USA

The Touch | NY exhibit is something we’re looking forward to checking out here in town, showcasing products and installations by 14 artists and designers specializing in the use of recycled materials. Products on show include jewelry, furniture, apparel (a skirt made out of plastic spoons!), lighting, and more.  The artisans featured include Estúdio Manus , Domingos Tótora, Tatiana Sperhacke, Blindesign, and Thomas Beale.

Touch NY
Opening reception: 18 May 2008, 7-9pm
May 18-20, 2008
Honey Space
148 11th Avenue
New York, NY 10011

[via CoolHunting]

This past January, we reported on the man-made waterfalls that will be gracing New York City’s East River towards the end of June. Created by Danish artist Olafur Eliasson, the project has since steadfastly gained steam – with scaffolding already having been built. Both the Circle Line Downtown and New York Water Taxi have announced they’ll be offering tours (some of them free) of the four falls . Gothamist reports that NYC is expecting tourism revenues to increase by $55 million due to the project.

 NYC Waterfalls

[via Gothamist]

Residents of Los Angeles have come together to save their beloved taco trucks. Under a new ordinance, trucks would have to follow overly strict rules about where and when they can set up shop. Non compliance would mean fines, misdemeanor charges and possible jail time. There are similar laws in place now that are rarely enforced. The NY Times explains:

This is the kind of city where you can pave over a freeway’s carpool lanes with toll roads, and few will complain. You can propose a 40-story skyrise in the center of Hollywood, and hardly anyone two miles to the west will take notice. You can squander public money, close down the ports and flatten landmarks, and many residents of this sprawling metropolis will simply yawn and move on.

But this is also a food obsessed city with rich Hispanic cultural traditions, and tacos have crossed the miles of road and class divides.

“Taco trucks are iconic here,” said Aaron Sonderleiter, a teacher from the Highland Park neighborhood of Los Angeles and one of the petition founders. “You go to one and you see black, people, white people, old people, young people. They really capture a microcosm of L.A.”

Nearly 5,000 people have signed an online petition opposing the new law at saveourtacotrucks.org

NYT: Hungry Angelenos Rally Around the Taco

Hmmm… cupcakes and techies? A combination worth trying out. The bloggers behind Cupcakes Take The Cake will be bringing their sweet talk to the real world at Cupcake Social 2.0, to be held at The Delancey Rooftop Bar in New York. Open to everyone, the event will feature free cupcakes provided by Sugar Sweet Sunshine (which, in our opinion, is the best cupcake bakery in town) as well as an interesting mix of bloggers, developers, and other sweets lovers in the tech industry.
When: Thursday, May 8 7-9PM
The Delancey Rooftop Bar
168 Delancey Street
New York, NY 10002

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This new art exhibition at Ad Hoc Art Gallery in Bushwick, Brooklyn, takes a look at the ‘temptation of possibility’ - resulting in a pastiche of images and experiences from people standing on the brink of change, hope, or peril. The month-long exposition will feature the works of Josh MacPhee, Billy Mode, Chris Stain and The Polaroid Kidd, as well as various found material and industrial detritus. Inside visitors can also experience a lifesize railroad shanty town (or at least the recreation of one), with photographs from the prolific Polaroid Kidd filling the walls, offering a candid glimpse at boxcar culture. The exposition will run from May 2 - June 1.

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Some of you readers are probably aware of Russell Davies’ Interesting conference - a bunch of folks turning up to talk and listen to other folks about what they find interesting. A day off to recharge the batteries and get the brain thinking a little more passionately. It seems to be a rather attractive proposition - this year’s Interesting London sold out in 3 hours! The event is also being held in Sydney and Amsterdam.

A long time collaborator of Russell Davies is planning to hold an Interesting New York. David Nottol is looking for volunteers and speakers to help. Details here.

[We’ll update this page as we get more details]

UPDATE: Dave says:

Thanks for the huge outpouring of support.  We have more than enough
volunteers for the planning committee.  I'll send all of you an email about
a time and place to meet up next week to choose a conference date, venue and
who we know that can help us with specific things like website design and
hosting, stage lighting and sound, etc.  Thanks again everybody.

Reason Magazine has a long and fascinating article about an artist’s collective and squat in Berkeley called The Shipyard. After having the electricity shut off by the city, the collective was stuck with having to generate its own power. They tried various methods such as solar and biodiesel, but struck gold with an archaic process called gasification.

In a nutshell, gasification is a process of heating up any carbon-rich material in a special container that produces carbon monoxide and hydrogen which is then burned as fuel. These materials includes coal, petroleum and more importantly, biomass, plastic and items we would consider garbage. Besides running the squat on gasification, they also successfully powered cars by the process.

Perhaps the best news of all is that the waste product (called carbon char) is actually beneficial for the environment.

The key in making a 21st century environmentally friendly process out of an old 20th century machine is the char left over after gasification. In the Amazon rain forest, scientifically mysterious processes create a charcoal known as terra preta (“black earth”) or “agri-char,” which has been used for thousands of years to enrich the soil and boost agricultural productivity. More recently, it got a glowing write-up in Scientific American in May 2007 and made Wired’s “JargonWatch” this March.

By taking the leftover carbon char and plowing it back into the ground, gasification might do more than the mostly carbon-neutral act of burning biofuel. The process is potentially carbon-negative, keeping most of the carbon in the ground rather than the atmosphere while helping plants grow faster, which takes still more carbon out of the atmosphere.

Reason Magazine: Power To The People

To celebrate the release of Sabine Seymour’s new book, Fashionable Technology: The Intersection of Design, Fashion, Science, and Technology, New York’s Eyebeam Museum will be hosting an event featuring wearable technologies, a runway show by the participants of Eyebeam’s Spring 2008 Girls Eye View program, followed by a discussion with Seymour.

The event is free and begins at 6pm on May 22, 2008.

Read the rest of this entry »

New York City has declared May “Bike Month“, and is hosting a contest to find the most bicycling-friendly employers in the city. Also in the works are initiatives to increase the number of cycling commuters. These include adding 200 miles of bike lanes by 2009 and installing 37 special bike storage shelters and 5,000 bike parking racks by 2011.

[via NYT]