The Secret of Happiness

Maybe because of Coca Cola's massive Open Happiness campaign for the 2010 Games, maybe because spring has come early and the cherry blossams make everything cheery. I am thinking about happiness. The Happiness Project recounts the author's daily adventures in pursuit of happiness, an instant NY Times bestseller, while the Future Well is a new design firm specializing in health and happiness. I'm thinking that the secret of happiness is simply discovering the things in the world that make us smile. For example this public poster series by the Dopludo Collective!

mirror/drink by maia love

Riddle: What am I? Transparent in a tipped glass, glistening on your lower lip before cascading down your throat, nourishing your cells. Melting off a mountain ice-block, somersaulting over stones, pooling in a mirror form before streaming down your pipes to land splash into your glass. As wealthy as diamonds, precious as platinum, rare as air. Escaping skyward as we gently slowly heat our globe-shaped home . . .

Dance piece by Maia Love.
Filmography by Hans Christian Berger.
Video edit by Moira Simpson.

Performed at the Vancouver Design Nerd's Jam at Recollective, April 2009.

Public Potluck Picnic

Spinning off from the last Design Nerd Jam which focussed on the convergence of a green and creative city, our group decided to organize an informal unstructured potluck picnic on the luscious grassy hill beside Science World. Fredrick who I met randomly in my group was keen to help organize and he put together the invitation. I sent out some emails and facebook invites and prayed to the weather Gods. They listened. It was lovely afternoon with a great little spread of tasty food and delicious conversation. Next time, more activities like kite flying, music playing, croquet and Frisbee. One highlight was Bruce showing up with his electric bike and mini sound system. Nerdtastic.

LaP: Learning at Parties

I was at a party Friday night. It was full of costumes, revelry and merriment. At one point well into the night, we stepped outside and enter into a fantastic conversation about energy. I remember that I could see the nearly full moon reflecting in the window of the house. Djs behind the glass. Dance floor behind the DJ. I don't remember how the conversation even started. LC proposes Manhattan Project 2.0 for renewable energy. "Do it. Put 500 billion into it!!! (as opposed to spending it on the war on terror)". I wasn't aware of the Manhattan Project (until I asked). No, I was thinking about the Manhatta Project which I JUST read about in article about Spatial History on World Changing. It is similar to the Lost Creeks of Vancouver but I think that bringing spatial history and place into the discourse adds new layers of richness and relevance to the project.



Spatial history asks:

What did our cities look like pre European history?

What was this place???

What has it been?


Basically, anything regarding place.

Hello baby hawk

Walking home yesterday, we had an encounter. So close to home. In the city.

Talk nerdy to me

 
Amazing Czech biking history from Fransisco.  What a nerd.

minimal realism

I don't even know if I'd ever get a tattoo.. but if I did.. I would look to Charles Harper for inspiration. This guy is amazing.

I was going to post about pollution in Beijing, but I already did that yesterday at Ci.

Human Development Index ~ for the developed

B+, as usual.

http://measureofamerica.org/
via: http://www.humantific.com/

359 nodes and 2799 links

raftacular

It was always my intention to keep the RAFT project going after school. It was always my intention to develop a simple design that could be scalable, adaptable, modular and work with materials at hand. I am so grateful for having met the fantastic people at eatART who are now supporting (and storing) this project at the hangar. Our mutual love for the sea as well as things like civil disobedience, energy awareness, creativity, invention, and general mayhem brought us all together this weekend, dressed like pirates, armed with a potato canon and ready for adventure. ( : So fun!!!

Ci newsletter chock full of nuggets

Ci, the company I now work for as a 'creative strategist' publishes a juicy newsletter called soundbite once in a while that shares some intelligence surrounding the SHIFT Report. I've blogged about it before - What do 5000 main stream North American's think (and behave) around issues related to sustainability and social responsibility. In a nut shell, it's way more than green green green.

Another feature on this one is a brand rivalry poll - Are Microsoft customers more concerned about the environment than Mac customers? Do people who drink Coke care more about local and organic than Pepsi drinkers? Is there really a difference between the people who buy Method and those who buy Clorox? Ci will profile the rivalry that has the most votes.

I encourage anyone reading this to sign up for the newsletter and stay in touch. This company is smart and ambitious. Two good things I like to see in an employer of mine. ( :

data art + love

"I Want You To Want Me", by Jonathan Harris and Sep Kamvar, commissioned by the Museum of Modern Art, for their "Design and the Elastic Mind" exhibition. It examines and organizes data from online dating sites and reveals some deep insights into who we are and what we are looking for. Of course, it also shows us how data can be turned into art.

:: via Ed Cotton at www.influxinsights.com

hello, lawrence weiner

I recently saw a Lawrence Weiner (and John Baldessari) show at the Apt. I went with Alex and Katrin which was a treat in of itself. I hadn't heard of either of the artists before this week. It was a private showing so we learned a lot about conceptual art and 'the business of. Alex asks the best questions. And since then (of course) I recognize the names. So you can imagine the delight of seeing this short video which I first saw on Kara's fabulous oliveisgreen. Check it oot.

RAFT :: being held hostage in gallery

Conceived as a floating structure, built mostly of salvaged materials, the project component of my thesis (RAFT) is used as a way to test and work through the creative possibilities that surround slow design. I use RAFT as a research tool – a conceptual and physical sounding board to uncover and develop a template for practicing slow design. The method was conceived primarily for industrial designers, and therefore more often than not includes a physical product output. It has the ability to transfer to other forms of sustainable design and production.

primed - opening!

Thanks to mandroid for taking these!!!

primed

hello out there,
my grad show is coming up quick!
just want to have here for the record; the river; the stream; the flow; the blog.
i installed the RAFT in there this afternoon.
i have to say i'm running on a low tank these days.
nothing a little pulverized pineapple, banana, and wheat grass can't fix.
still lots to do. but when is there not?

ready for the next chapter.

conversation with my dad

Look back to look ahead.

Oh okay. It wasn’t that different. We thought about things differently. Different worries.

170 000 years. Long time to the individual. Geological time. Blip.

British islands. 20 000 years at the most. Our kind of tribe.

20 building permits / year. Stable. That’s what its been. That’s what

Ever expanding growth in buildings. 70 years. Technology will upgrade. Computers. Tvs. Radios. Sit around living room radios. Still doing the same stuff.

Average growth over the last 70 years. We better be even more careful. Building up. Smart growth. Likely to keep growing. all the more important to think strategically. Needs to be managed. Start now. Economist we must have growth. Let’s not pretend it’s a big surprise. Its going to cost us a fortune. National policy encourages immigration. Average 2 children / family. Economic purposes. Immigration. Keeps labour costs down. Why? Policies that set limits to growth. Cost of labour goes up? Private sectors program. public private sustain this rate of growth. Why are we subsidizing labour by immigration policies that we can’t

Setting limits.

Nobody knows anything b/c there isn’t another model.

Suburbs are in place over time. Trees! Gardens! Subdivide suburbs. Densifying.

Policies to intensify existing.

Diversity. Density.

Cities used to be terrible filthy places.

Land use planning. Workers close to factories. Trucks noise ventilation.

Suberbs emerged as heaven. Away from work. Communiting was a luxury.

Dina shore. See the usa in your chevrolet.

Oh shit.

Terrorism.

Financing terrorism for our greed of gas.

Less then 70 years. House appliances, safe neighborhood, model was much modest house, smaller lots. Today over housed. 4 bedrooms for 2 kids. Cheap mortgage created urban sprawl. Subsidizing it as a nation. Sustainable community planning. Guarenteed mortgage.

Stability.

Maslows.

Human needs source of food. California gets taken over by mexico?

Certainly we don’t want to destabilize the future.

Let’s not do anything to jepordize this. Do not dig up the railroad tracks.

It’s a story. Its such a good story. Compelling concept. Native is glamorous.

HOOK.

Eat sleep poop mate breathe transportation cars eco efficient clothes

Technology will change

Longtitdude ? accurate clocks > 1700s. made all the difference in the world.

Latitude angles from the sun, horizon

Travelling around oceans 2-4000 years ago.

Austrailians had

50 000 years ago. Brave brave monkeys.

Roots of altruisms and ethics in chimpanzees and apes

Females will collect the rocks.

We are obviously More developed.

Rationalized it. ethical impulses

Rules of law, religion, communities, clubs, innate nature

Sophisticated monkeys.

God gene. Wants to understand sense of larger cosmos.

If we have it.. then likely other animals have it too.

Spiritual. Quite possible. And what’s wrong with that?

Non human.

Greater developed god gene.

Applied practical.

What are the implications of long term thinking

Not surprised as much.

Test concepts

Propose how It could be tested

Examples of

Develop criteria

Will this work in this scenario

Stable healthy sustainable communities

Long term planning

Tool to start using

You don’t believe in 7 generations ahead?

Go back to the first of those 7

What could they have done then that would have made a difference today

Communities

Homes

Lives

Things

Or NOT?

Doesn’t have to be rigid.

Understand your history in order to know your future

How did we get here?

Cultural disconnect.

Just holding on to these ideas.

Successful tribe, adopted agroculture, up to 2000 – 3000 people

Organized to come up with these ideas

Pretty spectacular

Not uncivilized

Died of disease

Now we’re here

beauty in fragility

Most living things work on some kind of clock: day and night, passing seasons, lunar cycles, rising tides, cosmic alignments, life and death. For the most part, humans experience time and space relative to the Earth, to life experience and span. Fuad-Luke, in his slow design manifesto, outlines six time scales and six units of survival that are useful in understanding the various scales at work.

• Year <> Individual
• Decade <> Family
• Century <> Tribe
• Millennia <> Culture
• 10s millennia <> Species
• Eons <> Web of life

In reading this, one could assume that the survival of a tribe or a culture lies in the ability or capacity to expand the time frame of the modus operandi. Clearly, embracing a long term strategy is inevitably a more sustainable one. Bringing it up to the surface in order to see how this magnificent place unfolds? There is beauty in our fragility.

RAFT as platform

Updated sketches coming soon to a scanner near you. and who is YOU? aha I get a kick out that question. It's very Modest Mouse.

evo lives on

I entered evo (my carleton ID grad project) into the core 77 / inhabitat / greener gadgets design competition. and received a notable mention. Cool! So did terry and shane. go carleton. Check it out over here. I'm flattered that 4 years later, the same design could even qualify for being green. Approaching emotional durability.



Eternally yours,
Sarah