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.

Weird

larytta - souvenir de chine - video directed by körner union

so weird. but i couldn't stop watching... trying to get posting again. starting with videos. more writing and personal work to come soon.

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.

359 nodes and 2799 links

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

grass chair

I'm liking this image.
Something like this with the RAFT for our grad show could work.
Very finished yet there is a time element with the two objects.

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

even the animals think we're fucked

thinking slow

Slow design is contextual so its definition changes depending on the scale and situation. To me it means taking the necessary time to consider as many facets around who and what the designed thing (object, system, experience) will effect over time. This includes the environment, the producers and the consumers, in the short run and long run. I am making an effort to expand the time frame in which I operate so looking at projects like the 10 000 year all mechanical clock designed by the Long Now Foundation. Extreme yes, but they are actually building the thing in order to talk about applied long term thinking.

A typical intended outcome of a slow design process is to effectively slow down the flow of materials and/or pace of life. Less consuming equals less waste. Careful planning equals less waste. Taking 2 extra minutes to crush the cans and bottles from mad max and bring them up the dock equals less waste. To me slow design adds yet another layer on top of all the eco / sustainable design strategies I've been learning about through school, the green building world and my current job. I feel like slow implies a sensibility around the way we consume that is not about sacrifice but rather quality and pleasure. It also doesn't mean we have to walk every where and do every thing slowly but more about taking the necessary amount of time to understand what is often hidden behind the shiny surface and the allure of bigger better faster now. Because it's killing us.

And there's my slow rant for now. Time to go to work.

playa soropta

hola! i´m writing today from changuinola panama. took a boat into town to check in with the internet world, and to pick up a few key provisionals namely chocolate and a hammock! i had no idea what this adventure would entail. so far i have not felt alone even though i have been travelling solo. lonely planet has really changed the nature and culture of travel. there is always someone going the same direction. i have not lost trust in people. in fact i am gaining it.



on my 4th night, i witnessed my first mama leatherback. we got to her just as she was laying her eggs, nest already dug, 153 cm in length (just the shell). Cesar, one of the locals working with us, was asking me about a few questions after a very silent 4 hours of walking under the rising moon and millions of stars.. do you have a boyfriend? si. do you have a son? no. do you have a sister? no. i have a brother.. he plays music... electrico guitar. and then he turns to me and says something like welcome to your first tortuga. o i got emotional for a number of reasons.. atlas shrugged, human nature, endangered species, dan and his audience, the gift of making music for people and its enormous potential to move the world. in a conscious direction. or is that conscientious? the best part for me was watching her slip back into the ocean.. where she goes.. no one will really know until she turns up again. could be in a few weeks.. could be in years.. could be never again.



i had this thought the other night.. if $ were no object, i would throw a music festival.. inviting all the musicians that i know and love. the fully down, trevor strange, keep yourself good company, milky way travellers, and of course franky! if more wanted to come.. great. bonobo? cat power?

i am realizing what i came here to do. and that is to gather strength... in order to face the world that i love. if that is all i do here, then that is enough.


ciao for now. xos.

playa soropta

well i did it.

i bought a ticket to panama.



to volunteer on a turtle conservation project on playa soropta for 5 weeks. ( :

http://www.turtleprotection.org/

soropta is on panama's carribean coast mid way down the horn. very close to an area called San San Pond Sak which is recognized by the UN as a globally important wetland based on it's uniquness and bio-diversity. i'm terribly excited although i have no idea what lies before me. haven't done my research yet but are you surprised? and who is you? i'm looking forward to being somewhere else. change of scenery. for scenery's sake. its temporary. i hope to come back with a renewed perspective on the great life cycle inquiry. i've proposed to my teachers that this trip is about biomimicry, immersion, invention, curiousity, transferable skills, biodiversity, community development. my passion lies in mobile-ness, culture and the environment. how to travel and be a researcher / designer / journalist concerned with the fate of our generations.. . pretty broad.. i know.



matt and jen, who i will be working with down there, have also been blogging about the soropta project. they are already down there walking the beaches at night and taking care of things. i met them at julian's birthday. enough said!

stay tuned internet. ( :

and, happy birthday mama!

what is art?

art is expression through a specific set of skills.
art enhances those who create it, and inspires those who experience it.
art happens when interior truth meets exterior world.
art is always (we think) trying to recreate nature.



is this a luxury or a responsibility?

art is inviting and has the potential to take you our of (or put you back into) the everyday,and towards a new ways of understanding what is possible and what it means to be human here there now then and into the f u t u r e.