An Almanac of Human Emotion
“I believe in technology, but I think we need to make it more human. I believe that the internet is becoming a planetary meta-organism, but that it is up to us to guide its evolution, and to shape it into a space we actually want to inhabit—one that can understand and honor both the individual human and the human collective, just like real life does.” – Jonathan Harris
Four years ago, Jonathan Harris and Sep Kamvar set out with a lofty goal – to create a database of human emotions on the Internet. Twelve million feelings later, the two have put together the We Feel Fine project, which includes one of the coolest Web sites I’ve seen in awhile and an extraordinarily beautiful book that was recently released. (Most of which is available to read online!)
The two artists and computer scientists wrote an algorithm that scrobbles the world’s newly posted blog entries for occurrences of the phrases “I feel” and “I am feeling,” essentially harvesting human emotion by recording the full sentence and context in which the phrase occurs and identifying the polarity (happy, sad, giddy, etc.) of the specific “feeling” expressed. Because the blogosphere is full of metadata, it is possible for them to extract rich information about the posts and their authors, from age and gender to geolocation and local weather conditions, adding a new layer of meaning to the feelings. Exploring this huge stockpile of information from the viewpoint of 6 different movements — Madness, Murmurs, Montage, Mobs, Metrics and Mounds — has resulted in an ever growing portrait of our culture’s collective emotional landscape.
Some of the fascinating results? Moods hit rock bottom on the day that Michael Jackson died. The high-water mark was the day President Obama was elected, when the word “proud” was all over the blogosphere. People in New South Wales consistently feel far more awful than the rest of the world. Women are far more likely than men to verbalize their feelings. Human beings get happier as they get older. The most frequently expressed emotion on the Internet is feeling better.
We Feel Fine does a dazzling job of turning the big, bad, cold-feeling World Wide Web into a warm, passionate portrait of the individual human and the human collective. I browsed through the book for approximately 30 seconds before mentally adding it to my Christmas list. It’s beautiful. So here’s to exploring the ups and downs of everyday life in all its color, chaos and candor, and here’s to human beings feeling better than fine.
Taking Your Life on the Road
Designing for reality: people won’t be hanging up their cell/smartphones anytime soon inside (what I refer to as) their traveling telephone booths. Microvision is working on ways to integrate social interactions while keeping your eyes on the road. It doesn’t help to focus attention, just your sight lines.
The Stuff of Life
Where was this book when I was studying chemistry?!
There wasn’t an easy way around rote, brain-numbing memorization of the Periodic Table of Elements when I was in school. I’d practice filling them in like a crossword puzzle, putting abbreviations and atomic weights of each element in the right square. There was absolutely nothing engaging about it, it was just a grind.
To transform a string of memorized data into something meaningful — the stuff of knowledge — is to give that data a context. Tell a story, show its utility, demonstrate something remarkable. Which is what Theodore Gray’s new coffee table book, “The Elements: A Visual Exploration of Every Known Atom in the Universe” has done for the Periodic Table. Suddenly elements are sexy little beasts, each with its own history and a glossy two-page spread.
You’ll recognized some, of course, like Calcium (Ca) and Sodium (Na), but have you ever gotten a close look at Promethium (glow-in-the-dark paint on diving watches), Tellurium (even tiny amounts will leave you reeking of garlic for months), or how ’bout the honorific Einsteinium (which, unlike the man, has little utility). Beautiful photos and interesting tidbits make the world, at the atomic level, interesting and comprehensible….and memorable.
[via Boing Boing]
Physicists Kept Awake by Seven Wonders
Stress, excitement, and indigestion are common causes of interrupted sleep — for most of us, that is. Not so for physicists, whose insomnia stirs for far less pedestrian concerns, as cataloged in this month’s New Scientist as the Seven Questions that Keep Physicists Awake at Night.
Number One: Why this universe?
“In their pursuit of nature’s fundamental laws, physicists have essentially been working under a long standing paradigm: demonstrating why the universe must be as we see it. But if other laws can be thought of, why can’t the universes they describe exist in some other place?”
I’ll be honest, I double-majored in philosophy because I was pumped up on French existentialist novels. Ironically, they were the last novels I ever read in a philosophy class. Instead, I ended up reading essays on multiple worlds and van Inwagen’s Doctrine of Arbitrary Undetached Parts. While I’m flattered to have spent so many sleepless nights mulling over the same topics as professional physicists, I feel they may have been confused on a slightly higher level.
The question is this – if I postulate a set of laws for a world (other than this one), and I’m able to imagine/reason how things work in that world without contradicting those laws, then who’s to say that this world could not exist?
Though the scenario is rather complex, the exercise is as simple as imagining a world in which I start my day at 4:30 instead of 6:30(oops)…. Meaning that, though the concepts are over most of our heads, it’s a reminder that the ability to imagine different worlds is available to us all.
For a lighter look at parallel worlds, check out this Nova special “Parallel World, Parallel Lives,” featuring Eels frontman Mark Everett. (The rest of the show is available on YouTube.)
Number Two: What is everything made of?
“Ordinary matter” is classified here as “atoms, galaxies and stars.”
Ponder this: if ‘ordinary matter’ only accounts for four percent of the universe’s total energy, what’s the other 96 percent?
As evil as it sounds, dark matter simply designates matter whose light either does not reach us, or particles which are not emitting light to begin with. We know dark matter is out there because we can see its effects, such as the continued expansion of the universe. It’s not the stuff from the X-Files that lets aliens take control of you body … or scientists are keeping that part on the low.
So what else keeps physicists up at night?
3. How does complexity happen?
4. Will string theory ever be proved correct?
5. What is singularity?
6. What is reality, really? (see also: The Sixth Sense, The Machinist, Identity, The Fountain and others of
the “it was all a dream, or was it” ilk)
7. How far can physics take us?
This last question is the wildest one of all. What it suggests is that physics, the (scientific) language by which we make sense of our world, may have its own limits. I think I’ll mull that one over the next time I can’t get to sleep…
3D TVs: Coming to a Living Room Near You
I remember waiting for an episode of “Family Matters” (long ago) that was going to be in 3D. We’re talking paper glasses with one red lens, one blue lens. You know what I mean — the type of 3D where, if you watch it without the glasses, it looks like you slipped and fell through the cracks in a table of RGB variants.
The good news is, the 3D TV of the future will be smoother, more efficient and come with cooler glasses. Better yet, it could be here by 2010!
Then again, maybe it shouldn’t be so surprising. Hollywood has been steadily releasing an increasing amount of films formatted for 3D. Think Coraline, Up, the U2 concert film and James Cameron’s upcoming Avatar. While Beowulf may not have been strong support for the need of 3D in the home, one has to imagine that film companies are hungry for the DVD market these films could bring.
Whether or not consumers will be able to afford 3D-enabled televisions just after upgrading to HD and plasma TVs is another question entirely.
NASA Helps Farmers Dig Healthy Crops
Farmers are using satellite views of their land for strategic management of their crops, marketing, and soil. Strategy, no matter what you’re ‘field’, is a always a matter of perspective.
The images help the Thomases root out problems caused by Canadian thistle and other weeds, NASA adds. “They help confirm that their crops are growing at least 10 feet from the borders of a neighboring farm–required to maintain organic certification. They can also spot the telltale signs of bottlenecking in the fields—where flooding is over-saturating crops–and monitor the impact of hail storms.”
Said Thomas, “We’d have to walk our entire 1,200 hundred-plus acres on a regular basis to see the same things we can see by just downloading satellite images.”
Thomas recently began providing her farm’s coordinates to her buyers in Japan. “There’s no more ideal way I know to show how healthy our crops are to someone thousands of miles away,” she said.
Michigan Looks Through the Future to the Past
Ahhh, the romance of old country roads. Wherever you are in America, “The scenic route” takes you through the heart of small towns and main streets with long stretches of country in between.
If you’ve ever been stuck behind a tractor on a 2-lane highway, you already know that this path is not built for speed. Which is precisely why these old heritage highways may be the perfect roadways for electric vehicles. Whether by Smart Car or scooter, the idea is to go slow and enjoy the view.
In the home state of Detroit, Kate Gallagher – project manager for the Southwest Michigan Planning Commission – has a plan for breathing some life into the state’s old country roads and small towns. The idea is to plant charging stations along these roads and establish “green highways.” Gas-powered rides are welcome, just be prepared to go at a more leisurely pace.
For the electric car market to keep growing, the problem of infrastructure (charging stations) for long hauls has to be addressed. If Kate Gallagher has her way, she’ll have succeeded at paving a path to a more sustainable future, while reclaiming a piece of the past.
[via Time]
Now You See Outside
There’s no question that the input we receive affects the world we see. I mean, how can you see it if you don’t … well, see it? The fact that I spent 6th grade through junior year of high school reading Stephen King’s entire library probably has something to do with the fact that I now seem to pick up terrible horror films as if I were trying to physically manifest BadMovies.org.
You’ve been warned.
Luckily for all of us, there are people out there enlightening those around them with more than the special edition of C.H.U.D.
One of them is George Ayittey, champion of Radio Free Africa – a non-profit organization with the goal of facilitating the flow of information on the continent. Specifically, the group is most interested in the sharing of ideas and supporting public watchdogs to expose criminal and political wrongdoing. Though an equally large undertaking is the creation of a viable network for spreading said information.
Knowledge is the ability to create change – voice is the ability to share it. Opening the lines of communication leads to the ultimate open source community. Only, instead of building iPhone apps, it’s building the future. The iPhone app store is a good example, though, in the sense that it shows how the empowered masses will always move things forward more quickly than the entrusted few.
I remember taking “The History of Mass Communication” in college (almost as stuffy as it sounds) and discussing the role of the colonial press in the birth of the nation. It’s hard to imagine this rebel press as a very big deal because we already have things like Consumerist.com and FactCheck.org. At this point, we truly seem to live in a country where the watchdog is thriving.
In fact, I can barely picture a world where I don’t have access to the outside through my computer, iPhone, coworker … etc. I am empowered and the fact that I’m even writing this post is proof that I have the potential to spark change, or at least Diggs, outside of my own, immediate sphere.
Radio Free Africa is picking things up at a different stage because this freedom of information – this flow of ideas – does not exist in Africa, or at least not to the extent that it does here.
Radio Free Africa is currently focused on:
- collecting current events and news articles relating to free press and violations against it
- collecting information on similar grassroots programs
- academic and policy review
- legislative outreach
- technology outreach – penetrating hard-to-reach locales through the use of tools like mobile phones and services like SMS, in order to create a framework for engagement and free media
- identifying areas where free speech is under attack and developing plans to intervene
In short, the visionaries at Radio Free Africa are building the reservoir, developing the pipeline and determining where to plant wells.
Meanwhile, across the pond, Luis Soriano Bohorquez and his donkey have worked out a system that – while not quite as expansive – is no less inspiring. Instead of connecting a continent through free media, Luis gets on his “biblioburro” every weekend in order to deliver books to the surrounding towns and villages.
With a few thousand books haphazardly piled in his home and at friends’ houses, it’s a little hard fill requests. And to think I groaned at having to use a card catalog once!
But, in the same way Radio Free Africa is seeking to open the lines of communication to and build community, Luis is broadening the horizons of the children around him. The children are becoming stronger readers – developing the tools to communicate on a much broader level.
Said one child, “It’s important because, when your parents ask you to read them a letter that they don’t understand, you can read it to them.”
Not only are they developing technical skills, but they are learning how to dream bigger, and through these books, they are allowed to step outside of their own worlds.
There’s a good chance that I’ll never see half the places I’ve visited in books. But I’m certainly better for all the places I’ve dreamed. It’s a question of scope. It allows me to dream bigger in the world I do exist in.
If we believe that change literacy is written in the language of dreams, then both Luis Soriano Bohorquez and George Ayittey should be thanked in the dedication.
Without their faith and support, this [insert dream/change/invention/cure/work of art/etc.] would not have been possible.
The Human Life Experience
24 hours in the lives of 10 invididuals. No, this is not MTV’s version of The Real World…this is the actual real world. The Global Lives Project is an amazing video installation with a mission to reshape how people around the world perceive cultures, nations and people outside their communities by collaboratively building a video library of human life experience. Through a volunteer network of filmmakers, designers, architects, activists and institutions from around the globe, The Global Lives Project aims to take people out of their own realities and put them into the world of people they never would have known with experiences they would never otherwise see.
Participants in the project are carefully chosen by local teams armed with a set of criteria designed to avoid reinforcing existing stereotypes about the world’s regions and people. Through a process of elimination procedure, video subjects are chosen based upon world region, population density, gender, age, religion and income. To date, shoots have taken place in Japan, Lebanon, Brazil, Indonesia, India, China, Malawi, Brazil, Serbia and the US and subjects have ranged from a Brazilian hip-hop singer to an Indian postcard vendor to a San Francisco cable car driver. Each person selected is videotaped for 24 hours straight and selections from each shoot are combined into a constantly evolving, traveling video installation. The exhibit features ten separate screening rooms thatshow the unedited recordings of each subject with another room where visitors can see all ten screens at once. Floor to ceiling high definition screens and wireless headsets that track visitors’ movements through the exhibit, providing them with the corresponding soundtrack for their location, further immerse visitors in the scenes taking place around them.
As cool as the video exhibit is, it’s only a tiny part of what David Evan Harris, the project’s founder, has envisioned for The Global Lives Project. They just put out their first DVD with a photography book in the works. (Check out a few of the striking photos from the various shoots on their Flickr account.) Even more ambitious than that, Mr. Harris is working with educators to develop this project into content for classrooms of all ages around the world. He says that “with the momentum we’ve established, we’re hoping that Global Lives will grow into an online library of human life experiences.” It seems like a lofty goal to attempt to share the huge array of experiences the world has to offer but the momentum continues to build, based upon an apology on the website for server difficulties due to the huge spike in traffic the past week. Here’s to hoping the project continues to transform people’s understanding of the world around them.
Doing the Doggy Dance: The Next Nightclub Sensation?
Ok, probably not the next nightclub sensation, but you have to admit these puppies got groove! It’s Monday morning and I thought you’d all need a little pick-me-up. This one works for me every time. The hair, the eyes, those big flapping jowls – what’s not to love?!
[No puppies were harmed in the making of this music video.]
The Carpet Kings of Invention
When I was younger, my mother used to stand on our back porch and survey the collection of building scraps that had somehow found a way into our backyard. She would complain, “I should have never married a carpenter” and I would secretly disagree with her. That pile of junk was the root of my imagination. My childhood was incredibly rich and inventive precisely because my dad was a carpenter.
With spare sheet metal, rebar, paint, nails, plywood, window frames, you name it – always within our grasp – my brothers and I were able to build elaborate forts, extreme bicycle courses, flying machines, or whatever we put our minds to. We were the envy of the neighborhood kids and today, I am still gifted with a knack for fashioning all kinds of things. Over the years, I’ve had cigar box purses, skirts made from sacks, a bird feeder made from a lamp shade, and even a small bottle cap necklace business. None of these ventures would have been possible without the help of my dad, his tool belt, and his habit of bringing home leftover materials from the jobsite rather than just throwing them away. I am reminded of the words mounted on the side of the Walker Art Museum in Minneapolis: “Bits and pieces put together to present a semblance of a whole.” I don’t think I ever would’ve known what that meant had I not started my life with a pile of junk to play with.
Even luckier still, it wasn’t even fake junk – K-nex or Lincoln Logs or any number of those lame building blocks that you buy at the store to trick your kids into being civil engineers or what not. I had real bricks! Firewood straight from the woods! Nails! Tools! And much to my mother’s dismay, lots of slivers, blue thumbs, and dirty, dirty hands.
So when I stumbled across the Ample Sample Contest, I was filled with a sense of nostalgia for my youth. The Ample Sample Contest encourages idea submissions on what you can create for the household using carpet samples. Anyone from students to design professionals can submit their ideas. The entries tend to lean more towards practical rather than decorative – I actually appreciate that more. Anything that is hand-made and carries a use value is not only clever, but it serves as an exceptional conversation piece. I know this all too well.
Last year, I purchased a wallet made entirely out of chip bag wrappers at a sustainability fair in St. Paul and began to receive an insane amount of compliments on it. It became so many that, I now frequently run an experiment with my friends just for fun. We’ll go into a coffee shop and make bets on how many minutes it will take (and who) will comment on my purse. My predictions have rarely failed. After about six months of ownership, the compliments still did not desist so I started to take a tally, which I keep in my purse. Today’s number: 714.
See for yourself for yourself how cool it is to be green. 
2009 Winner – The Shoekeeper
2009 Finalist – Magic Carpet Ride
2008 People’s Choice – Green Screen
2007 Winner – Care-E Purse
2008 People’s Choice – Carpet Sqr’d Chair
Give me your chocolate, your plants, and your Prius
If we erected a Statue of Sustainability today, her placard would undoubtedly read: give me your chocolate, your plant-based products, and your people-powered Priuses; at least, that’s what the latest innovations from Toyota, Coca-Cola, and the NASCAR racing industry would imply…
* Toyota released a behind-the-scenes preview of their 2010 Prius commercial that is choreographed and constructed entirely out of people. It looks like a scene straight out of a Dr. Suess book made for TV! Love it. Have a look at the video below where the production team describes the innovation and logistical challenges behind its debut.
* Despite Coca-Cola’s tarnished human rights image abroad, they are making important strides in sustainability at home with their partnership with the World Wildlife Fund. The Atlanta Coca-Cola headquarters has put out a fully-recyclable bottle prototype that is made entirely out of plant-based plastic. Traditional PET bottles are made from petroleum, a non-renewable resource, but the new plant bottle is made with up to 30 percent plant-based materials.
“The Coca-Cola Company is a company with the power to transform the marketplace, and the introduction of the PlantBottle(TM) is yet another great example of their leadership on environmental issues,” said Carter Roberts, President and CEO of World Wildlife Fund, U.S. “We are pleased to be working with Coke to tackle sustainability issues and drive innovations like this through their supply chain, the broader industry and the world.”
*Last, but obviously never least – race cars are always in the lead – is the introduction of a plant-powered Formula 1 race car from the Warwick Innovative Manufacturing Research Centre as a part of their WorldFirst project. The Vegetable Car boasts a carrot-based polymer steering wheel, wing mirrors made of potatoes, and a bio diesel engine that – I kid you not – runs on “waste chocolate.” And the sustainability measures do nothing to compromise speed, the Vegetable Car can still hit upwards of 125 miles on hour!
“Following the recent turmoil in Formula 1 arising from the high costs of running competitive motor racing teams, and doubts in sponsors’ minds over the commercial value of their involvement, the viability of motor racing is being critically questioned,” the WorldFirst website explains. ” We are seeking to prove to the motor industry that it is possible to build a competitive racing car using environmentally sustainable components.”
Move over Mother Liberty, the call for sustainability is getting louder and more creative every day.
Under Stars and Gutters Debuts in Rotoscope
Here is a sweet, new rotoscope animation for the latest Under Stars and Gutters video, 3,167. These guys are all my friends from Northern Ireland: an art student and three musicians collaborating in the mediums that they love. The animation was created by Brendan McCarey, a Design and Communications student at the University of Ulster-Magee in Derry, Northern Ireland. McCarey printed out all 1,831 frames and proceeded to hand-draw them, adding additional effects in pencil as he felt inspired.
“I used this style because it is simple,” McCarey explains. “It goes back to the basics and I think that represents the band and the music best: punk music is a return to the basics…I’m not trying to make them look like Hollywood stars because I want to show that the band doesn’t take themselves too seriously. Like the drummer, I just drew his arms and his head so you could just focus on his energy.” McCarey took about a full semester of study to complete the animation, but the drawings themselves took just over two and a half weeks. Below, I have posted the original video so that you can see what elements of the original McCarey chose to keep.
Under Stars and Gutters is a three-piece punk band from the northern coast of Ireland, comprised of Adam Carroll, Johnny Lowe, and Mark Easton. All three of them have been involved in many musical endeavors over the years and their popularity continues to grow. Like McCarey’s art, the music of Under Stars and Gutters is honest and energetic. However, bias be known: aside from their awesome creativity, the main reason why I like these videos so much is that it’s proof my boys have come a long way from the Irish drinking fiends I knew over two years ago! Cheers to that!
Tickle Me Loris and More
Because it’s Friday and everyone’s favorite onomatopoeia is “ha, ha, ha…”
]
And who doesn’t love a dead funny commercial?
When Worlds Collide: The Newsroom
Take a peek at this highly amusing skit from Landline TV that laments the woes of the changing newsroom. Oh, nostalgia…
The Do Re Mi Dance
I think we need more of this in the world today.
Essence Exposed: When the economy breaks, what happens to the soul?
If you can get past the stuffy British accents, this discussion panel on whether the free-market model has created a moral vacuum (put together by the Guardian) is definitely worth the listen. (It’s only about five minutes long.) It includes insights from Dr. Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury; Richard Sennett, a sociologist; and Susie Orbach, a writer.
Dr. Williams starts off by pointing out that the current economic crisis is just as much about pride as it is about greed. People share “the absolute terror of not being in control, the need to always be setting the agenda” and when people don’t have that, they tend to freak out. To put this in a business perspective, Cecily states, “There’s a human tendency to want to have everything figured out before taking action. For example, you often see people whose work life isn’t satisfying, yet wait to know exactly what they want to do before making a change. But you can’t really figure things out in your head; experience is the only way to really know what works and what doesn’t. That’s not to say that thorough research and preparation aren’t needed, but it is a reminder to not suffer the ‘paralysis of analysis’. The best one can do is to set a direction and just start moving.”
As it is, there are plenty of parallels between what the individual is feeling and what a business experiences in a time of recession. Richard Sennett points out that “modern capitalism reconfigured things like careers so that it’s no longer a meaningful concept for people to perform short-term jobs.” Short-term investment became much more popular than long-term gains and views, and when put in this kind of short-term regime, both people and businesses suffer.
Why does this happen? Orbach argues it has a lot to do with identity. “We now have this thrust…for a self that is so fractured that it can only be experienced through the latest accomplishment…” she explains. Their is an immediacy to our well-being, we tend to view our lives in terms of a checklist and when we’re in between checked boxes, we have a total loss of who we are. Orbach touches on the fact that we lack a sense of continuity and fluidity in what it is that comprises us. “It”, that feeling of self-satisfaction, simply comes and goes in such short-term wavelengths that it’s difficult to process. Our lives have become so external that we forget how to nurture our own identities.
“That is why branding is so important,” Cecily says. “A well-defined, deeply rooted sense of purpose should drive business strategy. As we know, conditions and trends can swing wildly, yet purpose is constant. Purpose is what makes a brand resilient and adaptive. In traumatic times, such as we’re in, it’s important that decisions be guided by the basics, ‘Is this who we are? Is this what we do? Does this fit?”
A brand, done well, is a distillation of purpose and personality. Branding is a process of translating that subjective, squishy stuff into objective terms. It’s an interesting process; the aim is to find language, metaphors, archetypes, style that moves seamlessly from subject (company) – object (brand) – subject (consumer) – object (purchase). A brand that resonates across all channels is a brand that has successfully articulated its purpose and meaning. This is why it is also the seat of strategy, the cause of resilience, and the driver of loyalty. – Pretty important stuff.
We do this as individuals too. Take Facebook, for example. We have objectified our identities in the form of the page and by adding you as a friend, joining groups, and exchanging information, we’re saying to one another – “Hey, I like who you are! I like what you’re about!” It’s all about bonding and belonging which, when extended through a community of like-minded people gives a sense ‘tribe.’ Essentially, that is the same relationship a business should have with its clients, even though it usually doesn’t play out in such obvious terms.
“Remember, no one else can ‘do’ you,” Cecily says. “It’s you, your brand, your identity. Don’t fall into the trap of comparing yourself to others. Just stay true to you, then use that sense of conviction to guide you through the rest.”
Animated Drawings by Blu
Simple. Elegant. Mind-blowing. Videos.
(Note: “The Letter A” loops once. Definitely worth watching a second time.)
[vodpod id=ExternalVideo.804666&w=425&h=350&fv=clip_id%3D427043%26server%3Dvimeo.com%26autoplay%3D0%26fullscreen%3D1%26md5%3D0%26show_portrait%3D0%26show_title%3D0%26show_byline%3D0%26context%3D%7Cnewest%26context_id%3D%26force_embed%3D0%26multimoog%3D%26color%3D00ADEF%26force_info%3Dundefined]
[vodpod id=ExternalVideo.804661&w=425&h=350&fv=clip_id%3D1958872%26server%3Dvimeo.com%26autoplay%3D0%26fullscreen%3D1%26md5%3D0%26show_portrait%3D0%26show_title%3D0%26show_byline%3D0%26context%3Duser%3A314547%26context_id%3D%26force_embed%3D0%26multimoog%3D%26color%3D00ADEF%26force_info%3Dundefined]
[vodpod id=ExternalVideo.804663&w=425&h=350&fv=clip_id%3D428184%26server%3Dvimeo.com%26autoplay%3D0%26fullscreen%3D1%26md5%3D0%26show_portrait%3D0%26show_title%3D0%26show_byline%3D0%26context%3Duser%3A314547%26context_id%3D%26force_embed%3D0%26multimoog%3D%26color%3D00ADEF%26force_info%3Dundefined]
Chunches De Mar: Environmental Art
Recently, I found myself in Costa Rica. I was looking for my brother, who had been living there for over a year, but this turned out to be a mistake: “my brother” looks nothing like the young man who met me at the airport. His normal military-style buzz cut had grown out into long blond locks that were gelled upwards in a crocodile fashion (“my girlfriend likes it” he defended), his English was accompanied by a noticeable Latin American lilt, and he was much skinnier than during our college years together. At best, I recognized his blue eyes, but even those were fiercer than I remembered, perhaps made so by his new startlingly dark skin tone. Luckily, it did not take long for our mutual idiosyncrasies to make themselves apparent and we quickly fell back into the brother-sister comradery/combat that has always dictated our relationship.
The first of his friends that I was introduced to were Carlos Aguilar and Laura Zamora and as if those were the only two people that I had met on my entire odyssey, I would have been perfectly happy: they are a truly fascinating pair. Carlos is a well-known Costa Rican artist and one of the pioneers behind the famous month-long artist collective known as “Chunches de Mar” that takes place every year on the beach in Montezuma, Costa Rica. Laura is his loving sidekick, muse, maker of home, biggest fan, and warmest heart. Each January, they spend a month on the beach with other artists that come from around the world to make art with an environmental theme and to share in the passion for their work and the world. Afterward, the most popular exhibits are put on display in the National Gallery of Costa Rica, located in San Jose.
In Costa Rica, “chunche” is one of the most versatile words in their spin on the Spanish language. It literally means anything – that object over there, this object right here, that topic you can’t remember the name of, that gadget you don’t know what to call. The best way I translate it to my English-speaking friends is that “chunche” is like the Spanish equivalent of when we say “whatchamacallit” or “thing.” (On second thought, I’m pretty sure “whatchamacallit” may only be specific to the Midwest, possibly even just my Grandma’s house, when she’s referring the TV remote…In Northern Ireland, their word for that-which-cannot-be-named is “doofer.” Weird.)
In the context of Chunches de Mar, “chunches” signify any of the trash or materials that is left behind on the beach. These items are gathered by the artists and used to make beautiful works of art that call attention to the contamination of Costa Rica’s precious beaches. This year, Carlos gathered as many plastic bottles as he could find and constructed a giant-sized plastic bottle out of all of the plastic bottles he found on the beach. He then filled the giant plastic bottle with plastic bottles and created a stream of plastic bottles flowing out from it, to symbolize the waste that is being spilled out onto the beach. I am currently in a disagreement with my camera right now, but as soon as it is resolved, I promise I will post some of the beautiful creations that were made during 2009’s Chunches de Mar, including Carlos bottle piece. (For now, take a look at their website to see previous year’s photos). Going strong since the year 2000, Chunches de Mar is a creative way to raise awareness about respect for the environment in a country where that respect is tantamount to the survival of their economy and livelihood.
Padma Makes Hardee's Rated R
Of the few episodes that I have seen, I have enjoyed Padma Lakshmi as a TV chef personality on the reality show Top Chef, but I like her even more now that she’s featured in a new Hardee’s commercial that is straight-up inappropriate, yet deliciously funny. Padma was a self-proclaimed former vegetarian, but clearly, if you come with the right package – such as a Hardee’s value meal – she’s willing to make exceptions to the rule. 
Twhatever
Since my start at the Push Institute, I have been waging a small war against Cecily and her deep love of technology. I am a minimalist at heart (with the exception of my wardrobe as girls will be girls) and I can safely say that I only need a bed, a desk, my radio, and a few trusty books to keep me sane. I don’t have an aversion to technology, but I prefer it in small doses. Like alcohol, if you take too much, you start to lose sense of your immediate surroundings.
I wouldn’t go so far to say as Cecily is an “alcoholic” when it comes to technology , but she is definitely extremely tech-savvy, in the kind of way that one acknowledges that the Irish know how to hold their drink. They don’t have a problem, they have a gift – an exceptional level of tolerance. I have since added many new applications to my lifestyle under Cecily’s tutelage (of which I have grown to love), but Twitter is one I am surreptitiously avoiding. This recent Super News video perfectly sums up my sentiments on Twitter in a hilarious, poke-fun way…
