Thriving too

Pulse: Emotions organism

Pulse is an exhibition by Markus Kison. It is a live visualisation of the recent emotional expressions written on the private weblogs of blogger.com. These emotional expressions are parsed according to a list of synonyms and transform a physical shapeshifting object, which was created analogous to Robert Plutchik’s psychoevolutionary Theory of Emotion. It is really remarkable that through its design mirrors both Rober Plutchick's emotions model and the human heart.

pulse from Markus Kison on Vimeo.

Cognitive Disenhancement

New drugs may help to enhance people's mental powers (article here). But a study carried out by Pamela Smith, of Radboud University Nijmegen in the Netherlands, and her colleagues suggests a less pharmacological approach can be taken, too. Their work, just published in Psychological Science, argues that simply putting someone into a weak social position impairs his cognitive function. Conversely, “empowering” him, in the dread jargon of sociology, sharpens up his mind.

Dr Smith focused on those cognitive processes that help people maintain and pursue their goals in difficult and distracting situations. She suspected that a lack of social power may reduce someone's ability to keep track of information and make plans to achieve his goals.

Via Applied Imagination

Al Gore calls for 100 percent renewable electricity by 2018

For a summary of Al Gore's speech yesterday click here, or watch below. Full Text here.
This speech could be important. The timing is perfect.

Great Small Works

Through puppetry and toy theatre, Great Small Works productions reanimate the public sphere and participation in democratic life. This Saturday I'll have the pleasure of meeting some of the collective, who I'm working with to organize the HONK! Festival in Cambridge, MA.

Since 1995, they has engaged audiences with political and avant garde work. They take the stage in theaters, clubs, schools, galleries, streets, and other community centers to address contemporary issues, such as the culture of fear, fundamentalism, and conceptions of evil.

Based in New York City, the company continues the twenty-eight year-old tradition of Spaghetti Dinners, variety evenings (founded on the Lower East Side in the late 1970s by veterans of Vermont’s Bread & Puppet Theater) that include music, live performance, political discourse, and vegetarian spaghetti.

Their Rapture Project (2007) is a serio-comic epic spectacle about fundamentalism and American culture and politics. Inspired by rough-and-tumble Sicilian marionettes, current events, popular End Times literature, The Rapture Project brings together tabloid newspaper stories, popular literature about Armageddon, and fundamentalist iconography to create an epic spectacle following an unlikely cast of characters from the USA to the Middle East and beyond.

Dance til you're green

Worried about the effect on the climate when you've spent all night bopping around in a sweaty, badly air-conditioned, power-hungry club? Seen the mountains of paper flyers strewn across the pavement outside, and wondered how much water was used with every beery toilet flush?

Well worry no more! Because sustainable clubbing is heading our way courtesy of Dr Earth

Romance

The Romance of a British Seaside Holiday..

THE THING

THE THING is a quarterly periodical in the form of an object. Each year, four artists, writers, musicians or filmmakers are invited by the editors (Jonn Herschend and Will Rogan) to create an everyday object that somehow incorporates text. This object will be reproduced and hand wrapped and then mailed to the homes of the subscribers.

The last issue was by Tucker Nichols which was a bonus surprise issue, consisted of four different beermats (also know as coasters). All of the copy on the mats is from real businesses Tucker encountered on a recent trip to Eureka, California.

Tucker used to have a rather wonderful and unique blog which he unfortunately suspended in January - still worth looking at some of the many comments.

THE THING has wrapping parties. I think they are amazing!

Collaboration Prize

The Collaboration Prize is worth $250,000 and recognizes collaborations among two or more nonprofit organizations that each would otherwise provide the same or similar programs or services and compete for clients, financial resources and staff. The Prize also seeks to build an information base of effective practice models that can be studied and used by academics, nonprofit leaders and grantmakers to inspire and advance their work.

Nominations close on July 21....

Would be nice to see a similar competition in the UK....

Lots of Feet

Who is your angel?

When asked; 'why an angel?' , Antony Gormley answered 'because no-one has ever seen one and we need to keep imagining them'. So, with a decade to think about it, we wanted Gateshead residents to tell us just what Angels mean in their lives.

Local artists Jane Gower and Tony Scandrett captured people from across Gateshead describing their feelings on Angels. Watch the slide show and hear some of the thought-provoking, funny and insightful responses.

I love the concept, and the photos are beautiful.

The installation was also on display in the Civic Centre main until the of June.

Magic numbers

A neat 90 second cartoon, telling us why 350 is the magic number, how people are spreading the message across 15 countries, what the G8 are doing about it and how all our individual actions can add up to change.

RSA Design Directions

A couple of the winners of the RSA Design Direction caught my eye, although all the winners and entrant's work seems amazing.

Alex Ostrowski approached The Frenchay Brain Injury Rehabilitation Centre in Bristol to see how he might use design to help in some way. It emerged that all patients suffer from post-traumatic amnesia and experience confusion in their sense of time, place and person. The term for this lost understanding is disorientation, something the unit is responsible for regaining with patients. Alex worked closely with staff to establish an appropriate colour system to bring holistic navigation to the unit, which we could apply to patients' timetables, orientation boards, and the building itself and the project resulted in a book entitled 'I am here'.


Jim Rokos designed 'Mind-plan', a tool that captured the user-centred nature of the brief, to help patients recovering from mental illness and who find it hard to plan a balanced life and fulfil their daily needs. A healthy balanced life allows recovery to continue and reduces the possibility of a relapse. Mind-plan is based on Maslow's psychological theory, Hierarchy of Needs, which many people perceive as the definitive set of five human needs.

Monday .... play time?

Have a go by clicking here :)

Brilliant!

Amir Hfallah creates forts in people's homes and then takes photos of them.

Via: Public Design Center

Book Design

Fully Booked presents a choice selection of artist books. Created by hand and printed in limited editions, these publications push the boundaries of conventional book design.

It presents material from printed publications that succeed in striking a crucial balance – between the market’s demands for availability, legibility and durability on the one hand and sophisticated visual and content design on the other. By featuring projects in this experimental field that combine enormous creativity with skilled craftsmanship, Fully Booked also reveals trends in today’s graphic design.

Looks fantastic.

Transition Culture

There are now over 40 Transition Towns in the UK, with more joining as the idea takes off. With little proactivity at government level, communities are taking matters into their own hands and acting locally. If your town is not a Transition Town, this upbeat guide offers you the tools for starting the process. It is a process which is, as Richard Heinberg writes in his Foreword, “more like a party than a protest march”.

Via Doors Report

Interestingly yesterday I had another article brought to my attention on the impact of our environment on our mental health. One finding was that people who live in neighbourhoods which are walkable have higher wellbeing. The article in Greater Good Magazine is called Sane in the Cityand well worth a read... particularly if you are living in a Transition Town or any town in fact.

In floods

Have you learnt to swim yet? Because Squint Opera have some interesting images of how London could look in 2090 with raised sea levels.

Better than that, how about we all take the time to assess our energy use and be a bit more careful with our resources.

Has anyone seen my armbands?

New Study by Dr Zimbardo

Dr Zimbardo, of Stanford Prison experiment fame, is leading a new study into Heriosm and Altuism.

Researchers from the Pacific Graduate School of Psychology and Stanford University are seeking participants for a new study on pro-social behavior. The goal of this research is to examine how people views ideas such as altruism, heroism, and other helping behaviors. While much research in psychology is done in laboratory settings, this study is designed to gather responses from the general public, allowing the researchers to gain a better understanding of how pro-social activities are widely perceived.

To take part in the study please complete the survey by clicking here. The survey takes about 15 - 30 minutes to complete.

Links posted in support of Greater Good Magazine

Garbage Warrior - The Film

Your Shot

I love National Geographic... and particularly like the relatively new Your Shot section where you can load photos onto their website for possible publication. They select a daily dozen. All stunning.

Outstanding in the Field

Following the links from Laura's post on Jim Denevan's sand art below, I discovered another project that he works on Outstanding in the Field. Open Dinners are arranged and held mostly in the open air, bringing together local farmers and food artisans, chefs and winemakers, they explore the connection between the earth and the food on your plate.

Looks beautiful, and very helpful in raising awareness about food production and location.

Make Art Public

I love this. Make Art Public

Drawing a line in the sand

So we've all been on the beach with a bucket and spade, right? One memorable year my brother and I dug a hole so big we couldn't escape and had to be hauled out by the wrists.

But how about taking a van. And a crane. And a reeeeealy big stick.

Meet Jim Denevan and his amazing 3 mile sand patterns. I'd sure like to see this guy tackle a sandcastle...

Powerful Message

More on Girl Effect. Click on pic below to enlarge.

Play Time

There are some great articles in latest issue of Greater Good Magazine on the importance of play, with some great advice for parents.

This quote from David Elkind:

"Over the last two decades alone, children have lost eight hours of free, unstructured, and spontaneous play a week. More than 30,000 schools in the United States have eliminated recess to make more time for academics. From 1997 to 2003, children's time spent outdoors fell 50 percent, according to a study by Sandra Hofferth at the University of Maryland. ...Decades of research has shown that play is crucial to physical, intellectual, and social-emotional development at all ages. This is especially true of the purest form of play: the unstructured, self-motivated, imaginative, independent kind, where children initiate their own games and even invent their own rules."

What do you call...?

Ok, so what do you call someone who finds herself taking photo's of cool cereal boxes (because they are green and fun) in Waitrose, with her iphone . . . . so that she can blog about them. 21st Century Woman? Nuts?

BTW - One box is about turning the box into your own puppets, the other about transporting an egg at least 3 metres.. as least!

Poster Competition

Art of Politics 2008 poster competition has announced this year's winners. I am so delighted that Thriving Too blog author, James David Morgan, came third in the competition overall. Well done James!

The poster below.

Interesting 2008

I had a brilliant time today at Interesting 2008 peoples' conference, created and organised by Russell Davies. Everything was completely cool, from the informality, to the mixture of talks, to the Interesting 2008 branded apples, and the sign in tables. Thriving's friends School of Everything were in the entrance doing fantastic trade with their high tech mainframe (uh hum). You guys own me some bluetac!

Many of the talks will be streamed online any minute now so keep an eye on Russell's blog. Magic idea. I loved it all! If I didn't have to go and pack I would be going on about it even more.

UPDATE: For really good posting documenting the day have a look at Roo Reynolds Blog. Roo kicked off the morning with his talk about Lego. I have been thinking rather sneaky thoughts about all the lego being stored in the shed ever since. Thankfully I don't think my son reads this blog.

Sir Ken's Vision

Monday night was an extraordinary evening where, among many others, I was fortunate to hear Sir Ken Robinson talk about creativity in education, immediately after receiving the Benjamin Franklin Medal at the RSA. Sir Ken is a perfect and wonderful recipient of this honour, one that the RSA gives with great thought and consideration.

Sir Ken spoke, as always, with enormous humour and charm, describing amusing details from his personal life, including his second wedding to his wife at the Elvis Chapel in Las Vegas. The talk will be available to view on the new RSA Vision format on their website shortly, but in the meantime you can listen online by clicking here.

Having had a few days to digest the talk and the audience discussion following it, I think the most important message for me, was that there are many different ways of engaging and stimulating children and young people to develop. The first example that Sir Ken highlighted was the work of Dance United and their programmes with young offenders. The second example was The University Park Campus School in Massachusetts, US.

There are so many projects which depend on individual's vision, energies and leadership. All diverse and inspiring and making a difference to young people all over the world. While we often try to design formats and models so that they can be duplicated easily and widely, Sir Ken's talk re-enforced very strongly my belief that it is often the act of creating a new type of project, developing new ideas collaboratively with others, which leads to their success. And lets teachers some space and trust to be innovative....

The RSA medal is a fantastic achievement... well done Sir Ken!

And thank you also to all the lovely people I met with through Monday and into the evening - it was enriching and fantastic FUN! (Laura, Laura, Katherine, Dan, Andy, Libby, Graeme, Ian, Ruth, Elly, Michael, Jerry, Andy, Matthew, Philip, Ian, Jonathan, Tony.....)

Nodestone goes live

I met friends Libby Davy and Graeme Sutherland at the RSA on Monday. Libby and Gra have joined forces, blending a formidable combination of expertise, to form Nodestone. Their beautiful new calling card in the pic above.

Nodostone is specialising in providing courses, coaching and a full hand-holding service for organisations wishing to develop into social media.

Their next course, Social Media for the Third Sector, is on 11 July 08.

Just what we need, when we need it!