Farmlab
1745 North Spring Street, Unit 4
Los Angeles, CA 90012
1.323.226-1158

Friday, February 5, 2010, Noon

Metabolic Studio Public Salon
Simon Balm

A Year at the South Pole

Simon Balm will describe his experiences during a year spent at the South Pole conducting astronomical research in one of the coldest and extreme environments on Earth.

A native of London, England, Simon Balm received his Bachelor of Science degree in Chemistry from the University of Durham in 1988 and his Ph.D. in Chemical Physics from the University of Sussex in 1992, working with Nobel Prize winning chemist Sir Harold Kroto. After graduate school he spent two years as a NATO Postdoctoral Fellow in the UCLA Astronomy Department followed by four years as a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, MA where he helped to design, build and install a radio telescope at the geographical South Pole. After several Summer visits to the Antarctic he wintered-over with the telescope at the Amundsen-Scott South Pole station during the 1995-1996 season as a scientist with United States Antarctic Program.

[text and graphic from Farmlab website. Cross-posted to The Data Stream.]

Wunderbar Festival
“Housewarming”
138 St. Lawrence Square
Newcastle England NE6 1SU

“Jorn Ebner and Monica Ross cordially invite you to a housewarming in reverse.

On this site a row of council flats was demolished in 2008 to make way for the Byker South Redevelopment plan. The scheme has recently been shelved due to the current economic crisis – a situation that reflects the fragility of the social housing sector within society.

Housewarming will take place in open space, unsheltered and probably cold. No house stands here and another may or may not again: the artists imply the history of their private occupation of a flat on this site as the basis to host the sharing of social space. Tea, coffee, drinks and snacks will be provided by the artists, but guests are also welcome to contribute refreshments to be shared by all.

Housewarming is produced by Michelle Hirschhorn and supported by Wunderbar Festival, Newcastle City Council, ISIS Arts and the Friends of St. Lawrence Park.”

more on Byker and The Byker Wall:

• BBC on the original Byker Development
• City of Newcastle > Environment and Planning > Regeneration > Ouseburn Byker Sites >St. Lawrence Square

Wunderbar Festival Schedule

[text and graphic from Housewarming Facebook Event page. Cross-posted to The Data Stream.]

Signal Fire is worried that New York is SCREWED!
http://nypost-se.com

Tourists vacationing in Miami have a disturbing addition to their view of the beach: a growing population of convicted sex offenders have been residing under the Julia Tuttle Causeway. With over 60 offenders living in the tiny space, the community is now spilling out into plain view. Forced by law from living anywhere near congregations of children, they were actually encouraged by the city to live under the highway.

Interestingly, for those who follow the court’s offer to live under the bridge, they find a close knit and remarkably civilized community. There is a village of shacks made from driftwood, thatch, and scavenged junk furnished with twin beds, sofas, DVD players, TV’s, and microwaves and each week everyone pays $2 to fuel the camp’s generator. There’s even an enforced 10pm curfew. In addition, many members care for each other and respect each other’s personal space, especially after a woman joined their ranks.

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Visitors view House Magic @ University of Trash

When Supreme Court judicial nominee Sonia Sotomayor, as a junior at Princeton University in 1974, helped design a course on the “History and Politics of Puerto Rico,” the opportunity came as part of a specific moment in the history of American higher education. Starting in the late 1960s, members of the student movement and their allies, frustrated with the hierarchical structure of university education and feeling its content was irrelevant to the pressing issues of the day, began inventing new approaches to learning. Free universities aiming for a radically democratic pedagogy emerged off-campus; many universities, like Princeton, eventually responded by incorporating student-designed courses into their curriculum.

In recent years, artists and activists have made efforts to reclaim this tradition. Drawing on the utopian pedagogy of the 1960s and beyond, The University of Trash, a project by Michael Cataldi and Nils Norman, offers free classes, lectures, screenings, and workshops at SculptureCenter (44-19 Purves Street, Long Island City, New York) from May 10 to August 3. The exhibition consists of an installation, largely made from recycled materials, and the “temporary, makeshift University” for “radical ideas and projects” that will take place within it. Members of the public are invited to propose courses and other events (which might include holding a meeting or band practice or hosting a radio show, curating a film screening or presenting a lecture).

(more…)

In order to raise awareness for the the Weingart Homeless Center, ad agency David&Goliath created the Weingart Homeless Project. This non-traditional ad campaign asked the people of California to imagine themselves homeless. The ads feature twelve homeless individuals living in the Los Angeles are (12 of the more than 70,000 homeless people in LA). Each person was photographed holding a sign displaying the phrase “Before you turn away, put yourself in my place.”

They took these images, blew them up to life-size, removed the faces, and turned them into realistic cardboard cutouts. The final products were then placed in upscale shopping centers around LA asking passers-by to take notice. The ads not only raised awareness and funds for the Weingart Homeless Center, but they forced people (if only for a moment) to face the thousands of homeless people that are so often ignore.

via Osocio

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