Wednesday, March 25. 2009
Via BLDBLOG and Storefront for Art and Architecture
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Postopolis! LA has been gathering pace over the past few weeks, despite the silence, so it seemed like high time for an update. Although we're still finalizing both the schedule and the list of speakers, it's looking amazing so far.
[Image: Logo by Joe Alterio].
The whole thing kicks off in less than two weeks, running from Tuesday, March 31, to Saturday, April 4, and from 5pm-11pm everyday.
The venue has finally been announced, as well: we'll be up in the sky, watching the sun set every evening from the rooftop pool, deck, and bar of the Standard Hotel in downtown Los Angeles. The event is free and open to everyone, with a cash bar and free wifi, so come on down for some landscape and architecture, bring your favorite wireless device, and wear your Speedo or bikini if you want to use the pool (it's more like a wading pool, FYI). And, of course, we'll be keeping our fingers crossed for no rain.
The list of speakers, as it now stands, includes unbelievably interesting people. Here's a glimpse:
—Ari Kletzky (Founder, Islands of LA)
—Austin Kelly (Principal, XTEN Architecture)
—Ava Bromberg (Artist, In the Field)
—Ben Cerveny (Strategic and Conceptual Advisor, Stamen Design)
—Benjamin Ball and Gaston Nogues (Architects and Founding Partners, Ball-Nogues Studio)
—Benjamin Bratton (Architect and Theorist)
—Bryan Boyer (Organizer, Helsinki Design Lab 2010)
—Christina Ulke (Artist, Co-Founder, C-Level, and Editor, Journal of Aesthetics and Protest)
—Christopher Hawthorne (Architecture Critic, Los Angeles Times)
—David Burns, Matias Viegener, and Austin Young (Founders, fallen fruit)
—David Gissen (Theorist and Historian, CCA)
—Dwayne Oyler (Architect and Principal, Oyler Wu Collaborative)
—Eric Rodenbeck (Founder, Stamen Design)
—Freya Bardell and Brian Howe (Principals, Greenmeme)
—Fritz Haeg (Artist and Writer)
—Gary Dauphin (Writer and Critic)
—Jeffrey Inaba (Architect and Principal, Inaba Projects)
—Ken Ehrlich (Artist and Writer)
—Mary-Ann Ray (Architect, Writer, and Principal, Studio Works Architects)
—Matthew Coolidge (Director, Center for Land Use Interpretation)
—Michael Dear (Professor of Geography, USC)
—Michael Downing (Deputy Chief of Counter Terrorism, Los Angeles Police Department)
—Mike the Poet (Poet and Writer)
—Orhan Ayyüce (Architect, Blogger, and Senior Editor, Archinect)
—Patrick Keller (Architect and Principal, Fabric)
—Paul Petrunia (Founder, Archinect)
—Robert Miles Kemp (Designer and Principal, Variate Labs)
—Sam Grawe (Editor-in-Chief, Dwell)
—Sharon Johnston and Mark Lee (Architects and Principals, Johnston MarkLee)
—Stephanie Smith (Founder, Ecoshack)
—Steve Roden (Musician and Artist)
—Ted Kane (Architect and Author, Polar Inertia)
—Whitney Sander (Architect and Principal, Sander Architects)
—Yo-Ichiro Hakomori (Architect and Principal, wHY Architecture)
—Zach Frechette (Editor-in-Chief, GOOD)
That's nowhere near the final list, though, as we've also got a handful of media panels planned for Saturday, April 4; these will include Matt Chaban from the Architect's Newspaper, Dakota Smith from Curbed LA, Greg J. Smith of Serial Consign & Vague Terrain, journalist Alissa Walker, a variety of Archinect school bloggers, and many, many more.
So stay tuned for more updates.
And, don't forget, Postopolis! LA will be hosted by BLDGBLOG, City of Sound, mudd up!, Plataforma Arquitectura/Arch Daily, Subtopia, and we make money not art, under the organization of the Storefront for Art and Architecture and the sponsorship of ForYourArt.
Hope to see you there!
Personal comment:
Names (including fabric | ch) at Postopolis!LA.
Friday, March 20. 2009
The National Phenology Network’s Project Budburst Facebook group; an unidentified insect posted by Flickr user urtica as part of a citizen science project Life on the Japanese Knotweed; pasque flowers spotted in Brainerd, MN, by Flickr user esagor.
Are you plugged in to the Internet? Are you an amateur hiker? Photographer? Gardener? Birdwatcher? Frog aficionado? Nature lover? If the answer to any of these questions is “yes,” then with the click of a button you can also make a serious contribution to the study of climate change.
Online social networking is no longer just about tagging a picture of your dog on Facebook or announcing to the world what you’re having for dinner on Twitter. Scientific institutions worldwide are beginning to harness the power of online social networking for scientific research. Online communities are an ideal vehicle for matching professional scientists with armies of enthusiastic amateurs. This corps of citizen scientists has the capacity to capture far more data over a vastly expanded geographical spectrum than professional scientists can on their own.
The USA National Phenology Network is one organization that is reaching out to citizen scientists via the Internet. People have used phenology, the study of the timing of lifecycle events of plants and animals, to detect the signs of spring since the early 18th century. The rising threat posed by global warming has spurred scientists to put phenology to another use: to detect the signs of climate change.
Plants and animals are very sensitive to even the smallest changes in their climates. Shifts in the timing of their lifecycle events can therefore be an important indicator in the study of climate change and its effects. Slight changes can have huge repercussions; mutual relationships between species and even entire systems can begin to fall apart.
USA-NPN is asking people across the country to record the phenology of their local flora and then report it online. Amateur hikers and photographers can also participate in NPN’s Project Budburst. They are asked to identify the phenological stage of the flowers and plants they see using information provided by the project’s website. The participants record the location, longitude, and latitude of what they observe. Eventually, Project Budburst will use this information to include real-time mapping with Google maps.
Relying on anonymous volunteers to collect data that will be entered into important scientific databases certainly raises questions about the reliability of the information gathered. Yet it turns out that most of the data is remarkably accurate, and researchers do perform checks on anomalous data. What’s more, the large pool of samples collected by a large group of volunteers diminishes the impact of any faulty data.
This creative new use for social networking also answers critics’ accusations about the frivolity of Facebook, Twitter, and other sites with proof that online networking has the potential to mobilize users to actively participate in innovative programs. Jack Weltzin, executive director of NPN, has said that in the future NPN hopes to make it possible for people to submit their findings via Twitter. NPN, a nonprofit organization, also hopes that iPhone and Facebook applications might be created to more easily facilitate volunteer participation.
Climate change scientists are not the only members of the scientific profession to tap into the potential of these online communities. In addition to tracking climate change, the information participants collect can help scientists predict wildfires and pollen production and monitor droughts as well as detect and control invasive species. Other online projects, such as “The Great World Wide Star Count,” rely on volunteer participation to gauge the level of light pollution across the globe. Several websites are also dedicated to tracking the migratory and breeding patterns of animals such as birds, frogs, and butterflies. All of these observations will augment the databases available to scientists attempting to understand annual fluctuations.
Imagine what the near future will bring–a world where you wake up, look out your window, and notice the first lilac blossom of spring. As you drink your coffee, you report your floral spotting on Twitter. Presto! You’ve made a contribution to the study of climate change before you’ve even had your eggs.
So the next time you head outside, grab your camera and snap a picture of the flowers that are starting to bloom in your neighbor’s yard. Then plot your location on your Google maps and give scientists the help they need to understand global warming and its consequences.
This piece originally appeared on Climate Progress.
This article is reprinted from the Center for American Progress’s “It’s Easy Being Green” series.
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Via Worldchanging
Personal comment:
Une utilisation intéressante du "crowdsourcing" et des réseaux sociaux.
Tuesday, March 17. 2009
Social innovation and design for sustainability
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François Jégou, Ezio Manzini with essay by: Priya Bala, Cristiano Cagnin, Carla Cipolla, Josephine Green, Bas de Leeuw, Helma Luiten, Isabella Marras, Anna Meroni, Ruben Mnatsakanian, Simona Rocchi,
Eivind Stø, Pål Strandbakken, John Thackara, Victoria Thoresen, Stefanie Un, Edina Vadovics, Philine Warnke, Adriana Zacarias.
"What is a sustainable lifestyle? What will our daily lives become if we agree to change some of our routines? How do we reduce our environmental impact without lowering our living standards?" A new book, edited by Francois Jegou and Ezio Manzini (with a chapter by me in it) attempts to answer some of these questions. Collaborative Services: Social Innovation and Design for Sustainability suggests a variety of scenarios: Car-sharing on demand, micro-leasing system for tools between neighbours, shared sewing studio, home restaurant, delivery service between users who exchange goods… The scenarios looks at how these kinds of daily life activities could be performed by structured services that rely on a greater collaboration of individuals amongst themselves.
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Via Doors of Perception
Personal comment:
Téléchargeable directement en ligne sous forme de pdf, le livre présente tout une série de stratégies pour "vivre à moindre coût énergétique", à titre individuel ou en groupe. John Tackara (Doors of Percpetion) y contribue.
Une ressource, gratuite, à faire circuler.
Wednesday, March 11. 2009
Measuring our individual carbon footprint helps us see where our choices fit into the bigger picture. And, because various tools allow us to calculate our impacts at the individual level with relative accuracy, it's easy to discuss what they are and how to change them. But as we've noted before, hyper-focusing on individual responsibility in the face of climate change can be confusing … or worse.
Now, Microsoft is working on a new software tool with the goal of helping measure and understand the climate-changing impacts of entire cities. I first learned about the project in February, when business executives from a cross section of industries met in Chicago to discuss the urgency and potential economic advantages of corporate environmental responsibility. The mid-morning panel discussion deteriorated into bickering for a few moments, when one panelist reached for one of the plastic water bottles set out on the table. The chairman of Ikea’s GreenTech operations objected to the presence of plastic bottles at the event; Coca-Cola’s Senior VP of Technical Sustainability contended that the bottles weren’t necessarily problematic, contingent on a number of variables. The debate temporarily diverted attention from the panel topic, “The Sustainability Advantage: Who Will Survive and Why.”
Rob Bernard, Chief Environmental Strategist for Microsoft and one of the panelists at the discussion, believes this squabble represents a widespread problem in the dialogue about best sustainability practices.
“You can talk about how much post-consumer content is in the bottle, about whether it gets recycled. The answers are often so complicated it’s hard to know where to start. The problem,” Bernard says, “is that our debates are emotion-driven, not data-driven. How do you use software so that we can debate based on data instead of perception?”
In an effort to make these data sets both accessible and standardized at a scale beyond the individual, Microsoft is developing software to quantify extraordinarily large and complex environmental footprints. Partnering with the Clinton Foundation, the International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives, Ascentium Corporation and the Center for Neighborhood Technology in an initiative called Project 2˚, Microsoft is developing software to track GHG emissions generated by major cities. The free web-based application will be available to the C40—a summit of the world’s 40 largest cities—as a means of sharing information online and tracking the efficacy of current programs. The idea is to standardize the language describing metropolis-scale environmental impact and facilitate discussion about best practices.
The application is similar to another release from Microsoft called the Environmental Sustainability Dashboard, which allows businesses to track resource consumption and emissions by plugging in figures from past utility bills. Applied at the city scale, the software could be a valuable tool in assessing and deconstructing the impact of massive, complex systems, and could provide insight in drafting future climate initiatives.
Sharon Hoyer is a freelance writer covering sustainability, culture and arts in Chicago. You can find more of her writings on the environment at Centerstage Chicago. You can find her in the garden or on her bike.
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Via WorldChanging
Personal comment:
Alors on attend le "software" de Microsoft, en souhaitant qu'il fonctionnera mieux que ... :)
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