you go to or call your town hall there should be someone there to answer your questions bc going through legal documents is absolutely exhausting.

Look into if your city allows chickens / ducks or if you have a fairly large yard, goats! They’re super great animals (that I honestly have minimal experience with) but do require much more love and care than a plant. Farm animals can live for years and require professional medical care, so if you’re v tight on funds I would not suggest this. Also, if you would not be able to kill a farm animal, there are many places that will do it for you or that you could sell it to for a lil profit.

Rain barrels! Water from gutters is a great way to water plants, and some people even connect their shower drains (if they use plant-friendly soaps) to rain barrels to reuse the water for gardening! Obviously, do not use rain barrel water for human consumption because it has not been properly treated & we’ve put so much harmful shit into the environment. The simplest way is to get a giant ass bucket (like 20+ gallons) and reroute your gutters into them. (most gutters have one main gutter on the side of a house that most likely drains into the sewer system) (Also, do not make modifications to a house you do not own / are renting / etc) Here’s a simple way to make a rain barrel!

THIS IS THE MOST IMPORTANT TIP BEFORE WE START: If you want to plant something that does not naturally grow in your location, PLEASE make sure it is not an invasive species! This is a link to learn more about invasive species!

I have no yard:

Obviously, not having any green space makes any food production difficult. But! As long as you’re creative, there’s still a lot of ways you can grow your own produce. The best way if you don’t have any green space is to look into a local community garden. This is the best way to learn, because there’s always people outside tending their own gardens & they’ve always been super friendly. Also, this is a great way to get to know neighbors and get involved with your community! I know the community garden near my previous home in Cleveland had a start of the season fee, but they always had a garden coordinator on sight, tools available to borrow, and seeds to plant a garden with. Obviously, even community garden is different due to most being grassroots organizations, so I can’t speak for all of them. But, you’ll get a small square of land that’s all your to cultivate for a growing season! A small garden like this could easily be well managed by a 20 minute visit 3 times a week for weeding and watering. (If you live in a v hot and dry climate, you’ll need to visit more often)

Do you have windows in your apartment? (I sure hope so bc legally you have to) Window boxes are an easy way to grow herbs and small plants! These could be as simple as a old plastic container or if you’re crafty a wooden window box can be super cute! Here’s a link for how to make your own window box!

Do you have doors in your house? (God, again I sure hope so) Do you know those plastic shoe holders that go on the back of a door? Grow herbs in these! Obviously, this has to be in a room that gets a lot of natural sunlight. Or, if for some reason you don’t have doors, or just can’t stop yourself from slamming the door, just hang it up on two command hooks! This is a great way to grow your own herbs, because herb plants are typically p small and won’t rip through the plastic.

Grow your own potatoes / onions in planters inside! Potatoes and onions typically need much less sunlight than above ground plants. This is a link for indoor potatoes! This is a link for indoor onions!

I have a yard!

The first thing to do is see where water puddles in your yard. If you plant something in an area that typically has a 3 inch puddle when it rains, it’s not going to do well. Improving drainage is pretty labor intensive, so another option is to build raised beds! If you have the time and resources, here is an article about improving drainage!

The second most important thing is to look at where your yard has the most and least sun throughout the entire day! Plants are grouped into three specific categories, full sun (6+ hours a day), partial sun (4-6 hours), or full shade (Less than 4 hours). If you plant something that prefers full sun in a full shade area, it’s going to die practically instantly. This is an article that further explains sun / shade!

The next step is to design your garden! Every plant has a minimum distance it must be planted from other plants. Also, if you plan on having dogs or chickens, make sure you leave a space for the dog to poop & the chickens to graze so they do not destroy your hard work! Also, some vine-like plants (Such as tomatoes or beans) need a stake or a cage to grow around. There are many different garden designs and every yard has a different amount of sun, so pre-made designs should be used as a guide, not an absolute. This is a link to 19 different garden designs!

Do you want to grow corn or anything else tall? Great! DO NOT PLANT THESE IN NORTH-SOUTH LINES!! Corn grows to be 6-7 feet tall, and will cast a giant shadow on your other plants! If you plant them in a East-West line, they will cast a much smaller shadow on surrounding areas but will not impede the other corn plants.

I don’t want to grow my own food:

Hey, I get it. Some people don’t have time and some people just don’t want to grow things. There’s a lot of things you can do to help live a sustainable life!

Take the bus / public transportation as often as possible! I know this is a basic example and many people use this as their main trasportation, but there’s so many people that refuse to use public transportation. Yes, everyone has a public bus horror story, but 99% of the buses I’ve been on have been super clean & efficient! Also, if you live ina rural area, I know this is not really an option for you. If you cannot use public transportation, car pool! Currently, 86% of Americans drive by themselves to work, which is super wasteful!

Support your local farmers market! I know they’re known for selling honey for $7 for like three tablespoons, but there really is no better way to support you local farmers than to buy their produce! This also helps remove the grasp big business has on your community and keep money in your community, which most likely will be reinvested in your community! Most farmers markets are weekly and are held on weekends! If you look up your city / neighborhood there should be links to nearby markets!

Offer your yard to someone that wants to garden! I mean, free landscaping and they’ll probably offer you fresh food! But also, make sure you trust this person enough to give them free reign over your landscaping and you wouldn’t mind seeing them 3 times a week when they tend their garden.

Donate! Most urban gardens / garden collectives are 100% grassroots organizations, so donations keep these organizations going! I know living in the rust belt, we have so much land that was sitting vacant that is now brought back to productive use by urban farms! Urban farms help stabilize housing markets in neighborhoods and remove blight, and are one of the best hands-on ways to help fight food deserts in communities that cannot support a grocery store!

If you don’t have a local urban garden, start one! Even if you don’t want to grow food yourself, starting an organization that lets other people grow food in your community is a great way to bring a community together! Many land banks have programs where you can “rent” vacant land from them for a small fee (The land bank for Cleveland is $1 per year, I believe). Also, if you start an official nonprofit, that’s a great thing for your resume and all money you invest into it is tax deductible! giving your community the ability and the knowledge to grow its own produce is an amazing opportunity to bring a community together and has a great impact on a community’s health!

Thank y’all so much for reading & I hope this was even slightly helpful! Any questions, comments, suggestions, etc are greatly appreciated!!

#urban farming #sustainable living #gardens #gardening #sustainability

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fernyear3 · 3 years

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Notes for end of term critiques:

M - observe, depict / illustrate, appropriate, deconstruct

O - celebration / critique - the work is viewed and displayed as a celebration, but is also somewhat of a critique on the ways we search for pleasure in the wrong places, decorative - due to the use of advertising techniques and aesthetics to draw the viewer in to the work, maybe technological if I end up working out how to make the images move through animation

F - artificial, urban, social commentary, realism, identity, language-text in relation to graffiti

Adaptability: 

How does your work read to an audience in light of the current context in which we are living? How do you adapt and grow your practice to fit the occurring changes without compromising your integrity as an artist? What can you do to remain motivated when personal and world circumstances are in a state of flux? How do you respond to limitations of studio space, time and materials? 

- I think my work is very relevant in a modern context, and especially with the idea of covid, where everyone is looking for a dopamine fix, and for pleasure to get through each day. This idea of stimuli is something everyone relates too, with reference to advertising, commercialism, and addiction. I think personally at this current time I have enough at home that I don’t have to change the integrity as an artist, but finding cheaper materials and learning new skills while we're in lockdown can be hard. I remain motivated by trying to make work that I genuinely want to work on, while setting time for my family, exercise and rest as well. It is easy to get distracted in lockdown however and that is something I need to overcome. To do lists are super helpful. Limitations of time, space, and materials make it hard but it is what it is and we have to work with it, In relation to materials, I need to get Gesso and fabric markers, which I will buy online, and then I might ask Elvis if I can borrow his mini projector, as once I have the layout mockup sorted I can start painting.

Intention: 

What is the content of your work? What ideas, themes, or concepts are you aiming to communicate? Why have you chosen this as the subject matter to investigate? How do you think the formal qualities and methodologies of making underpin or assist these ideas? What is the work’s contextual territory or what “conversation” is it having with particular fields of contemporary art practice.

My work features painted imagery of images I have taken, Motifs and symbols from pop culture and the culture around me, and tagging / graffiti on a tie-dyed base. My work is an observation of culture and particularly discusses pleasure, and how we as people look for it and achieve it. My subject matter points to ways people try and achieve this state, with marijuana, palm trees, the idea of having money and addiction through gambling, as well as the idea of wealth through the rings on the fingers, the palm trees referencing this idea of island living and pleasure also as palm trees have direct correlation with living a good life, the zodiac symbols referencing spirituality and looking for a higher power and GTA which has this idea of technology, and achieving pleasure through alternate realities. The way that the imagery is floating in space helps to reiterate this idea of the artificial and advertising techniques, while making it look very graphically orientated, and the use of tie-dye also brings up the hippie counterculture discourse, which is another reference in history to people finding pleasure, especially through drug use and spirituality.

the urban look to the work is due to wanting this to be from an urban viewpoint, and have advertising, graphic aesthetics due to commercialism and consumerism being another way people attempt to find happiness. I use images i have taken and lived experiences that surround me in my environment and translate them in to commercialised looking art, as I am interested creating an idealised and aesthetically pleasing version of my urban experience, while also being a shared experience.

My work is in the field of pop-art, urban art, and modern art, due to both its subject matter and how it is displayed.

I want to animate the work so that it moves when using the tiny-eye app, something I’ve seen from artist Shawnee Tekki. The pokie machine symbols will spin and then show a big win sign flashing on the middle of the artwork, the hands will move so the joint gets lit, and the GTA symbol stars will each fill with colour in turn, to fully stimulate the brain with the dopamine rushes you get from these addictions. this will work to further portray the ideas that I am painting.

Reception:

How does your audience respond to, read and discuss your work? How do you respond (to your outcomes and the opinions of others), and what do you experience when you step back and reflect on your work objectively?

I want my audience to first be drawn in by the visuals, the advertising techniques, and the scale / colour of the work, and then start to see what the subject matter has displayed and have that feeling of push-pull with both the celebratory elements, and then there negative connotations. I think the use of technology when animating my work will activate the same part of the brain that releases dopamine when people gamble, see advertising, or play video games. I experience these experiences when I step back and look at the work, as I feel it is quite urban, bright, and eye-catching. I want the idea of dopamine to be present in what the subject matter discusses, and in the viewer when they interact and view the work.

Formal Qualities:

What are the formal qualities of the work? What does it look like? This information may or may not be clearly visible, but noting it down to yourself can help remind you of why you are working in this manner.

The formal qualities are quite urban, with repeated motifs, realism painting, graffiti and graphic subject matter. It has commercial aesthetics, as well as using materiality and fluidity in the tie-dye background. It Is eye-catching, large scale, and colourful.

Contextual Information:

Is there contextual information regarding your methodology and/or aspects of your research that can enliven the work? You may include this information in your submission if you wish or read it out during your critique/discussion. Consider all of the forms of information that can accompany work in an exhibition. E.g. titles, list of materials, duration of moving image etc. Can you use this information, in conjunction with the verbalisation of your notes, to provide your audience with a way into the work? 

Title - Dopamine

Scale - 1.2 metres by 1.8 metres

Will be painted realistically.

Will be animated, so you will be able to use the tiny eye app to view the work moving.

Materials: tie-dye, acrylic paint, fabric marker, gloss medium.

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assassin-writes · 5 years

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The Lucky Ones / TLO Intro

genre: urban fantasy ~ angst :’)

SYNOPSIS

Zenith is the antithesis of everything The Well stands for. While it is filled to the brim with powerful magic, his very essence renders it useless. In this place filled with rejects and outsiders, he still find himself painfully different from all of them. Now, Zenith chooses to escape, and gambles his safety on his ability to blend into an unfamiliar society all while running away from his haunting past.

More under the cut:

SETTING

This world is highly influenced by the magic that exists within it, and this magic has one rule: everyone has a single power defined by a particular mental state. Because of this, the world puts great value on people being able to control themselves and, subsequently, control their abilities.

There have been great efforts made in order to help people who struggle, yet there are a few nobody has found a way to aid, at least so far. Most of them are left alone, since they may not have any powers, or they may not be harmful. But, just like before, there are a few unlucky ones, whose powers are so great it makes them a danger to themselves and everyone around them.

These people are given one last chance to show improvement at one of the Help Centers around the world. If they fail, they get thrown in The Well.

THE WELL

What is The Well? To most people, it’s a vast desert with the occasional people running around, a harsh but fair and necessary part of keeping society safe. Few people can tell you the horrors that go on down there, because nobody who ends up there can ever come back. That’s how it got its nickname.

Even fewer people know that a couple hundred years ago, The Well used to be a lush area surrounded by several fences and security. Nowadays, it’s a seemingly endless hole in the ground, thousands of miles of emptiness. The people living there tried countless times to build a society and enforce laws, but they learned all too soon that the effort of dozens can be burned to the ground in an instant by just one. As such, everyone is pretty much on their own now.

CHARACTERS

Our characters are part of two groups: those who crawled their way up from The Well (barely), and those who are yet to end up there. Some were doomed to fail from birth, while others were broken down every day to ensure that would happen. All those people have one thing in common, a last chance to prove they are better than what happened to them.

From The Well

ZENITH

noun (astronomy): the point in the sky or celestial sphere directly above an observer

Zenith’s first and last gift from his mum was being shoved into the sand when he was a baby, right before she was brutally murdered a few feet away from him. As it turned out, this was the most important lesson one could learn in the Well: hiding.

Just like how one would learn to cry for help, for soothing or for hunger, his life was a series of lessons too. He learned to run, to keep quiet, and to eat whatever he saw in front of him. And just when he was about to become an animal, he also learned how to dream. A life of pain was saved in an instant by just three words he had overheard: “outside the Well”.

From that moment forward, everything he did was to help him escape. Together with Grace, one of the few people he grew to trust, his insane daydreams started to seem like they could become reality.

Power: Zenith has a tendency to dissociate, which nullifies the powers of everyone in his vicinity.

GRACE

noun: the free and unmerited favour of God, as manifested in the salvation of sinners and the bestowal of blessings

Grace grew up in The Well too, but further away from the walls, where few people ventured. She spent most of her time in a small group, doing their best to build a farm and eating the produce. Her life was one of the most peaceful in the Well. Unfortunately, just like everything else in the Well, it didn’t last long.

Another group of people had been eyeing them and their riches, and decided to attack. Grace and her mother managed to run away, closely followed by one of the men, who shot her mother’s leg clean off, causing her to collapse. Distraught by what had happened, Grace charged at the man, who made the mistake of underestimating her. A second later, she had shoved a knife in his chest, killing him instantly and running back to her mother, cradling her in her arms and screaming in agony. To her surprise, she watched her mother’s wound begin to close.

Her moment of happiness was cut short, however, when another man found them and his friend’s bloody corpse. That moment sealed the two women’s fates, who were forced to keep on running from the people who had now made it their life’s goal to get revenge.

Power: Grace’s power is healing someone whenever she is afraid to lose them. The catch is that she has to cause an injury of equal size to another person before being able to do so.

From the Help Center

ETHEL

Ethel’s mother died in childbirth, and her dad never quite managed to get over it. He tried to deal with the pain for his daughter’s sake, but allowed himself to indulge into occasional nostalgia. Determined to give Ethel some form of a relationship with her mum, he shared his wife’s favorite movies, listened to her music, and even signed her up to ballet. But Ethel wasn’t her mum, and she didn’t like ballet.

She tried telling her dad that she wanted to quit, but stopped when she saw the pain in his eyes, reassuring him that she actually loved it. This happened with every other activity, and soon enough what used to be an enjoyable bonding activity turned into soul-crushing guilt.

One day, while Ethel was dancing, her dad joined her in her dance. She smiled, softly, and watched as his expression went from bliss to shock as he suddenly pushed her away. Her dad managed to whisper one word with a shaky voice:

“Christa?”

Power: Ethel has a shaky sense of identity, and she frequently “borrows” other parts of someone to add to her personality. Whenever this happens to much, she starts shapeshifting into them.

JAMES/ADAM

Adam’s fate was decided before he was even born. About 20 or so years, to be exact, when a team of researchers started a project to create the first person with artificially created powers.

Adam grew up in a sterile environment, allowed to play only with the little cars and purple people his caregivers would give him. He tried to refuse, but got bored soon enough. He could only watch the zombie movies they put on, or play with the children they allowed him to, who always wore purple. He tried to stay away from everybody, but he got too lonely. Even the only freedom he ever knew manifested in a lab, where at least he was allowed to make things fly the way he wanted them to.

When he was a bit older, he was finally allowed to go and practice outside, tossing and moving bigger and bigger things. Or stopping multiple things at once, which got smaller and smaller.

When he was even older, they took him to a new place and gave him a pair of headphones. The rules were to only throw around the green cars, not the purple ones, and to stay where he was. He did what he was told, watching with excitement the pretty fire he was causing. Quickly enough, he got bored, and decided to run off to see everything better.

He sneaked around until he reached right behind one of the big cars that had tipped over, and noticed something underneath. Curious to what it was, he lifted the car slowly. Right in front of him were a dozen of people, all crushed together into a nauseating pile of gore.

By the time they found him, he was screaming and crushing everything around him. They tried to tranquilize him at first, then to shoot him, but he was more than capable of stopping bullets. He only stopped hours later, collapsing from exhaustion.

He vaguely remembers going from doctor to doctor, and them trying to get him to talk. The same people tried to give him the same toys, tried to get him to watch the same movies. Ultimately, they let him see his friends, and he struggled to resist. It didn’t last long. He gave in. And the second he did, they threatened to have them killed if he didn’t comply.

James hesitated for one second, hesitated for two, then crushed his friends’ skulls and collapsed the entire building onto everyone’s heads.

Power: James’s entire life was decided for him, and as such his power is what he wishes most: control. His abilities is telekinesis, the power to influence everything around himself.

THEME & MEANING

This story is about the people society has all but given up on, the secrets they sweep under the rug and make themselves forget.

The irony of the title is that our characters are a couple of people whose lives have been turned upside down due to factors completely out of their control. Now, they have one last stop before they can either be redeemed in the eyes of society, or get thrown into The Well and have to fight for their lives.

However, there is another meaning that is just as important. This world’s entire foundation is comprised of thousands upon thousands of rejects, people who have failed to prove that they’re functional enough to integrate, yet our story only follows a couple of those people. Why? Because they were the ones who were powerful enough for their screams to cause trouble. Unfortunately, in this world, just like in any other, not everyone can be that loud.

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thebluesideofthemoon · 7 years

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The Wall #48: ZOOTOPIA

Well, it's about time I got around to this. Welcome to The Wall, and I'm not going to waste any time because I'm going to have a lot to say. I feel like I don't need to say this, but just in case you haven't seen the movie (not just this one, I mean in general) I'll try to be as spoiler-free as I can. Yeah, I said "try", because sometimes I'll see something as awful as Collateral Beauty or Yoga Hosers where I have to spoil the movie just to get my point firmly across in why those movies are as bad as they are. And yeah, that's a general rule of thumb: if I consider the movie awful I WILL spoil it (So yes, take that as your premature warning that I WILL spoil Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice in the next review. ;D). Seeing as this is the movie that revitalized the series and allowed it to take off in a way far bigger than I could even imagine, I have to pay its respects and give it the proper review it should have had in the past. So, let's dive right into the literal urban jungle that is the colorful world of Zootopia!

I’m not even going to waste time by dabbling in my usual routine of building up my points in a movie of what I liked and what I didn’t because I’m going to say something I haven’t said about a movie this year since Hell or High Water- I absolutely adore this movie. Believe it or not, I wavered a lot in how I felt about this movie throughout the course of the year, but my answer is finally clear. But first, the usual- plot.

In this movie, a young anthropomorphic bunny by the name of Judy Hopps (voiced by Ginnifer Goodwin, whom I last saw in that godawful “romantic comedy”, Something Borrowed back in 2011) dreams of becoming a cop in the big city of Zootopia to make the world a better place. This doesn’t turn out to be that simple as for a bunny trying to even train to become a cop proves to be incredibly difficult, though determined to not give up she pushes on and eventually manages to graduate from her training and be moved into the central district of the Zootopia Police Department, though instead of being assigned into a highly pursued case of tracking down twelve missing mammals, she gets assigned to parking duty. One messy turn of events later allows Judy to be part of the missing mammal case, though on the condition that she only has 48 hours to solve it or she will be fired from her job. She’s stuck with virtually no resources, though manages to find one clue that takes her to one key witness that may hold the answer for the case, in the form of a red fox by the name of Nick Wilde (voiced by Jason Bateman, whom I last saw in 2015’s The Gift, which was actually a pretty good movie… and then the ending happened) who turns out to be pretty uncooperative. The clock is ticking, and the evidence is minimal, so can these two unlikely partners come together for the better of their society?

Continuing with my usual formula this is where I would start listing down the negatives about a movie, and this was the part that I found the most tricky was how to feel about these because I have two: Gazelle, and the ending- specifically the climax.

Let’s start with Gazelle, who is voiced by mega-famous Colombian pop star, Shakira- heeeeey, finally a movie that has someone representing my home country of Colombia that also DOESN’T suck- isn’t that right, Hot Pursuit? Anyway, she suffers from something another animated movie I reviewed (and the first movie I ever reviewed on The Wall, as a matter of fact) which I will now call “DreamWorks Syndrome”. When your movie has DreamWorks Syndrome it will feature a big name voice actor or actress playing a pretty tiny role in spite of their exposure and fame to the general public. Granted, at least Shakira gets to talk in this movie whereas in Angry Birds, Sean Penn could have been replaced by a garbage disposal and the difference would have been none in the slightest. Shakira also isn’t a bad voice actress, then again I’ve been of the belief that pop stars and voice acting is something that goes hand in hand. She’s also at least not out of place in her role, unlike Miss Almost-30-Year-Old Rhianna voicing a 12-year-old girl in Home. I can’t be the only one who thought that she was going to have a bigger role in the movie based on how prominent she was shown in the advertisements. Hell, I was under the belief that the final showdown of the movie was going to take place in one of her concerts, and I was actually right! Well… sort off. As it turns out, that’s what happened in the scrapped version of the movie, not the final one. If you haven’t seen the movie (for whatever reason), that’s not how the movie ends. I’ll get into that (as spoiler-free as possible, of course) in a bit, but I’ll finish with Gazelle and Shakira. Gazelle’s role is pretty minimal and she doesn’t really add much to the movie. She’s not in the movie enough for me to say she’s one of the stand-out characters when the best use of her character involves a running gag about two other characters in the movie fooling around with this app that allows them to digitally insert themselves (or rather, their faces) into a music video featuring her. It’s actually a really funny gag, but that’s the best thing involving her character. The other reason why she’s here is for the movie’s title (and only) song, “Try Everything”. The song is… okay-ish, it’s really put together in a way that it’s pretty much just your typical generic uplifting pop song, though at least with Shakira singing you get her pretty distinct vocals to make the song at least nice to listen to. I’ll admit I was never a big fan of Shakira (my mom and sister LOOOOOVE her, though) so this song is just a “take it or leave it” type of deals- you hear it at two points in the movie, once at a montage, and at the credits for the obligatory “everybody dances” ending.

Speaking of which, when I originally talked about Zootopia I said I noted some pacing issues with the last act of the movie, and knowing what I know about the history of this movie that turned out to be very unsurprising. This movie was basically remade from the ground up at the last minute due to the original concept of the movie being too dark for its own good- and before anyone raises any complaints about “well they should have gone with that darker version”- no they shouldn’t have, though I’ll address that later, as I want to get through the rushed ending over first. So yes, the movie had to be completely remade and that may be what ended up causing the ending of the movie to feel a little fast. To be fair, all of the elements for the climax are there, they’re just blink-and-you-miss them. They didn’t need any more extra time being established- I think even just one extra minute could have made all of the difference. It’s at least more sensible than how Big Hero 6 ended up in a giant pile of explosions and nonsense, but yes I’m aware of the issues here and they sadly have not gone away. So how much does these two things affect how I feel about the movie? I thought about this long and hard, and if I’m going to be completely and totally honest… they don’t. My flag is up- despite this movie’s problems it has a metric ton of AMAZING things going in its favor that its negatives are pretty negligible by comparison.

First of all, I have to give absolutely major kudos to the amazing animation and design of the movie. There’s something particularly special about the way this movie looks to how everything in this world is constructed. The character designs are absolutely great, the city looks amazing- all of the districts are distinctively designed, full of life, and it gives me this absolutely giddy feeling of “holy crap, I want to go there!” I rarely ever get that feeling out of many movies, and that’s one telling sign when I knew this was something special. I could make an entire college essay at how amazing the level of detail in the environement in this movie is, but I really AM trying to keep this short as I can, so let’s just put it this way: A+ for not only the design, but also the REALLY great animation! This movie is fast-paced, colorful, full of great action moments, the expressions are absolutely joyous to look at.

The characters are simply wonderful! The crazy thing is that they’re all types, but the level of development they get, how layered and fleshed out they are really is something to admire. Nick and Judy are a pair that form the typical “cynical guy/optimistic girl” pairing, however a combination of great dialogue, perfect chemistry, as well as a really great level of depth allows them to not only be great foils to each other, but also makes them highly relatable and really easy to sympathize with the both of them. Not just them, this applies to other characters such as Bogo (voiced by Idirs Elba), Clawhauser- who also manages to score one of the saddest scenes in the movie- the other secondary characters are also unbelievably enjoyable, like Nick’s best friend Finnick (voiced by Tommy Lister), or Duke Weaselton (voiced by Alan Tudyk- wait a second, how many Disney movies have you been in now, pal?), and even more bit characters get their own really memorable moments (I’m sure the wolves need no introduction. Huh, I’d say between this and Storks that it’s been good year for wolves). Again, I could really expand on these a lot more, but there’s just no room or time here.

The comedy is absolutely great. It goes between really sharp, witty banter to even the use of puns, though these are used in a much smarter way than I’ve seen plenty other movies (especially animated ones) use them- they’re pretty much background gags. They’re never in your face, and they’re pretty much used for scenery, which makes them really great to go hunt down when rewatching the movie- I certainly did.

While “Try Everything” may be really far from the best pop song (though considering how awful of a year for pop music 2016 was, it may be one of the few that actually qualifies as even “listenable”) the rest of the soundtrack is really fun. Movie scores are something I don’t usually notice because 90% of the time they’re often really generic and forgettable, and then there’s movie scores like in Accidental Love which are grating and make you want to kill yourself. But this one has a score that is really enjoyable to listen to, goes really well with the movie and adds that little extra hint of fun to a lot of scenes (like Judy giving out the parking tickets for the first time, or her chasing Duke in Little Rodentia). I wouldn’t say this is the biggest positive about the movie, but I think it’s worth pointing out nonetheless. No, if you want a REAL major positive here it is:

The movie manages to combine a lot of really great elements that makes it a really enjoyable family movie, from the comedy to the characters, but it also has some really brilliant uses of filmmaking to make the movie also a really great mystery and leave little extra touches for anyone watching the movie to notice, even when they’re not in your face, or as I like to call it the “Edgar Wright Method” (He may not have been the first one to do this, but it’s my example so shut up and read). If any of you have seen a movie by Edgar Wright- and knowing my audience, I’m going to say that’s probably most of you- this movie pulls a really nice trick of putting tiny little bits of plot littered in the background. The brilliance of this is that it allows the audience to notice things that any less competent filmmaker would have just simply presented, but with someone like Edgar Wright he just leaves things like really great, funny gags way in the back that you may catch out of the corner of your eye, or other little moments that make you go “rewind that, I want to see that again”, which happens here but in a way that sets up the final act of the movie. Seeing the movie for the first time I’ll admit, I didn’t see any of these extra details, but now that I’ve seen the movie several times I feel like I’m discovering something new every time I rewatch it. Even shots are reused to make really sharp, contrasting parallels that actually help in the intensity and drama, as well as the investment in the audience.

I love movies that feel rewarding to revisit, these kinds of movies actually acknowledge that their audience is smart enough that they don’t need to have exposition jammed down their throat, they can find these details for themselves because they’re that observant, and seeing this kind of fine crafting in an animated movie of all things is the kind of thing that I want other movies like Sing, or Ice Age: Collision Course, or hell, even movies like Kubo and the Two Strings can learn a thing or two about Zootopia- movies are a visual form of storytelling, you don’t have to talk down to anyone just because your movie is restricted to needing to be seen by a younger audience, they’re smart too, and movies like this can really go a long way into showing what animation can really do.

Oh yeah, there’s a message in this movie, isn’t there? I pushed this until the very end on purpose, because, like I said, this movie has a lot of amazing things going for it that this is just icing on the cake. The message of prejudice is something that clearly hasn’t gone overlooked- it really doesn’t take a rocket scientist to notice it. Now I did say that I don’t think that the old concept for the movie would have worked, and here’s why: it would have come across as insanely heavy-handed. The movie would have suffered from a grim atmosphere, compounding that with the message of “prejudice is bad” would have come across as a more of a “no duh” moment, rather than how it’s presented here in the way that it’s entirely possible for someone, even if they are the nicest people in the world, to have prejudices of their own. Now, I’m being very specific with my wording here- “prejudice” and not “racism”, because the thing that it seems that some people who failed to grasp the point of the movie love to connect this movie as being a movie that’s about racism, when it could really be applied to a wide variety of different scenarios. Something else I don’t think this movie gets enough credit for is the fact that it not only gets you thinking about it, but it also helps you understand it. Not to give anything away but from the way we see one certain character be treated it actually becomes perfectly understandable why they act the way that they do- which is actually something that is really scary to think about. Again, I need to stress: “prejudice” NOT “racism”. There IS a difference, and it’s a very dangerous difference at that, and the way the movie deals with it is absolutely brilliant, as well as the fact that it answers what it can be done about it. It’s a crime mystery with a good enthralling mystery, and really smart commentary that also works within the context of the world, so even if you wanted to completely eliminate the message of this movie being connected to the real world in any way (though that’d be something really difficult to do), you can- the movie still works! The idea of taking a really beautiful, utopia and showing its ugly insides is a much smarter, more clever approach to deliver this kind of message; while there’s an obvious right and wrong, the morality is a little bit more grey and that allows you to discover shades about the characters and the world and how they all grow and develop into what, I consider to be, one of the true masterpieces of the decade. (2,636 words. This has, undoubtedly become my most positive review to date- and no, Finding Dory doesn't count because I spent half of that ranting about Pixar. Music: Shovel Knight- High Above the Land)

You know, back when I reviewed this movie the first time I gave it a... admittedly, joke review, and a joke score to go with it, but that was an intentional decision to exaggerate how I felt about the movie at the time. Though... that may not have been as far from the truth as I thought.

Yes, you're reading that right- not a 10, but an 11. I thought about this long and hard, but I can definitively say that Zootopia has joined an elite club of movies that I would call my unquestionable favorites. There's the 10s, movies which are absolutely perfect in every way, but then there's these movies- these are the movies that go above and beyond and will forever be part of a very small pantheon of movies that I not only find truly spectacular but absolutely worth watching again and again and never get tired of it. Now, if you have any problem with this... well, I'm assuming you made it 'till the end of the review, but hey that's what the comments are for, aren't they? And if not, then you're more than welcome to drink a cool, tall glass of "Shut the Fuck Up". Either way, it ain't going to ruin the way I sleep at night. Sigh... if only the next movie I had to talk about was going to be as fun as this. Next time, guys... I destroy Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice. Oh yes, it WILL be a bloodbath. Until then~

#The Wall #Movie review #Zootopia #Disney #Catch Up January

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gravitascivics · 5 years

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UPDATING CIVILITY, PART IV

[Note: This posting, the previous several postings, and at least the one to follow are a restatement of what has been addressed previously in this blog. Some of the sentences to come have been provided before but the concern is that other information has been discovered and an update seems appropriate. The blog has not changed the overall message – that civics education is seriously deficient – but some of the evidence supporting that message needs updating.]

This blog will now venture into addressing civility less from a quantitative perspective – reporting on how many people are rude and how many people storm out of stores because they were treated disrespectfully – to describing the social forces that are producing this less than desired condition. It will use the language of personal responsibility and citizenship to describe what is happening in this aspect of the nation’s social life.

Many people in this nation are currently concerned with the economy; at least polls seem to indicate that since the financial crisis of 2008, economic issues top voter interest. Yes, this concern is usually upper most in voters’ minds but given how so many were negatively affected by the Great Recession and its aftereffects, one can hear the anxious stridency among the populous when it comes to jobs and income.

How are civic concerns intermixed with economic problems? One can intuitively sense that there is a connection but how exactly do they relate? To have one see the connection, one needs a workable understanding of the political construct this blog promotes, federation theory. Remember that a construct is the overall view, and accompanying emotions, about some element of reality. In terms of civics, that would be over the governmental/political institution of a society.

Not only does this account want to analyze how economic conditions dispose people to either being civil or not, or how civility affects the economy, but it wants to do it in a way that illustrates how conceived notions of fellow citizens affect how one deals with economic realities. And, as the last two postings indicate, a key civic concept this account employs and is central to federation theory is the concept of social capital.[1]

This concept hints at a level of meaningful inter-connectiveness among citizens. While this whole notion will be further developed in subsequent pages of this blog, to be clear, the call here is not about instituting a pie in the sky nirvana or extreme and unrealistic altruism. Robert D. Putnam's utilization of this idea, social capital, does refer to people looking at their society as something greater than their immediate interests and ambitions, but does not delegitimize those interests.

Below, this blog will report a great deal about what exactly is being promoted by using the notion of social capital. Here, the effort is to point out that good citizens are those who embrace social capital as a positive ideal and are willing to seek its qualities in themselves and in their associations and community.

Its opposite would be narcissism and selfishness. Of course, everyone is entitled to pursue his/her individual goals and interests. The question is how one balances the demands of one’s ambitions and those of the collectives to which one belongs.

Many political writings have been about this tension and there exists varied arguments as to what leads to a productive solution to the tension. Dysfunctional approaches to handling this tension is seen as a key element in determining the levels of incivility that exist within a society.

There are social philosophies that equate economic policy and healthy social arrangements. For example, promotors of pure market values tend to do that. Adam Smith, who to many was the father of capitalism, argued that the greater good is achieved by individuals pursuing their individual interests. The cooperation entailed in providing a wanted good or service within the context of a competitive market, through the “invisible hand,” produces the best results for society in its varied aspects.

But while capitalism has given nations untold wealth and prosperity, markets do fail and at times will, if unchecked, lead to social detriment. For example, Jean M. Twenge and W. Keith Campbell[2] present a convincing argument, backed by statistical evidence, that excessive narcissism and all of its manifestations were central in creating the conditions that led to the economic crisis initiated by the onset of the near collapse of our financial market back in '08.

An irrational degree of self-enhancement promoted the excessive materialism and resulting debt which accrued from buying houses beyond people's means to running up credit card charges which placed people in unsustainable positions. Of course, lending institutions, run by equally narcissistic or purely self-centered motives, fed this monumental irresponsibility.

No, this is not an economic treatise – beyond the expertise of the writer – but here is a take on the relevant developments over the last several decades. There has been, since the 1980s, an enormous shift of wealth to the upper classes. Quoting experts Jacob Hacker of Yale and Paul Pierson of Berkeley: “Over the last generation more and more of the rewards of growth have gone to the rich and superrich. The rest of America, from the poor through the upper middle class, has fallen further and further behind.”[3]

Economies that experience this type of imbalance see consequences detrimental to their overall health. One consequence tends to be that this inordinate level of income and wealth to the upper class needs to be invested. At the same time there is a demand gap; i.e., otherwise productive economic activity is hampered by a diminishing ability of the low and middle classes to consume. When this happens to any meaningful degree, two results can occur.

One, the excess money (capital) in the hands of the upper class becomes fodder for developing “bubbles;” i.e., ill-conceived investments that heighten asset prices like stocks and real estate when the fundamental economic conditions do not warrant their increases. And two, the lower classes engage in excessive borrowing to make up for the lost income (to maintain their standards of living).[4]

While these sorts of economic machinations occur, a certain animal spirit is introduced – or more accurately, encouraged – that lead to other irresponsible practices. In those pre ’08 years, for example, there were also leveraged investment schemes where borrowing was collateralized by assets attained with borrowed money. These developments progressed in the years leading up to the collapse.

In all of this, one has a lack of investment that generates long-term, needed assets that help develop such productivity enhancing projects (like infrastructure) that create sufficient middle-class employment in the economy. Hence, a diminishing middle-class occurs. And all of this is not new; the bubble effect and the excessive leveraging just described were conditions that preceded the Great Depression of the 1930s. Therefore, what was experienced more recently was a retake, but in a more complex world economy.[5]

While the ravages of the 2008 collapse did not approach those of the Great Depression, the pain associated with the Great Recession has been real and is still with the nation as segments of its people continue to struggle these many years later. Only more recently has the nation begun to get long-term unemployment under some level of control.

Whether this account is right or wrong, one did see in the pre-collapse period excessive narcissism based on assumptions created by faulty economic conditions. The nation spent way over what many of its people were earning (by borrowing on the artificially inflated equity in houses) for a long time. That time ran out in ’08 and one only hopes that the next folly – some new bubble – does not materialize.

Economically, there are still increasing levels of income and wealth disparity and this trend continues to grow, even after the ’08 collapse. The use of the concept, social capital, does lead one to see another consequence of this disparity. In Putnam’s more recent book, Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis,[6] he writes about how the disparity has led to a high degree of economic and social segregation among the nation’s economic classes.

America is not only lacking in social capital, but it is also creating the social dynamics that will make it almost impossible to sustain any social infrastructure that would support it. Therefore, one can expect in the coming years and decades less public-spirited citizenry, less equality in terms of both economic factors – such as opportunity – and political factors, and less trust and cooperation. The nation will most likely experience weakening communal bonds and increased animosity among economic segments of the economy.

And this is not limited to how citizens interrelate. For example, Oliver Bullough describes how it has become the public policy of certain urban areas of this nation to proactively allure money investments by kleptocrats and thieves from around the world. He highlights the cities of New York and Miami in those pursuits.[7] What possibly can go wrong? At a minimum, the social qualities such policy engenders cannot be seen as promoting those values one associates with social capital.

Such policies and the economic activities described above lead to national politics becoming even more strange and antagonistic. One cannot be surprised if this antagonism adopts a more organized form. With social media as a resource, one can imagine an organized and militant response by disadvantaged groups. Seen through this prism, the current political environment with its bizarre undertakings one sees in the news, makes tragic sense.

The point is that the nation is reaping what it sowed; at least one is tempted to see it that way. And most telling is what Putnam points out: that most Americans are only semi-conscious of these causal developments. They are simply not being instructed as to these socioeconomic developments. They know that things are not as good as they used to be, but they have little understanding of what is taking place.

To illustrate his points, Putnam writes about two kids who live a few miles apart, one a product of an advantaged family, the other of a disadvantaged situation – one can’t even use the term “family” to describe his home life. Despite their proximity to each other, there is little to no chance they will ever have any contact with each other.

This is desperately different from the social world Putnam grew up in back in the 1950s. In that earlier world, his high school had kids from differing social and economic classes. The level of interaction among the different segments of the student body was healthy and often. This is not so true today and the level of such interaction is becoming more and more infrequent.

For one thing, poorer kids are stuck in dysfunctional schools while wealthier kids are more apt to attend private schools. The “indivisibility” of our nation is becoming a memory. It needs to address this development by, in part, having its economic metrics account for the cost factors that result from such segregation. One way it can begin to address this growing dysfunction is by changing what is taught in civics classes: they can include lessons that describe and explain the sources of such realities.

Civics education has not been responsible for either the economic collapse of 2008 or the class segregation one presently sees growing, but it was, along with many other factors, complicit. Its content has been devoid of information reflecting what was or is happening. It has obviously not successfully promoted social capital.

Such instruction, to the degree it could have been effective, would have promoted a whole array of values that would have questioned many of the assumptions that were being made and that proved or are proving false. With excessive self-absorption and little to no concern for the general welfare, people were easily led to cast a blind eye on the irresponsible behavior in which many had been and still are engaged.

For one, those who were/are responsible for this civics content just didn't or don’t want to see what today should seem very clear: the nation engages in self-defeating courses of action when the general view is limited to self-interest. What is worse, the average American still doesn’t recognize this deficiency to any meaningful degree.

Is the claim here that most Americans don’t care for the common good? No, it is not. But the claim here is that there are not enough people who are concerned for the common good; who share enough social capital. And in that, civics education shares a meaningful amount of the blame for this deficiency.

[1] As used and defined by the political scientist, Robert Putnam, who defines social capital as a societal quality characterized by having an active, public-spirited citizenry, egalitarian political relations, and a social environment of trust and cooperation; it speaks to communal bonds and cooperative interactions. See Robert D. Putnam, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community (New York, NY: Simon & Schuster, 2000).

[2] Jean M. Twenge and W. K. Campbell, The Narcissism Epidemic: Living in the Age of Entitlement (New York, NY: Free Press, 2009).

[3] Bog Herbert, “Fast Track to Inequality,” The New York Times, November 1, 2010, accessed May 1, 2019, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/02/opinion/02herbert.html? r=1&src=me&ref=homepage.

[4] At the time of this posting, there is current concern over a debt bubble being accrued by large corporations. Two reports on this development acknowledge the high levels of debt but see it from different perspectives over its potential to result in meaningful damage to the economy. They are as follows: Peter Tchir, “Corporate Debt Keeps Piling Up,” Forbes, January 27, 2019, accessed May 3, 2019, https://www.forbes.com/sites/petertchir/2019/01/27/corporate-debt-keeps-piling-up/#2b1ef1c57910 AND “Should the World Worry about America’s Corporate-/Debt Mountain?” The Economist, March 14, 2019, accessed May 3, 2019, https://www.economist.com/briefing/2019/03/14/should-the-world-worry-about-americas-corporate-debt-mountain.

[5] See Thomas L. Friedman, The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century (New York, NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007).

[6] Robert D. Putnam, Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis (New York, NY: Simon and Schuster, 2015).

[7] Oliver Bullough, Moneyland: Why Thieves and Crooks Now Rule the World and How to Take It Back (London, England: Profile Publishers, 2019).

#civility #civics #civics education #social studies

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randomjerinamo · 6 years

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Setting the Cat Among the Pigeons

Article in full- 'Setting the Cat Among the Pigeons'

Frank Zappa was quoted as saying ‘jazz isn’t dead; jazz just smells funny.’ The same can now be said of capitalism, as the free market becomes a stagnant monopoly of corporate giants feeding a host of leech-like shareholders and impotent bureaucrats. Capitalism has been working well for the past century of economic and technological growth; so why is it not working now? Why is an entire generation looking down the barrel of a future completely lacking in the opportunities that previous generations enjoyed? The answer may be found in the lack of a truly liberal approach to business; as our enlightened society clings to antiquated forms of aristocratic privilege alongside the radical ideologies of freedom that came to light during the French Revolution.

Many alternatives to Capitalism have been floated, outvoted and sunk in the past hundred and fifty years, but we all know that the Marxist cure for Capitalism is worse than the disease... don’t we? Why are we even talking about a system of totalitarian programming where every facet of society is controlled by a ‘democratic leader’ who can have you and your family shot by the secret police for writing anti-government poetry on a wall that nobody owns? The fact that people are talking about it is an indication of how badly our capitalist system is failing to provide the average person with an equal opportunity to share in the rewards of our exceedingly rich society.

One of the leading proponents for democratic change in Australia is Helen Razer, who makes a very good argument against Capitalism in her book ‘Total Propaganda’ (2017); only once making the mistake of implying that a fictional ‘state’ can be trusted with the administration of law, health, equity and education- without being corrupted by the human vices of greed, apathy, lust, fear or spite. Historically speaking, socialists have proven themselves to be just as prone to corruption as the capitalist next door; from trade union leaders to church raffle-ticket sellers, but so long as the capitalist door keeps falling off its hinges, the ugly head of Marxist class-warfare will continue to raise itself above the level of healthy debate. And while the likelihood of Marxist revolution is slim, a situation such as this allows the dominant ideology of conservative wealth accumulation to continue unabated, while the divide between rich and poor is filled by sectarian politics and would-be authoritarians.

The real test of left wing liberalism versus right wing authoritarianism occurred almost a hundred years ago in Spain, when King Alfonso XIII gave up his right of absolute power and allowed a moderate government to be formed in place of his bumbling efforts to modernise the Spanish nation in the early 20th century (Beevor, 2006). This experiment in democracy was torn apart by the democratic process which saw Communist, Socialist and Anarcho-Syndicalist factions pool their resources to beat the Monarchists (who wanted King Alfonso back on the throne) and also the moderate government that represented the rest of Spain (who just wanted a fair share of what could be produced by Spanish industry and agriculture).

What followed was a war of Nazi-supported fascists and Kremlin-supported communists. The fascists eventually won but not before the communists had annihilated most of their comrades who helped them to win the last free election to be held in Spain for half a century (when General Franco, the winner of the civil war, died in 1975). The Wikipedia entry for General Franco actually differentiates between ‘fascist’ and ‘conservative authoritarian’ governments which adds another twist to the political wrangle that resulted in the second World War between France and Germany (and their respective allies) only a year after the war in Spain ended.

George Orwell wrote a first-hand account of his experiences in the Spanish Civil War (1938), having arrived to fight with the international volunteers who supported the Marxist battle against fascism; fleeing for his life when the Spanish communists began purging their own army for suspected traitors. He also wrote ‘Animal Farm’ (1945) and we seem to be in the same predicament now as Orwell’s cows, horses and sheep were when the pigs moved into the big house and let everyone else do all the work.

Would it even be possible that capitalism could lead to the same situation as Orwell depicted for the inhabitants of Stalin’s Soviet Socialist Republic? Is there any similarity between Russia in the 1940’s and America in the 2010's? The Communists didn’t need to own land to control the lives of the Russian people; they had a political mandate that gave them absolute power over the land, resources and industry. So too did the kings and queens of Europe; before the signing of the Magna Carta which was the first legally binding document that gave some guarantee that those in a position of power would be accountable for their actions.

So what guarantee do we have today that the people in power will use it responsibly? Is your boss going to pay your super? Is your landlord going to fix that leaking tap? Is there a modern-day William Randolph Hearst (aka Citizen Kane) who makes casual phone calls to the U.S. President to suggest changes to American foreign policy? Maybe all bets are off now that China and Russia have successfully converted to capitalist economies run by totalitarian dictators/conservative authoritarians?

Capitalism actually worked pretty well for Western nations during the 20th century, enabling the working classes to step up to a standard of living that almost equated to an egalitarian society- with middle class standards- during the 1950’s, 60’s & 70’s, but under closer inspection, it might have been the socialist demands of trade-unions that gave the average person enough money in their pocket to support the global economy; before the trade unions got so powerful that a state of emergency had to be called by the British Government to avoid a financial collapse.

So… can Capitalism and Socialism work together to avoid the situation of a stagnant market and shrinking economy wherein conservative factions consolidate their positions as shareholders, board members and real estate tycoons? Or do we need to remove the last vestiges of ‘noble birth’ as indicated by hereditary title for this to become a reality for the next generation of landless serfs/empowered consumers? Does anyone have the right to exact payment on land or property that they have ceased to occupy? And can the English Crown really be used today to enact the same injustices that occurred during the Enclosures of the English common lands (Fairlie, 2009) some five hundred years ago?

We all know how negative gearing works; you borrow money to buy a house and get the tenants to pay back the loan for you; alternatively, you can pay somebody else’s mortgage on the house you occupy while you try to save up for a deposit/equity-based bank loan on a home of your own. Whichever way you look at it, the banks are making a lucrative profit on the basic human requirement for shelter and security, which is fine if people are voluntarily partaking of the opportunity that banks provide, but when there is no other choice then it begins to look like a protection racket.

Protection rackets have worked very well in the past, with everyone from Pope Alexander XI to Al Capone making a tidy profit from being the baddest guy on the block, but do the ideals of a capitalist free-market allow for this kind of behaviour? Or do the democratic principles set out by the likes of Plato, Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Abraham Lincoln make this kind of graft and corruption unacceptable for a society that seeks to build a better future for their children?

Alas, this digression can only end in bitter and divisive arguments, so let us look for a solution that allows neo-liberalists and social democrats to profit equally as they work together to prevent Trump, Putin and Xi Jinping from creating a ‘panopticon’ that locks the world into a craggle-like state of Legomania. Needless to say, it would be unwise to nationalise the banks, media and mining companies at this stage of the game, but perhaps we could take one small step in the direction of economic prosperity for all Australians; and perhaps the rest of the world.

Public housing has long been seen as a saving grace for those who have failed to find gainful employment, but what if it was the first and foremost opportunity for first home-owners to purchase a modest dwelling for a minimal amount of interest? And what if these dwellings were designed, built and maintained by the next generation of young Australians who may have difficulty finding employment in other sectors? And what if these public housing projects not only incorporated green technology and urban-friendly recreational areas but also provided a sanctuary for the elderly, disabled and long-term unemployed?

This can only work if a mutual obligation agreement is, a) agreed to by tenants, and b) enacted by local authorities, thus ensuring that a harmonious environment is maintained wherein the values of peaceful coexistence and inter-generational prosperity can be cultivated. Which basically means that getting pissed and bashing your missus will get you, a) arrested by the police, and b) kicked the fuck out of the building. But just think of how much money people will have to spend if they don’t have to pay rent or an exorbitantly tailored mortgage!

Not only that, but the money saved on housing-crisis centres, emergency services and health/aged care will be phenomenal, and if people have a place to call their own then they will be that much happier spending their time redecorating the kitchen, rather than overdosing in the stairwell. We all just want a safe place to raise our kids. Let’s give our hardworking police, ambo’s and child welfare people a break from their routine of drugs, violence and verbal abuse; everyone knows the story about the unhappy rat and the cocaine-laced water bottle, let’s build a happy cage that people can move on from once they are ready to invest in the open real-estate market.

As the capitalist bubbles continue to burst, we just might need Milton Keynes to get us out of another Great Depression; the banks have made a very big profit over the past hundred years of continuous growth (they made enough out of the last housing boom to fund a national space program) and maybe it’s time for them to invest in the future of all Australians? And yes, there are terrible things happening all over the world but even if we can’t beat them all in one day, I still don’t think we need to join them.

References-

Razer, H 2017, Total Propaganda, Allen &Unwin, Sydney.

Beevor, A 2006, The Battle for Spain, Penguin, London.

Fairlie, S 2009, A Short History of Enclosure in Britain, in The Land Magazine, Retrieved 17/05/18 from http://www.thelandmagazine.org.uk/articles/short-history-enclosure-britain

Govier, T 1992, The Right to Eat and the Duty to Work, Chap. 8: Economic Justice and Welfare In Social Ethics: Morality and Social Policy, edited by Thomas A. Mappes and Jane S. Zembaty, 372-83. New York: McGraw-Hill.

Levitsky, S & Ziblatt, D 2018, How Democracies Die, Crown Press, New York, 2018.

Orwell, G 1938, Homage to Catalonia, Retrieved 27/06/18 from http://www.george-orwell.org/Homage_to_Catalonia/index.html

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lendoco · 6 years

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IOTA is first in IoT. IIoT Telecom is planning to be first in IIoT on Blockchain. Do you know what’s difference?

The Internet of things (IoT) and Industrial Internet of things (IIoT) is similar in principle of operation and the name of the technology, but are designed for different tasks. These technologies are developing in parallel, and hardly ever have any intersection in future.

These are completely different concepts, the similarity between which is only in abbreviations and high-level concepts. But if you concentrate on the details, these concepts go hand in hand sometimes, borrowing some plans one from another.

IOTA is First in IoT. IIoT Telecom is planning to be First in IIoT.

Where IoT is applied today? IoT involves domestic use — the technology tries to provide maximum comfort for the user. IoT can serve a very wide range, IoT is often called: travel’s Internet, taxi’s Internet, technologies’ Internet and etc. These ecosystems typically use low-cost end devices and applications.

It function based on the IoT:

Surveillance cameras with recognition of situations and faces of people;

Speech recognition systems to control music playback;

Vehicles that travel themselves and can exchange information with each other to ensure the comfort of passengers;

Smart Home & Smart City. According to Experts, in the next decade IoT will consist of hundreds of millions different devices connected together, which will entail the task of ensuring their interaction with each other.

Developing its own protocols and standards, IOTA with Protocol Tangle is initially focused on the standards and requirements of the IoT.

It is confirmed by the following developments:

Principle of operation of the Protocol Tangle — IOTA has done a good job in security and deep development of interaction and microtransactions nodes as “each other” on the basis of PoW; IOTA has tried to solve the speed problem of micropayments, which is vital in the IoT. However, such interaction is really necessary for IoT, but it is not vital for IIoT. In IIoT, the interaction takes place” Everyone — IIoT Platfotm”, and all of the above benefits are not quite needed. In this case, if IIoT Platform is decentralized, the interaction of each sensor/meter occurs only with one of the components of the decentralized IIoT Platform.

IIoT application areas The main value of using the Industrial Internet of things (IIoT) is achieving maximum energy efficiency of any production or urban network. In other words, the calculation is based on the direct cost of optimization through the use of technology.

The direction of IIoT is completely focused on the tasks of the Industry and its specific branches, such as, for example, municipal lighting systems, smart animal husbandry, diagnostics of pipe breakout and etc.

First of all, IIoT is the interaction of sensors that control the operation of equipment in the production, during the processing of raw materials or, for example, during oil production at the tower. The key to this definition is the autonomy of devices and their ability to transmit data independently, without human intervention. For this reason, devices such as smartphones and tablets cannot be included in this segment. As noted earlier, the data is not sent each-other (IoT), but each-IIoT Platform (IIoT).

The result of applying the IIoT:

The total percentage of defects is reduced;

Improves the efficiency of the process chain, production lines;

It is possible to carry out better process monitoring;

You can more clearly trace the chain of product creation and optimize the process of the production line;

Reduced costs;

Increases the comfort of living in cities. In terms of technology, the Industrial Internet includes the following components:

Devices and sensors capable of recording events, collecting, analyzing and transmitting data over the network.

Communication — network infrastructure that combines heterogeneous communication channels — mobile, satellite, wireless and fixed. Platform for the Industrial Internet of things, designed for device control and communication, applications and Analytics. In this case, the platforms should include the development environment and it security solutions. The company IIoT Telecom plans to provide the service IIoT based on the IaaSB service — Infrastructure-AS-A-Service on the Blockchain. As part of a solution — wireless network LPWAN, decentralized IIoT Platform on the Blockchain (using EOS technology) and a large variety of sensors.

At the same time, IIoT does not need a high speed of payment delivery. Payments can take place upon the provision of services, or even once a month.

The advantages of using the IIoT Efficient production is impossible with separate operation of sensors: Industrial Internet of things on Blockchain from IIoT Telecom allows you to collect all the information and optimize any production process.

Thanks to IIoT, it is possible to connect all sensors into a single network, collect and analyze information from different stages of production simultaneously, which will increase its efficiency and reduce the number of defects.

Another possibility of IIoT is the monitoring of the state of the environment in the immediate vicinity of production. While previously the main task was to obtain data on what is happening in the production itself, the new requirements also involve compliance with environmental standards. Here applications IIoT almost limitless.

Together with the appearance of IIoT, it is possible to see what is happening with the environmental parameters. For example, IIoT allows you to measure indicators such as humidity, pollution and the composition of the atmosphere, as well as other parameters within the range of human production activities.

IIoT Telecom develops its solutions, initially focusing on the standards and needs of IIoT.

It is vital to ensure the development of correct algorithms for processing the collected data, the preparation of specific solutions to improve production on the basis of these data. Things like speed of payments and algorithms of interaction of the system components go into the background.

Find out more: https://iiot.tel/blog/

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clemencegrouin-rigaux · 6 years

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SYMPOSIUM : Bio-Inspired and Circular Design - 02/02/2018

-MORNING SESSION

INTRODUCTION

Tony Juniper, ‘if we are going to accommodate the needs and aspirations of upwards of 10 billion people, then we are going to have to do things in radically different ways. Getting from where we are to where we need to be’ Theme is to look at biology in design Steve Jobs, ‘A new era is beginning’ Designers needed to come up with new ways of doing things Will celebrate diverse creative and tangent practices

MAISON/O An incubator of sustainable intelligence

DESIGN+BIOLOGY+ENGINEERING

‘A new generation of creatives are emerging, who see that, far from being constraining, sustainability offers a fantastic new set of creative levers – enabling them to think up entirely new ways for people to go about their lives’.

QUESTIONS How do we integrate biology in the design process? How do we reinvent architecture to adopt living materials? How do we incorporate weather patterns into architecture?

The Living Founded and ran an architecture firm an design studio called the Living Introduction to his design ecosystem Involves a hybrid of things Research Books Buildings Topics involve sustainability Design with biology is different to other forms Robustness of a population rather than optimisation of an individual

1. Bio Computing Using living organisms to compute and process conditions around them to solve human problems, such as carbon emissions Working with AirBus to make lighter weight planes to then produce less carbon emissions Design entirely new airplanes based on biology Designing the partition in an aeroplane that was more light weight and can withstand massive pressure Growth of slime mould, an incredible natural living system Used this system to help design this aero partition Used the networks in the slime mould and mimicked it to create strength within the structure Created thousands of possible partition designs Created an algorithm to work out a large set of data that created possible designs Using tools of computation that are newly available Then apply human judgement to look at which ones make sense Used this natural system at multiple scales Wanted to push the limits of new technologies About 50% lighter than the original partition Currently undergoing testing to fly A320 planes Could save over 1 billion metric tonnes of carbon emissions

2. Bio Sensing Using organisms to detect invisible conditions of environment, such as water quality Sensors, LED lights, small circuits Using living organs and building materials: blue mussels The amount mussels open and close their shells is an incredible accurate way of detecting water pollution Artificial Intelligence + Natural Intelligence Has evolved over millions of years Lights are the ‘visual context of the city’

3. Bio Fabricating/Manufacturing Using living organisms to be tiny factories and manufacture. the building blocks for architecture. Project for MoMA Design a temporary structure Natural Carbon Cycle Temporarily borrow from the carbon cycle and contribute to this healthy loop Start with low value raw materials

Mycelium Root structures that grow over time Often binds together material Forests natural composting system Can create interesting geometric patterns Can also be used to make physical objects Combine it with low value agricultural waste Can make any shapes that can be made from a mould Can be used as packaging Wanted to create a new building block for architecture Tested the strength of individual bricks This material is very different on the inside to the outside, it has a skin on the outside and inside is very combust The outside is waterproof but then if you cut it in half, it is absorbant Made a tower out of these ‘mushroom bricks’ Has about 10,000 bricks Their idea of design is to test them out in public, culture and people

Books Allow us to operate on a different register ‘Embodied Energy and Design’, explores sustainability and architecture Embodies energy is all the energy required to extract, transport, process, construct, etc the product This has been increasing over time

Buildings Design that can be changed and flexible according to situations Using buildings as research Radiant floors Structure made from engineered timbre Façade is made from salvaged material Spaces designed for both humans and machines

The Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL Why Livings Things?

Bio-Integrated Design/Architecture How they can integrate biology in architecture and also the design process We have nature in our cities ‘Urban Greening’ Inserted scaffolds that were impregnated with algae A wall or surface that had a partifuclar area of growth The algae would break from the petri dish

Cryptogamic Covers Summaries algaes, lichens, mosses, some ferns We tend to clean these off buildings

Urban Microgeography Used as an observational design tool

Impure Aesthetics Often very patchy

Try and apply a biomimetic model to her practice Create a connection between different themes Fold The role of aesthetic and design to approach social and poltical issues Discuss architecture Energy and information into articulation The disciplinary boundary of architecture Design, biology and computation How do we make our world cleaner and less toxic How can we design with the ‘sticky mess’? Intersection of biology computation and design A form of bio-artificial intelligence Collective intelligence The pre industrial Have been exploring algae Started with the idea of effectively indexing information First prototype in 2006 Trying to index through organic matter Possibility of framing matter and opening a conversation of the inhuman ages Bacteria of microorganisms can be dangerous Embracing the aptitude and changing to design Mythology is a catalyst of static form Modernity has sanitised our cities What is artificial? Our image of nature Descruction, decay, etc, she names some of the most fundamental elements of nature ‘The dark face of ecology’ The biological products because bio-citizens to us

‘Urban Algae Farm’ Equilibrium There are multiple interactions within buildings Micro-organisms grow faster with the life of the building Biomass can be used as energy and food A new kind of symbiosis These can keep evolving Design a new anthropology for this new emergence

‘BioTechHut’ Their first permanent algae farm project Sufficient Able to produce food in the form of proteins, the equivalent of what 12 people need to survive daily Can absorb daily

BioTallin Video Tallin Architecture Beinnale Looks at the city from an anthropocentric point of view Everything is symbiotic Landscape and the city Aim to mobilise artificial and natural intelligence A platform for experiementation, research and practice New paradigm of architecture

-AFTERNOON SESSION

MAISON/O How do we grow animal-free liquid leather? How can designers integrate biomimicry principles into the development of new materials and products? How do we train bacteria to produce a colour range? How do we design for bio-circular manufacturing systems?

MODERN MEADOW Team lead for materials degisn Biofabrication company Design + Biology + Engineering

Animal Free Leather Design and edit DNA to instrust and manufacture the cells of DNA These cells multiply producing. the collagen, the proteins that makes up the leather. Finally: assemble collagen into unique structures and materials.

What else can we do with this technology? No animals needed Where is the structure set if you are no longer taking from an animal Leather is a found material so these constraints are no longer necessary MoMA ‘Is Fashion Modern’ Took 111 fashion items from history Chose to design the graphic t-shirt White cotton t-shirt that has been deconstructed and joined back together using their material Can work with this new material as a liquid Made stitchless seams What new ways can they manufacture objects Bio leather but needed to consider a new name Brand name: ZOA

‘Grown of ZOA’ Aim to push a conversation around materiality Not finished products, more like prototypes to push this conversation Guiding principle: what can we do that we cannot do with traditional leather? Can control the grain, and where this goes Presents a relief piece where the three-dimensional shapes are grown Leather Lace: Layering on the liquid leather Adds the three-dimensional element to it Can also spray on the leather to silk and holds the silk flexibility Advancing science, age of genetics, how this has informed the design process Understand how we can engineer new properties and new characteristics in materials

Background in architecture Working with pigment producing bacteria How do we give these new materials a place and a name?

Design x biotech - Faber Futures Embedding consumer bio technology- bacterias who produce extra ressources/ pigment molecules

Embed her findings in society in a sustainable way Biology can rapid prototypes in ways that humans are unable to do What does this mean from a textile point of view? Using up to 500 times less water using this bacteria dyeing method

Ginkgo Bioworks X FaberFutures How can you scale up this method ? Infrastructure determines how big a product can be

Mediated Matter- Engineered Print Had to build new tools To make the process a craft she needs to maintain a level of consistency Residency. Assemblage : lo-tech algorithms /design variables : control to some level - How to come up with new aesthetic of the final piece ?

‘Assemblage 001’ was their first completed garment

How does this interface with the broader economy? How biology informs practice

Future Craft : hyper specialize hybrid technologies signal / the rise of the niche market. Convergence : digitalized biology has democratized the creation of complex biological consumer products. Metabolic Materality : biofacturing process and biological characteristics of an organism now define a brand identity and its business model.

Industrial Biodesign : Big Bang Projects - Guillian Graves

Questions Want to be able to craft new materials and techniques that do not have the same destructive properties as their predecessors

 Design & Science for a more desirable and sustainable future 10 years ago started to work with nature Using nature as inspiration to design more sustainable products AskNature.com We do not necessarily have the technology to mimic nature to such small scales Uses tea fermentation to get material

bacterias - fermentation- cellulose : could be use as a material ( transform organic waste )

Air Pollution Indoor air pollution more deadly as we spend 80% of our time inside Created a system of appliances that calculate the air pollution

Always been fascinated with the structure of materials How knitted textiles can be engineered to make environmentally responsive fabrics How to redefine natural materials Developing site specific installations using knit Quality of movement Began by animating the textiles Material systems for 2d and 3d shape-changing textiles Both natural materials and textiles are composed of fibres, therefore biomimicry is a good methodology

Biomimetic knitted textiles - Jane Scott

Systematic as a design cycle Technical problem > search biology > identify appropriate principles > abstraction from biological model > assess feasibly through prototyping > design outcome Searching for parallels between how nature responds to structure with materials The Pine cone hygromorph = moisture activated material. Orientation of fibres in the scales themselves determines the movement Shows magnified images of natural fibres How can the shape of the yarn twist the shape of the fabric Engineered through integration of hierarchy Areas of active material in areas of inactive material Determination of stitches changes the programme of shape change

The Responsive Knit System : RKS Data illustrating directional behavior of fabric ‘Flux’, studio set up

Using the programme, it enables the assembly of much larger pieces Spray makes the fabric coil and move

Knit as Manufacturing Can knit in any shape How can we change the shape Looking at differential growth and how leaves grow Programme this into a knitted fabric Shaped intarsia fabric When you knit a patch of material

Keynote: Chris Grantham, Ideo, London IDEO - Designing Circularity How do we shape the world to our needs Thinking of the economy as something that has been DESIGNED Therefore it can be REDESIGNED Industrial revolution got a lot of people out of poverty The education system that prevented interdisciplinary collaborations meant that this is how the way we think has been shaped as well as our existence ‘Knowing what we know today about the linear economy, if we had the opportunity to redesign it, would be design the same system?’ We did not anticipate how flawed the linear model was Structural waste

Circular Economy Restorative and regenerative by design Tries to serve the widest ecosystem in the most sustainable way ‘Not resourceful, it was just a matter of survival’ Separation became not necessarily a conscious things We are now trying to create a connection To be conscious is a uniquely human gift We have an opportunity to design the economy to serve ourselves with good intensions Making connections is fundamental to making a successful natural system

Regenerative Principles

Industrial Symbiosis

How might we unlock the value of a circular economy?

CoLab Companies coming together Think of a systems level

It is all about the MINDSET Inspired by nature can inspire creative thought

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swipestream · 6 years

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Urban Fantasy/Science Fiction: Lazy Gimmick or Legitimate Genre?

Could easily double as the cover of a kinky porn film, blurb included. Also “deadwalker”, “streetwalker”, what’s the difference?!

Typing “Urban Fantasy” into Google results in 7.7 million results, dozens of Wiki articles, and a slew of book recommendations, many with covers that call to mind late 90’s schlock like Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Charmed. (I can hear the furious typing already…) Now, I don’t pretend to have read every popular work classified as “urban fantasy”, especially since many are aimed at the housewives who consume Danielle Steele or erotica by the megabyte on Kindle. However, my experiences thus far have made me immediately skeptical of this label.

Let’s examine Rosemary and Rue, the first installment in the October Daye series, written by Seanan McGuire, who once had a world-class British comedian disinvited from hosting the Hugo Awards for mortal fear that he might tell a fat joke. (An accurate harbinger of things to come, considering Jon Del Arroz’s banning by Worldcon this year) It’s about faeries and elves in the distinctly un-magical setting of contemporary San Francisco.

There are a litany of weaknesses in this book, and cataloging them all would take several times the length of this article. However, let’s focus on the “urban” aspect; at no point does the setting add anything to the story, and at several times it actively detracts from it. The plot switches from generic parts of San Francisco to generic magical enclaves within generic parts of San Francisco, but the two never mesh well with one another. The magic never interacts with the urban in any interesting or unique manner.

And that leads us to the main explanation for the rise in popularity of “urban fantasy”. Ordinarily, conjuring up a fantasy setting is a difficult task. One has to create an entire world, consider the races, demographics, geography, political situation, culture, economy, ecology, and a thousand other details. There is a reason Frank Herbert’s Dune is considered such an achievement. And even an interesting setting like Martin’s Westeros is far from original, heavily borrowing from the War of the Roses. How to deal with this challenge? Well, for the hack writer, simply use our current society in place of the fictional fantasy world, and voila! As an added bonus, you can claim it’s an exciting new genre with a hip name like “urban fantasy”.

A decidedly less sexy and women’s romance-laden approach to urban science fiction!

Does that mean that any works in an urban setting are automatically inferior, lazy works? Not at all!

Just the other week, I lavished praise on Katsuhiro Otomo’s Domu, which blended cramped, 80’s Tokyo with a creepy murder mystery, and later, a tremendous battle between two telepaths. To a large extent, his magnum opus Akira accomplished the same with a futuristic setting. Larry Correia’s Monster Hunter series frequently combines modern weapons and situations with vampires, werewolves, orcs, elves, and many other monsters. And I have greatly enjoyed reading John C Wright’s Moth and Cobweb series, whose first books features a Christian knight fighting ogres in modern-day America.

It’s notable which books present themselves as “urban fantasy” and which do not. I’m a huge Haruki Murakami fan, and based on the definitions, A Wild Sheep Chase, Dance Dance Dance, and several others would easily qualify. Yet, none are marketed as being part of this genre, and I don’t see them mentioned in the many lists or recommendations online.

So what are the differences between the good and poor works, and what conclusions can be drawn about “urban fantasy” as a whole? And why am I asking so many rhetorical questions?

For one, the urban aspects harmonize well with the fantasy in the works of Otomo, Correia, and Wright. In Domu, there is a sense of dread and secrecy conveyed by the large, impersonal apartment complexes where new residents move in and out without any of their neighbors learning their name. The idea that something paranormal is occurring with no one being the wiser is intriguing. Later, the telepathy battle in the apartments is picturesque and memorable, at times looking like familiar sights we’ve all seen in apartments, and other times utterly alien, often within the same sequence.

In the Monster Hunter books, it’s neat to see monsters hiding within and attacking modern society instead of a medieval one, and being fought with guns and grenades instead of swords and shields. It’s likely a hypothetical many of us pondered as boys. With Wright, it’s novel seeing Athurian legend re-imagined today, as well as the unique, humorous permutations of Christian morality. (How does one behave virtuously at Hooter’s?!)

Moreover, in all three examples above, and especially Murakami’s work, the setting is only one small aspect of the work’s appeal. Take away the urban setting, and you still have a bunch of excellent, exciting books and comics. There are still a bunch of neat ideas.

Too good to be considered urban fantasy?

Meanwhile, take away contemporary San Francisco from Rosemary and Rue, and what is one left with? A predictable, tedious love triangle and a cliche fantasy world simpler and less interesting than works that had come out over two hundred years ago. It’s window dressing for what would otherwise be a hackneyed, forgettable book.

One might also look at an example of “agrarian science fiction” in the works of Clifford Simak. Simak loved portals into other words, aliens, immortals, and talking animals nestled in a rural village the modern world had forgotten. But of course, the setting was of minute importance compared to the story itself.

Thus, we conclude that fantasy or science fiction set in an urban environment can absolutely work. Not every story requires the expansive, deep world of Dune. But be very, very wary of anything called urban fantasy…especially if it features a cover inspired by Buffy or is written by a humorless harpy calling herself an “award-winning stand-up comedian”.

Urban Fantasy/Science Fiction: Lazy Gimmick or Legitimate Genre? published first on https://medium.com/@ReloadedPCGames

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topinforma · 7 years

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New Post has been published on Mortgage News

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Design rentals around party spaces, says architect-developer

To attract young renters to his projects, architect-developer Mike Burnett believes in designing around parties.

“Always design for the party — this is very important in a site plan,” Burnett, 40, told San Diego apartment owners and managers last week. “How are you going to get drunk?”

He was being only somewhat facetious. But he had a point.

If millennials can’t afford to buy, they want to live in a happy place where they can mingle with each other, enjoy San Diego’s outdoor environment and keep costs low.

Unlike projects favored by institutional investors, the built-in amenities aren’t the thing.

“We don’t do big infrastructure things — pools, gyms, all the other things that cost a lot to maintain,” said Burnett, speaking at a breakfast forum to nearly 300 members of the San Diego County Apartment Association and CCIM commercial real estate group at the Town & Country Hotel.

“We find only 5 to 10 percent of the people use them for the first couple of months. We’d rather build in spaces that are passive. They become sculptural. We are using interesting shadows and outdoor spaces that look over the view and use panels that block out views with animated spaces behind it.”

The wide-ranging discussion about what to expect in 2018 included historic trends, predictions on federal tax reform that could disrupt the apartment business, and urban planning and architecture in what the group described as a possible “renaissance in small- and midscale apartment development.”

Burnett, whose FoundationForForm company has won numerous awards over the last decade, acknowledged that he is only focused on a small market niche and leaving suburban, single-family development to others.

But he said families could continue to live in his projects with school-age children as the charter school movement takes hold in urban neighborhoods.

Among Burnett’s design principles that other developers and architects might borrow:

Place parking on the ground floor where the spaces don’t have to be ventilated and be repurposed for all those party animals.

Use stairs, not elevators that need constant maintenance and attention; Accessible units for the disabled should be located at street level.

Include pocket parks and other public spaces to draw in visitors to restaurants and services in the building.

Build affordable units rather than paying the city’s in-lieu inclusionary housing fee. “It’s a moral thing for me,” he said.

Add flare to the design, such as his YouAre Here project in Golden Hill that retained elements of a 1965 Texaco gas station. The firm’s upcoming 29-unit Eitol project at University Avenue and Park Boulevard in Hillcrest is composed of 13 four-story, bright red towers with a marketing banner displays a pair of buff mermen. (The name spells Lot 13 backward.)

Besides design, Burnett addressed the current apartment market, saying lenders are offering 65 percent loan-to-cost terms, down from 75 percent and are pulling back from the market because of perceived overbuilding.

Rick Graf, president of the Dallas-based Pinnacle development company, said many cities are coping with the same development pressures and regulatory problems in San Diego.

“A lot of the new construction is going into high-end, urban,” he said. “(Investors) want to invest in high-rise downtown. It’s fun, sexy, cool stuff and at the end of the day, most people don’t live there.”

Pinnacle holds 172,000 units in its portfolio, including 15,000 in California and eight projects in San Diego County. The newest is IDEA1 set to open next month in East Village.

Graf, who said he and his wife recently moved into a downtown Dallas rental, said developers and investors instead focus on workforce housing aimed at middle-income households.

“They need a place to live and increasingly, single-family housing is difficult to happen,” he said. “It’s a challenge everywhere.”

He said regulations are growing everywhere, even in regulation-averse Texas where there’s talk of rent control in Houston.

“That’s blasphemy,” he said tongue-in-check but understandable given rapidly rising rents in many markets.

Construction, while up in recent years, is down in historic terms, partly because it takes longer to gain approval, Graf said.

“Given the alternatives (in investment returns), the money will go elsewhere,” he said.

On the tax reform side, Bob Pinnegar, CEO of the National Apartment Association and previously executive director of its San Diego counterpart, said Congress is considering reducing business deductions, low-income tax credits, like-kind exchanges and partnership tax preferences.

To fight against such changes, Pinnegar said the association has set aside $1 million to launch a campaign to get members to lean on Congress.

At the state and level, he said, other legal changes aim at increasing affordable housing through zoning and developer fees, but rent control was lately avoided in Indiana, Oregon and Tennessee.

Robert Vallera, a Voit Real Estate Service vice president, said even if multifamily housing production is the highest in 20 years, it’s not keeping up population.

At 8,300 units approved last year in San Diego County and 100,000 statewide, he said that represents 1 home for every 400 residents, compared with 1 per 100 residents in the 1970s.

The upshot is that median apartment sales prices were up 11 percent last year as vacancies plummeted and demand grew.

One other perspective came from urban planner Howard Blackson, who said despite the era of regulation and tight markets, the Legislature recently approved new funding for affordable housing and San Diego is easing up on zoning controls.

“Understand that the regulatory environment is getting better,” Blackson said. “You are perfectly positioned to build more apartments and multifamily homes than anybody in our lifetime has been able to do.”

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Alaska Airlines employees have long received bonuses for helping reach on-time arrival goals and improve passenger satisfaction scores. And they recently got a new way to earn a pay bump: If more travelers sign up for the carrier’s frequent flier program. (September 15, 2017) (Sign up for our free video newsletter here http://bit.ly/2n6VKPR)

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Defense giant Northrop Grumman Corp. is acquiring aerospace and defense firm Orbital ATK Inc. for about $7.8 billion in cash, a deal that would boost Northrop Grumman’s presence in the space, launch and missile industries. (Sept. 18, 2017) (Sign up for our free video newsletter here http://bit.ly/2n6VKPR)

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Northrop Grumman is acquiring Orbital ATK, a deal that would boost the defense giant’s presence in the space, launch and missile industries. (Sept. 18, 2017) (Sign up for our free video newsletter here http://bit.ly/2n6VKPR)

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Lifelock has been going to town on the Equifax breach, with ads and press releases trumpeting how the breach proves how valuable its own services (cost: up to $29.99 a month) can be to protect you from identity theft.

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Consumer incomes generally are not increasing fast enough to match rising household costs, which has crimped business at these restaurants. (Sept. 18, 2017) (Sign up for our free video newsletter here http://bit.ly/2n6VKPR)

[email protected]; (619) 293-1286; Twitter: @rogershowley

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