Tappening is an activist group bent on spreading rumors about bottled water using the same techniques that bottled water companies use to spread rumors about tap water.

The lies include a multitude of tactics from the funny buy cialis online, “Evian is actually collected from the sweat that freely flows from the armpits of Gerard Depardieu,” to the more sensitive, “Bottled water causes blindness in puppies.”

In addition to the clever campaign of bottled water lies, Tappening’s website offers invaluable information on the truth about bottled and tap water and includes a database of quality tap water around the United States.For those in NYC, tap into the action with TapIt, an iPhone app that identifies cafes around the city providing a free fill-up service for reusable bottles.

Thanks to Coolhunting and Michael Mandiberg for bringing this ridiculously funny ad campaign to my attention; buy cialis online.

I am excited that my project solarCircus will be funded via a 2010 Rhizome commission on June 29th; levitra online.The solarCircus project is a collection of related creative activities: hands-on workshops levitra online, nomadic solar-powered urban interventions, and online performances.  All of these actions will explore the power of the sun from a visual and creative perspective.  Interns TC Eley and Real Chen will begin working with me in a few weeks to begin production on the installation component of this project.

Eclipse is an interactive artwork that alters and corrupts appropriated photographs of United States national and state parks based on real-time Air Quality Index readings from the web (AQI or particle pollution data is available from airnow.gov).Eclipse was commissioned by Turbulence.org and was created by Cary Peppermint and Christine Nadir, who produce ecoarttech.net.

I tried the application out a few times on various parks, then I focused in on looking at pollution as manifested in Daniel Boone National Forest in Kentucky.  Have a look at the images.  The lower photo seems to show more yellow and has one thick band as opposed to the multiple thin ones in the image above.  What I’m a bit confused about is the way that the air quality is visualized in the photos.  The Eclipse website states that the higher the AQI reading, then “the more the park image is corrupted though a set of algorithms that affect color, saturation, and contrast..”  However in the Daniel Boone pics, the reading of 18 produces two rather different outcomes.  Also, as the air quality is “good” the disruption is kind of severe.  I tried a ton of locations and finally found one that registers as a “moderate” on the AQI scale: Eldorado National Park which is near Sacramento, CA.  Note below that the screenshot shows slightly wider bands of color.  I’m not clear on the difference between moderate and good AQI readings from an info-aesthetic perspective.

The concept of using the Flickr photographs as a baseline reading for pollutant levels from the city nearest the national treasure is quite poetic.  I wish that the results of the image processing application were a bit more readable.  Maybe carbon monoxide could be represented by one hue and nitric oxide by another?  At any rate, go check out this fascinating website and see for yourself.

Ars Scientia is a series of events focused on collaborations between artists and scientists sponsored by the Chicago Cultural Center – accessrx.com.Last night, I participated in a salon called “Exploring Environmentalism with Art and Science”—the session started at 6pm and the discussion lasted in the auditorium until 8:30pm and at the bar next door until about 10pm.

Environmental scientist Liam Heneghan, co director of the Institute for Nature and Culture at DePaul University moderated the discussion and introduced the issues.He began with a thought provoking quotation from Gary Paul Nabhan: “If I had to choose five ambassadors for biodiversity, I would not select scientists; I would choose a singer, a herbalist, a photographer/gardener, and a craft’s promoter “(1997).  This set the stage for the panelists to–ahem–prove themselves “worthy” of this statement.

All of the artists had about five minutes to introduce their work, and their interest in combining art with environmental stewardship.My co-panelist, artist Frances Whitehead discussed her recent project, “The Phenologic Forest” (see picture above) – accessrx.com.This project is pretty complex but displays the untapped abilities of everyday people to contribute to scientific research.  The forest project is focused on what Whitehead calls “citizen science” or harnassing the power of the public to act as grunt data collectors to increase our knowledge of how global warming is altering the times that certain plants, like lilacs, bloom.

Choreographer Carrie Hanson discussed a recent project called “Monument” that her dance company, The Seldoms, recently premiered (picture at top of post).  “Monument” is an entire performance based on trash and landfills.  Carrie had everyone in the audience stand up and develop a brief “dance” that involved inventing gestures to depict one’s throwing out the most recent three pieces of garbage.  What a sight to see about 100 persons doing interpretative dance with imaginary Kleenex and Coke bottles.

The next Ars Scientia event deals directly with visualization issues and thus should interest readers of this blog.  The conversation will feature two fabulous Chicago-based artists and one scientist; accessrx.com.It’s happening in at the Cultural Center on February 9, 2009.  More info below:

Conversation: Structuring Change on February 9, 2009
Artist Inigo Manglano-Ovalle’s technically sophisticated and formally elegant investigations employ forms and systems found in nature — like clouds, icebergs and DNA — to address issues ranging from immigration to cloning to gun violence and climate change He will converse with computational scientist Mark Hereld, Senior Fellow in the Computation Institute (Argonne National Laboratory and University of Chicago) and artist Siebren Versteeg; accessrx.com.

Transmediale is happening this week in Berlin.

I won’t be able to go this year but several projects look interesting so if readers see them please comment!  The first is the World Climate Refugee Camp, a public art installation by Hermann Josef Hack.  “With climate change we all become nomads”, claims the artist; buy cialis. Buy cialis: global warming, caused by wealthy regions, creates millions of refugees in the poorer regions of our world. Buy cialis: aridity, flooding and other extreme weather conditions force refugees to abandon their homelands.The Climate Refugee Camp, consisting of about 400 small tents, converts Brandenburger Tor and Alexanderplatz in Berlin into symbolic areas of crisis, drawing attention to the plight of refugees – buy cialis. Buy cialis: in addition to this intervention, Hermann Josef Hack also will present the first Climate Refugee Guide, a travel guide for climate refugees.

The other project I’d love to see is Corpora in Si(gh)te (although the title is trying too hard I think).doubleNegatives Architecture (dNA) sets up a number of sensors to form a mesh network throughout the target area—the building of Collegium Hungaricum Berlin—in order to collect and distribute real-time environmental information such as temperature, brightness, humidity, wind direction and sound; buy cialis.The data collected from these sources are processed by a software and in real-time translated into nodes reflecting the sensor network.The fluid character of this architecture occurs as a living form, its shifting structure relates to every environmental change.

This dNA ecoviz project sounds fantastic, and what an amazingly complex work to pull off for a short term festival; buy cialis. Buy cialis: please send word if anyone is able to experience this.

Julia Christensen’s book about how communities are using abandoned big-box store spaces is OUT! This is a really fabulous project that shows how an artist can really connect with diverse communities across the US to report on an issue pervades all of our lives: what possibly could happen to a Walmart when it abandons a store to expand to a larger one?  In the book cialis, Christensen profiles several empty Wal-Mart and Kmart stores to discuss 10 imaginative and successful projects converting lonely big box spaces into a library, a Head Start center and a senior resource center.  Click to read more about the book at the publisher site: MIT Press.

Thanks to Craig Zucker and the good people at Tap’D NY, there is more and more attention now being focused on drinking tap water for the good of the planet and for taste.  Tap’D NY is a company that puts out a brand of bottled water for New Yorkers sourced locally—it is purified tap water.  People can order it by the case for home or office – cialis buy online.The hype is good, but I’m a little concerned about more plastic (though beautifully designed) being put out into the world to support an environmental cause.
Coca-Cola also uses tap water from local municipal water supplies to produce its Aquafina and Dasani bottled water.  Many other commercial companies do the same.  We need artists and creative folk to device cool ways for people to carry re-usable safe containers for tap water now.

Dutch artist Tjerk Stoop created a fabulous, site-specific air pollution visualizer in March of 2008 for the Eco-Aesthetics exhibition – buy levitra online. He’s just posted new photos on his website and the work was also blogged today by the good people at infosthetics.

Stoop’s installation consists of a series of glass tanks that show the daily average of carbon dioxide present in the air outside the gallery; buy levitra online. The tubes are configured to look like a minimalist bar graph sculpture.The milky hues visible in the tubes is produced from a chemical reaction that occurs between chalk and carbon dioxide. The more white that is visible in the tube, the more pollution was present that day – buy levitra online. Interestingly, the TAG gallery, the site of the Eco-Aesthetics exhibition, is located on one of the most busy streets in the Hague. So buy levitra online, it was an ideal place to test the installation, and raise awareness in the very eco-conscious Dutch population about smog in their city.

When I met Tjerk in March buy levitra online, I was awed to discover he had created this gorgeous sculpture in the midst of having a little girl. Buy levitra online: what a feat! The piece is definitely one of the most interesting sculptural efforts to represent a time-based vision of air pollution that I’ve seen to date.