Yule Heibel's Post Studio © 2003-2014

A quick guide to the maxims of new media | Mark Coddington

Love this catalog/ summary by Mark Coddington.

During my recent bout of civic activism with the JohsonStreetBridge.ORG awareness initiative campaign I helped found last July, a huge chunk of my unhappiness and subsequent (still, alas, enduring) depression stemmed from the fact that for a variety of complex reasons, I found myself forced to betray most of the principles listed by Coddington. It still breaks my heart, and perhaps it’s the everlasting testament, when all is said and done, for why Victoria BC will never, ever get a clue. In this town, people still play by the old media rules. And that can only mean that, really, there’s absolutely no room for me. Anyway, read Coddington’s primer – he links to good stuff.
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“When I dove into the future-of-journalism world, I quickly found that a few of these phrases function as shorthand for big, fundamental ideas. (…)

Consider this your dictionary for those phrases.”
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tags: mark_coddington, new_media_shift, newspapers

Jean Shin: TEXTile, 2006

Wow… I love this! What an amazing piece:
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“In this interactive sculpture, thousands of recycled keyboard keys are embedded into a continuous textile. The keys spell out a line-by-line transcript of the email correspondence between the artist and fabricators regarding the creation of the artwork. As a result, the sculpture documents its own making. Viewers can also type their own messages on the active keys amid the first three rows of emails. These new messages are then projected onto the opposite end of the fabric, thereby continuing the virtual dialogue. The project speaks to the pervasiveness of email in our lives while commenting on the fact that, despite the modern technology of virtual communication, our written language is linked to the tactile sensation of moving our fingers over an outmoded typewriter system.”
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tags: jean_shin, textile, sculpture, art

Chart Wars – Target Point

Excellent must-see Washington DC Ignite presentation by Alex Lundry on data visualization and using charts (“chart wars”).

tags: alex_lundry, targetpoint, data_visualization

Crafting a New World

“There is a craftsperson in everyone, according to Richard Sennett. But don’t spend too much time plumbing your psyche for a latent woodworker, quilter, or metalsmith. Craftsmanship, according to Sennett, a sociologist at New York University and the London School of Economics, both includes and eclipses the endeavors that might jump to mind. It is an “enduring, basic human impulse, the desire to do a job well for its own sake,” he writes. It’s also an impulse that contemporary culture, with its obsessive embrace of efficiency, financial reward, and the bottom line, has devalued—to its own detriment.”

tags: richard_sennett, utne_reader, crafting

Victoria’s Johnson Street Bridge has significant heritage value – Journal of Commerce

Surprised to see that Victoria’s Johnson Street Bridge made it into the “Journal of Commerce – Western Canada’s Construction Newspaper” (Jan.25/10) …for its heritage value (not its potential as a mega-replacement construction project)! Right on. (Would love to know the story behind JSB’s entry into the the Journal of Commerce…)

From the article:

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“The main opening span is 148 feet in length and when in the open position is balanced over a 45-foot fixed span. The Strauss Bascule Company Ltd. prepared the design for the bascule spans and the operating machinery.

The superstructure of the bridge was fabricated in Walkerville, Ontario and contains 100 tons of steel. “

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tags: johnson_street_bridge, victoria, journal_of_commerce, heritage, preservation

Rape of the Sabine Women by rufus corporation

Would really like to view this film. The paintings by Nicolas Poussin and by Jacques Louis David are both such powerhouses, one can’t help but think that only film-video artists of overarching ambitions would tackle this subject. This interpretation by Eve Sussman sounds very intriguing:

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“The Rape of the Sabine Women is a reinterpretation of the Roman myth, updated and set in the idealistic 1960’s. Filmed on location in Athens and Hydra, Greece, and in Berlin, Germany, the 80 minute video was directed by Eve Sussman with an original score by Jonathan Bepler, choreography by Claudie De Serpa Soares, and costumes by Karen Young.\n\nThe Rape Of The Sabine Women was conceived as allegory based loosely on the ancient myth that follows Romulus’ founding of Rome. Re-envisioning the myth as a 1960’s period piece with the Romans cast as G-men, the Sabines as butchers’ daughters, and the heyday of Rome allegorically implied in an affluent international style summer house, this version is a riff on the original story of abduction and intervention, in which Romulus devises a plan to ensure the future of the empire. While the Roman myth traces the birth of a society, this telling suggests the destruction of a utopia. The intervention of the women is fraught, and the chaos that ensues transforms the designed perfection into nothingness.\n\nThe Rape… is a video-musical conceived in an operatic five act structure that opens in Berlin’s Pergamon Museum, moves to the S-Bahn and Tempelhof Airport, Athens’ Agora meat market, a classic modern 60’s dream house overlooking the Aegean, and finally, Athens’ Herodion Theatre. Forgoing the compromise of the original, the Rufus Corporation’s re-imagining pits mid-twentieth century ideals against the eternal themes of power, longing, and desire. A modern process piece created in improvisation-a product of 180 hours of video footage and 6000 photographs-the video with 7.1 sound installation features compositions by Jonathan Bepler, recorded live on site , incorporating a bouzouki ensemble, a Pergamon coughing choir, and a chorus of 800 voices.
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Aakash Nihalani on Babelwire: Episode #21 – Tape and Mirrors

Beautiful video of Aakash Nihalani creating his “tape art” interventions in New York City’s public spaces. By taking us with him (through his tape interventions) I think Nihalani is really re-imagining and re-seeing space, and that’s an amazing gift to the rest of us.
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“When artist Aakash Nihalani moved from the suburbs to NYC he was compelled by its symmetry. As an organic response he started laying down tape on the streets and on buildings, creating brightly colored sticker tape boxes framing aspects of the city he wanted to show people, creating tableaus from real life. Both uncomfortable at potentially defacing property by using permanent materials, and enraged at the continued treatment of public artists as vandals, we join him as he brings 3D to his work for the first time, via use of mirrors and passers-by, and discuss why impermanence is important to the acceptance of street art.”
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tags: art, aakash_nihalani, street_art, video

Battle of the Blue Bridge: How the petition was won

A rather amusing look at history according to Victoria’s mainstream media (in this case by Times-Colonist reporter Bill Cleverley). Wow, this is quite the ellipsis…

If there’s one thing I’m learning from the whole Johnson Street Bridge issue and process is that one apparently can’t trust our media to get the stories right.

tags: johnson_street_bridge, media, newspapers, times_colonist, bill_cleverley

Home – Banners of Persuasion

“Demons, Yarns & Tales – Tapestries by Contemporary Artists”

tags: exhibitions, tapestry, arts

Design fantasies for obsolete Bay Bridge span

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Why demolish one of the Bay Area’s most recognizable structures rather than retain at least some of it for public use? “There’s no reason it can’t be transformed into something wondrous, a fusion of nature and the machine,” said Frederic Schwartz, a New York architect who spent last fall as the college’s Joseph Esherick Visiting Professor in Architecture.
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Inspired by NYC’s High Line, Frederic Schwartz’s students re-purposed the Bay Bridge (slated for demolition).

tags: bridges, johnson_street_bridge, bay_bridge, san_francisco, restoration

The Best Way to Become the Hub of your Community using Twitter

Great “SlideShare” presentation on using Twitter to create a news hub for your community.

tags: local_news, twitter, slideshare

The Americanization of Mental Illness – NYTimes.com

One of the many thought-provoking statements in Ethan Watters’s article on modern mental health (and its diagnosis & treatment):
“Since the illness was seen as the work of outside forces, it was understood as an affliction for the sufferer but not as an identity.”

Watters writes about how a Western (often American) conception of mental health has shaped global understanding of illness/ disease, sometimes with negative consequences. In earlier times and in other cultures, mental states were diagnosed with a view to “culture bound syndromes,” but modern mental health refutes this. In turn, however, cultural attitudes to mental health can grow more rigid (and unforgiving): your brain is broken (neurological disorder), vs. your spirit is (temporarily?) discombobulated. The former view exacts a harsher response than the latter, according to experiments conducted by researchers.

tags: mental_health, cultural_norms, americanization, nyt, ethan_watters

BuildingGreen.com – HPB Case Study: Overview – Boston Children’s Museum Renovation

Interesting environmental/ sustainability angle: Boston’s Children Museum is stepping up its green credentials:
“The museum expansion and renovation was designed to enhance the building’s connections to its urban waterfront site, guided by a desire to build environmental education opportunities into the design. From the adaptive reuse of the onsite 19th-century wool warehouse and industrial site to the new graywater storage system and green roof, the museum has become an environmental teaching tool for its young audience, in addition to becoming the first LEED-certified museum in Boston.”
And:
“The museum is a working exhibition that demonstrates green building elements. The programs incorporate three principles:

1. Green by Example: The “Green Trail” is a series of interactive stations with age-appropriate explanations of the building’s green elements and their relationship to the ecology of the area.

2. Green Hands-On: All programs will be based on current research on how children learn about the natural world. For example, children and families were invited to help plant parts of the green roof.

3. Green at Home: The museum will create a “Growing Green” section of its website for further interpretation of the building as well as steps for children and families to take toward greater sustainability in their own lives.”

tags: green_buildings, museums, boston, childrens_museum, environment

The Facebookisation of the enterprise – confused of calcutta

JP Rangaswami on what it might look like when the IT department had “lost control of the device,” the HR department had “lost control of the profile,” and the IT, HR and Finance departments had “lost control of the job description.” For Generation M (Mobile), those are native conditions, and enterprise has to meet them there if it wants to engage Gen M’s talents.

tags: facebook, confused_of_calcutta, jp_rangaswami, business, management

Twelve Resolutions on How to Be a Mensch : The World :: American Express OPEN Forum

Article by Bruna Martinuzzi, author of “The Leader as a Mensch: Become the Kind of Person Others Want to Follow “
Some great ideas here:
1. Give people gifts other than those that you buy.
2. Become a talent hunter.
3. Become a talent hunter.
4. Spend more time in the “beginner’s mind.”
5. Don’t tell people what they can’t do.
6. Minimize the space you take up.
7. Become a relationship anthropologist.
8. Be happy for others.
9. Get rid of grudges.
10. Help others caress the rainbow.
11. Make people feel better about themselves.
12. View all promises you made in 2009 as an unpaid debt.

tags: bruna_martinuzzi, mensch, advice, wisdom

Tim Brown urges designers to think big | Video on TED.com

TED talk by Tim Brown: “says the design profession is preoccupied with creating nifty, fashionable objects – even as pressing questions like clean water access show it has a bigger role to play. He calls for a shift to local, collaborative, participatory ‘design thinking.'”

tags: ted_conference, tim_brown, design_thinking