Emily Davidow
What to Wear in NextCity
Posted on 02.09.08 by Emily

DDCLAB EMF Resistant Clothes

Tinfoil hats are so passĂ©. So what should you wear to Faraday’s Cafe?

Check out the latest collection of electromagnetic field blocking and “anti-identity theft” clothing at DDCLAB (427 W 14th St, New York NY 10014 map).

Here’s the text from the windows:

EMF: Electro Magnetic Field Block
Anti•Identity•Theft•Fabric
Electric Resistivity
measure of how strongly a material opposes the flow of electric current and allows the movement of electrical charge.

DDCLAB
Woven of super sheer mesh polyester fibers coated with blackened copper, this high performance ultra thin, light weight and flexible mesh shield has a high ohm/sq resistivity that protects against identity theft by blocking high tech scanners from lifting valuable passport and ID information.

Filed under: advertising and ask emily and consumerism and culture and design and environment and fashion and health and marketing and nyc and observations and retail and shopping and technology


NextCity: The Art of the Possible
Posted on 02.09.08 by Emily

NextCity: The Art of the Possible took place last night at the New Museum of Contemporary Art as part of the New Silent series sponsored by Rhizome, which looks at the ways digital technologies have fundamentally altered our lives and experiences of urban space.

Adam Greenfield, author of Everyware: The Dawning Age of Ubiquitous Computing, Speedbird, Urban Computing and its Discontents, and the upcoming The City is Here for You to Use, moderated an excellent panel discussion that included Christian Nold (who we loved at Pop!Tech), Eric Rodenbeck of Stamen Design, and J. Meejin Yoon of MY Studio and Howeler + Yoon Architecture. Here are the notes I took during the talk:

Adam Greenfield’s imagining metropolitan form and experience in the age of ambient informatics. What does it look like after the PC? He’s teaching a course at NYU’s ITP called Urban Computing with Kevin Slavin of Area/Code. They take as an assumption that in the near future, that which will primarily condition choice is not the physical, but a data overlay. What are the qualities of this data-gathering layer?

  • embedded in enviornment
  • wireless
  • imperceptible, small/buried, recedea from consiciousness
  • post-GUI
  • multiple (tens to hundreds)
  • relational
  • locative (can locate themselves in space and time)
  • situated (specific to places or conditions)

Examples of these technologies:

  • GPS and ‘GPS’ - you need to be in sight-lines of 3 satellites for GPS to work. That’s hard to achieve in urban canyons, but ‘GPS’ is an urban substitute that can triangulate location through wifi or mobile phone networks.
  • RFID - radio frequency tags like those used in easy pass, transit passes, credit cards, the new U.S. passports
  • NFC - Near Field Communication, a short-range wireless communication technology that lets you pay for things with your mobile phone.
    Wifi, Wimax, Wibro bathing cities in open networks
  • we do love our nike+ipod. run baby run!MEMS - Micro ElectroMechanical Systems like the accelerometers in the iPhone and Nike + iPod.

We now can see tremendous amount of information about cities, patterns of use and visualize them in new ways. Information can be made available locally in a way that it can be acted upon. For example, receiving an alert that says, “Hey! You’re about to enter a high crime/bad air quality area”. The result is a city that responds to the behavior of the people in it in real time.

Christian Nold is interested in embodiment and how we are embodied in the city. He recently had an experiment going through customs where he had to have his fingers scanned, but they were too sweaty for the machine to work from his running to catch a flight. We are encountering all kinds of new systems for dealing with our bodies.

Biomapping Device With a promotional image for a lie detector apparatus up on the screen, Nold explained that many of these systems are about control. Our bodies are giving up data to institutions we don’t have control over, and we can’t get the data back. In a lie detector, your words are not trusted; the body’s data is the truth. In Christian Nold’s projects, subjects use a device that is similar in that it uses galvanic skin response (pictured left), but the people control their own data. First the body’s data is measured. Then, by looking at the tracks, the subjects talk about what they were experiencing that caused physical arousal.

When you go from the individual to the aggregate, you start to see some wonderful patterns, which Nold delightfully termed “communal arousal surfaces.” Each city is different.

In Stockport, people were hardly aware that they had a river running through town, since it was covered by a bridge and shopping area that dominates the town. The map also showed that the social heart of the city was still in the old market area.

San Francisco Emotion Map - Christian Nold

The San Francisco Emotion Map (see above) featured a lot of people’s memories being embedded in a particular place. Another interesting highlight is murals. People care about and enjoy them, but they don’t show up on any other maps or tourist guides.

His projects are shifting away from art to local town planning and community activism. A recent project included handing out decibel meters to a community concerned with noise from an airport. The government measured acceptable levels of noise, but their information was based on one or two sensors placed on the road intermittently. The situation looks totally different when you base it on real data.

 Images sensory Homunculus Showing a sensory homunculus (see right), a model of what a man’s body would look like if each part grew in proportion to the area of the brain concerned with its sensory perception, Christian asks us to start thinking in terms of sensory commons rather than public space. Public space no longer exists as interactions become more mediated than ever. How much control do we have? How much agency do we have? (Right now, more than people know.)

Eric Rodenbeck struggled at first to get the display connected and working with his Macbook Pro. This gave Adam an opportunity to point out that these ubiquitous technologies are sold as “seamless” and “perfect.” In the real world, technology breaks constantly, always and reliably. Plan on it. And push back when you see promises of perfection.

cartilinear image

Once connected, Eric began explaining that mapping and data visualization is a medium with a wide expressive potential used for all kinds of things, including deception. He used as an example a map of red and blue states in the 2004 U.S. elections. It looks binary and grim with a blue “Baja Canada” and the rest red, showing little hope for a “United” States. But then we look by county, on a color spectrum from Democratic Blue to Republican Red and see that really we’re quite reddish-purple. And when you adjust it to show each county proportional to the population, as in the cartogram above, we see it’s even more mixed and widely democratic.

Roedenbeck’s interested in the idea that data visualization and mapping is the intersection of analysis and spectacle. Spectacle in this case meaning assertive, robust, active, specctacular and exciting. As a medium, data visualization is live, vast and deep. Stamen creates frames and structures that let you drive through data.

Cabspotting - Timelapse - Lines-Sf4Hr

Cabspotting.org captures GPS data from Yellow Cab taxis in San Francisco. When looking at the paths, we see their flows defining the streets or arteries of a system that can only be described as a heart. (Pictured above, but watch the time lapse movie for full effect.)

Other projects discussed:

Stamen Design | Big Ideas Worth Pursuing

Mapping of development in Plano, TX for Trulia

Stamen Design | Crimespotting

Crimespotting in Oakland, California illustrates how these are not politically neutral. How public should public information be?

Eric recommends Modest Maps, a free display library for designers and developers who want to use interactive maps in their own projects.

J. Meejin Yoon asks “How do you physicalize ideas?” She’s interested in play - working with our own rules and restrictions. In architecture, the term “play” refers to the gap between two materials.

Defensible Dress by Meejin Yoon

The defensible dress project was inspired by her experience with commuting in Seoul. Sensors detect someone approaching the wearer and trigger quills made from Flexinol wire to define the wearer’s personal space.

Other projects discussed:

White Noise White Light, an interactive light and sound field created for the 2004 Athens Olympics.

LowRezHiFi, a sidewalk and lobby installation in Washington D.C. with an interactive sound field and transparent field of pixels that displays information and registers movement as you pass by it.

Adam kicked off the discussion following the presentations by pointing out how this is becoming a politically charged issue. Recently, NYC council members drafted legislation requiring anyone who has a detector that measures chemical, biological or radioactive agents to get a license from the police department. This would stifle collection of environmental info vital to common good. The challenge is how to get community gathered data to be taken seriously?

Lots of great questions were asked. If you have answers, get in touch!

  • How to get community gathered data to be taken seriously?
  • Who owns your GPS trace and photo?
  • Are we prepared for openness?
  • What is the shape of society after these technologies are embedded?
  • How can you get lost?
  • If you can’t get lost, how can you ever find yourself?
  • What happens if you don’t have access? [Real life example: toilets along Highway 1 in Western Finland are unlocked by sending an SMS message to the number given by the Road Administration.]

In Brixton, Christian Nold’s helping develop Abundance, an urban agriculture project to create a resilient community and social cohesion in the face of climate change and other challenges.

Adam Greenfield spoke of reading The Great Good Place, a book about the informal and social third place after home and work, in Starbucks, the chain inspired by it. Everyone in the place was mediated, either plugged into headphones and a music device or staring into a laptop computer. He used to joke of the need for a chain of cafes called Faraday’s, after the Faraday cage, an enclosure painted to block all electrical signals. It’s not a joke anymore. How do you find a way off the network?

The current attitude towards these technologies is “isn’t it a shame that the rich have access and the poor don’t.” Pretty soon, the measure of grandeur and privilege will be to not have to expose yourself to these networks.

Eric explains how Fundrace.org made public information on people’s political donations along with their addresses easily available, causing neighbors to break out into fights. As problematic as any one data source may be, once you start mapping relations between multiple sources, things start to get troubling. For example, mash Fundrace up with capacitors that measure your treads as you walk and can distinguish individuals, and you can imagine doors may for some people and others won’t know they exist.

Where is the line on what’s acceptable? In South Korea and Japan, we see more acceptance and fewer articulated fears (but few good explanations). One pilot in the U.S. asked kids to wear nametags with RFID. PTA called an urgent meeting and physically removed it from the schools. These are not neutral technologies but “technosocial assemblages” that can’t be decoupled.

And what happens if it all goes away? Adam thinks about Marshall McLuhan’s idea from Understanding Media: Every technological invention or extension is also an amputation. The degree we get used to it is precisely the degree to which we lose our native capabilities.

We have some agency and some responsibility:

  • Fight to create lostness.
  • Design interventions that return serendipity to people.
  • Raise media literacy and awareness of what’s at risk.
  • Communicate to elected officials.

N.B. The next event in the series takes place in March, and it looks like a fantastic panel of artists working with biotechnology curated by the fabulous Régine Debatty.

Comments: 2 Comments


links for 2007-11-01: Looking at Things Differently
Posted on 11.01.07 by Emily

Lamas and Cameras in Bhutan
Posted on 10.13.07 by Emily

muensel: true love comes and goes

According to “Is That a Lama Behind the Camera,” Anupama Chopra’s great article in the New York Times on Bhutan’s budding film industry, last year a record 24 films were produced in the tiny Himalayan kingdom, population 700,000; in 2003 the total was only six. Even though there were only ten films produced in the country in 2005, delightful movie posters announced screenings in the theaters or public halls of every town I traveled through. The article describes a trend towards song-and-dance fantasy, but the movies that caught my eye had taglines that sounded far more realistic: “Muensel — True love comes… and goes,” “Ratho Namgay — bungling along a lifetime achievement of failure,” and “Kikhor — the drama of life begins at home, within the family.” It’s clear that while the dialogue is in Dzongkha and the costumes are traditionally Bhutanese, the themes are universal.

(more…)

Filed under: art and consumerism and creativity and culture and emily approved and fashion and funny and happiness and movies and observations and travel and video

Comments: 1 Comment


NY Design Week Highlights: Haute Green & ICFF
Posted on 05.21.07 by Emily

HauteGreen

 190 507610526 68B94E7Ae3 S 192 507634609 6F4Bd80D48 S 227 507637899 B664631A22 S 224 507637245 F45C4D5D5C S 230 507639339 D87810C5F1 S 194 507638913 1170527C3E S

HauteGreen’s 2nd exhibition of sustainable design that’s both aesthetically pleasing and friendly to the environment offered many delights. I’m not sure how I’ve lived so long without The Green Light, by xDesign (Natlie Jeremijenko, Amelia Anon, Will Kavesh), a botanical lamp, terrarium, and airfilter all-in-one. I also loved My Secret Garden, a rug made from discarded blanket scraps by Studio Jo Meesters, and Our Flesh and Blood, a chest of drawers made from reclaimed intricately carved furniture, an FSC-certified plywood base and drawer fronts screened with images by Art With Function. More photos from Haute Green.

ICFF

  • corona solar lightsThe Corona solar light, designed by Shane Kohatu and Emi Fujita, is a solar powered outdoor LED lighting system that can be staked to the ground, attached to a wall or placed on a tabletop. It uses no glues or fasteners, and is easy to diassemble for recycling.
  • loll designs + douglashomer adirondack chair that glows in the darkAfterGlow, a glow-in-the-dark recycled plastic adirondack chair made from 100% post-consumer recycled high density polyethylene (HDPE), a number two recyclable plastic (i.e., milk jugs), developed as a collaboration between Loll Designs and Douglas Homer.

  • May all your days unfold as delightfully as Molo design’s paper and textile seating and textile softwall (used as a bar setup at ICFF). Their felt rocks rock, naturally.

  • Amaridian offers modern, sexy, tribal furniture and accessories from South African designers, including rocking bench and bug screen.Amaridian at ICFF

  • Mio: Nomad architectural systemMIO’s cork ModuTiles and cardboard Nomad architectural system. Also their softbowls, featured also at Haute Green. Ok, we love everything they make, especially the recycled cardboard PaperForms acoustic weave tiles/3d wallpaper. Appreciate how their catalog lists the materials, design and origin positive aspects of each item (renewable, recyclable, compostable, recycled, closed-loop manufacturing).

  • transneomatic at icffFernando & Humberto Campana’s TransNeomatic container made of re-used scooter tire and natural wicker for Artecnica’s Design With Conscience project that pairs designers with artisans around the world. Transneomatic bowls are produced in Vietnam using scooter tires rescued from landfills.

  • PIE’s undulating furniture handcrafted from natural materials such as water hyacinth, liana, bamboo and rattan. Furniture collection is available at Vivavi. Founders Bannavis and Michelle Sribyatta founded PIE (Project Import Export) in Spring 2005, the same season they welcomed the birth of their son, π (~3.14).

  • Amenity Home’s adorable non-gender-specific Home Nursery collection made from 200 thread count organic cotton with non-toxic dyes with a foresty theme.amenity home nursery collection

  • YiAhn’s Bassinet that converts to a toy bin and bookshelf, then a chair and table as your child grows.
  • Valentin Vodev’s roller buggy stroller/scooter goes straight to my skating heart.

  • Picture 108I’ve loved Ronan & Erwan Bouroullec’s Cloud Shelving System since it was introduced. In fact, the only reason my walls aren’t lined with them is that they’re made from polystyrene, and I can visualize them offgassing just like the vaporous body they resemble. NeotericHome offers an eco-friendly version made from bamboo. Alas, the main reason my walls won’t be lined with these is that they’re 5.7 times the price of the original. (Disclosure: I don’t actually remember seeing this at the show, but it’s on their postcard.)

  • Design Boom’s DesignMart featured fun cash-and-carry accessories: “Chicken in space” theme embroidered laptop bags, clutch purses and accessories by Mandarin Orange. After washing drip-dry-dishes from giffin’termeer, each piece can stand upright, so the water runs off with no need to towel dry. Mixko’s “English Summer Pendant” with a cottony cloud and glass rain drops.

Filed under: consumerism and culture and design and emily approved and fashion and furniture and love and nyc and observations and senses and shopping and taste


Malignant Mole Bikini
Posted on 05.20.07 by Emily

 Malignantmolebikini
May means it’s time to enjoy all the fun ITP thesis presentations (NYU’s Interactive Telecommuncations Program). It’s also Melanoma Awareness Month, and the two dovetail nicely in ITP graduate Fiona Carswell’s Contemporary Memento Mori (”remember you will die”) series of interactive wearables that reference time and our relationships to our own body. Her malignant mole bikini, painted with UV sensitive pigment, appears normal until exposed to UV light, then dark moles appear.
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Filed under: art and culture and design and emily approved and fashion and health and observations and people and science and senses and technology


links for 2007-03-13
Posted on 03.13.07 by Emily

Filed under: art and consumerism and creativity and culture and design and environment and fashion and funny and health and links and science and senses and sustainability and technology and travel and webstuff

Comments: 1 Comment


protect your largest organ: the skin you’re in
Posted on 09.10.06 by Emily

marc jacobs melanoma limited edition nudie t-shirts
Marc Jacobs’ brilliant melanoma awareness and fundraising t-shirts feature naked celebrity photographs (Winona Ryder, Rufus Wainwright, Julianne Moore, Dita von Teese, Selma Blair, Carolyn Murphy, Naomi Campbell, Hilary Swank, Brandon Boyd, Christy Turlington and Marc Jacobs) and clever slogans such as “protect the skin you’re in,” “protect your largest organ,” and “save your ass.” Proceeds from the sale of t-shirts and the photographs by Brian Bowen Smith go to NYU Interdisciplinary School of Medicine Melanoma Cooperative Group in memory of the late NYU physician Jessie Rubin.

How to identify suspicious moles on your own skin? Look for spots that express ABCD (Asymmetry, Border irregularity, Color and Diameter) and also those that are E (Evolving in size, shape, symptoms such as itching or tenderness, surface bleeding, or shades of color). Please take care of your beautiful skin and get it checked out by a dermatologist if anything seems strange — when detected early, melanoma can usually be treated successfully.

More on Marc Jacobs’ store window activism, which actually turns out to be that of his business partner, Robert Duffy.

In-depth looks at celebrity skin conditions by dermatologist and film buff, Vail Reese, M.D., at Skinema.

Filed under: branding and consumerism and culture and design and emily approved and fashion and health and nyc and passions and shopping

Comments: 4 Comments


links for 2006-08-05
Posted on 08.05.06 by Emily

Filed under: culture and design and emily approved and fashion and happiness and interconnected and links and love and senses and shopping and taste and typography


the ultimate backpack: art + solar + helping others
Posted on 07.30.06 by Emily

Snipshot 1Aacbqjmmd New backpack is coming out this fall from Tumi co-designed by Anish Kapoor to benefit Doctors without Borders, coinciding with the launch of Kapoor’s intriguing Sky Mirror installation (a 35-foot-diameter concave mirror made of polished stainless steel reflecting the skyline) at Rockefeller Center from September 19 through October 27th (also sponsored by Tumi and organized by Public Art Fund).

Featuring a solar panel on top and temperature controlled neoprene compartments, the backpack can charge your phone or PDA while keeping your lunch or bionic tissue samples cool. Constructed from red-on-gray FXT ballistic nylon with silver metallic lining and a removable padded laptop sleve, you probably won’t be able to destroy it. (I’m still fond of their first generation computer backpack from the early Web days that confidently holds and comfortably distributes more weight than any other bag I’ve ever tried.)

100% of the $695 retail price for this individually numbered limited-edition of 500 backpacks (with Anish Kapoor’s imprimatur) will go to the worthy cause of Doctors without Borders.

Seeing this immediately brought to mind the great solar bags available now from Voltaic Systems. Also, lots of intriguing features recently added to another useful type of Backpack, a useful, beautiful and easy-to-use web service from 37 signals that allows you to organize all your to-dos, notes, ideas and calendar online.

via Fashion Week Daily


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