Recycled Art Reinvented?

Sheep! Made out of telephone materials! Ingenious, startling, and nostalgic. Why can I never think of these things...

New Recycled Art Stuff!

Bonobos Need Love Too

Bonobo born at the Jacksonville Zoo! The 24-year old mother is very proud of her unnamed new female daughter. Hitherto reading about this event, I had not imagined bonobos were kept in captivity because of their promiscuous ways that might scandalize the zoo and offend the public. Despite their reputation for sexual communual behavior, bonobos are very kind and intelligent primates. They can be called the "make love not war" chimpanzees, their very close genetic relatives. They face habitat destruction in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Science + Artistic Ingenuity= "Art of Science Competition"

Princeton University student shows adept prowess in creating artwork made from the manipulated molecular makeup of organisms.

Worm Window
Erin Cram
Department of Molecular Biology

This work is based on the rose window of St. John the Divine, NYC. Each segment of the image is an image of the microscopic nematode, C. elegans. The red images were generated by staining the animals with a dye called rhodamine-phalloidin, which lights up actin, a protein found predominantly in muscles. The blue is a DNA stain called DAPI, and the green comes from expressing the jelly fish protein GFP transgenically in the nematodes. The grayscale images are mainly of C. elegans embryos or dissected C. elegans organs. Although the work was assembled using Photoshop, none of the image is pseudocolored.

"American Decadence"

Holiday goodwill ignores the cries of the hungry. Forty percent of the food produced in the United States is casually discarded. Over 1 billion people worldwide do not have their dietary, nutrition needs met. Surprisingly, this wanton consumption and disposal of food products also has detrimental effects on the environment as well.
"'Addressing the oversupply of food in the United States could help curb to the obesity epidemic as well as reduce food waste, which would have profound consequences for the environment and natural resources," the scientists write. "For example, food waste is now estimated to account for more than one quarter of the total freshwater consumption and more than 300 million barrels of oil per year representing about 4 percent of the total U.S. oil consumption."'
Amazing!

Recycled Art Project!!

My artwork involved rummaging through a worn, paper bag filled with the objects I had hastily collected from my car. I was selling it and before the transaction, I removed all of the old cds, miscellaneous odds-and-ends, a pack of playing cards, flashlight, bumper stickers, a kitschy koala clip from Australia, a bracelet, a cord that would connect my Ipod to the stereo, and an air freshner. The beer bottles had already been thrown away. I had arranged these objects in a mandorla around an altar built from cds, the pedestal for the flashlight, air freshner, and koala. The playing cards were placed in such directions as to emphasize the continuous, cycle of merchandise, commerce, and the increasing reliance on vehicles, the abodes that essentially fulfill a second domicile for us. Above this sacred layout is a bumper sticker that once adorned my Toyota 4-Runner. It is an Albert Einstein quotes: "Only tow things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity. And I'm not sure about the former." Witty, sardonic, and critical. I wanted to empathize with the disinterested non-vehicle owning person and support the efforts to exclude oneself from dependency on motor transportation. I believe I made the right decision when I decided to sell my car.

Finally!! Artistic Documentation with a purpose

"Polar Obsession"

NPR has a fascinating article about National Geographic photographer Paul Nicklen who has spent 20 years documenting inclement polar regions through his astounding photography. Having been raised in the Canadian Arctic he is quite familiar with extreme temperatures, the volatile dangerous nature of leopard seals, grizzly bears, and elephant seals, and a life of solitude. Despite endangerment to his life, Nicklen says that it is all worth it. '"How are people supposed to care about the environment when they're living in a cement jungle?' he wonders in the interview. To make them care, he goes to extremes. Nicklen is on a mission to bring these remote habitats to those of us who may never see them, to make us care about the endangered polar ecosystems and the animals that inhabit them. His photos appear in a new book, Polar Obsession, published by National Geographic. "
My comments: There is finally a person championing the cause of environmental awareness through photography (art) with the focus on animals in realms that are on the perilous edge annihilation. When the peat moss in the Arctic starts to thaw and begins to release huge quantities of carbon emissions, humans-gluttonous, self-satisfying and congratulatory, greedy and consumptive creatures-will not be the only organisms to suffer. Paul Nicklen is a refreshing anomaly, a person who is risking his life to capture beautiful, fleeting moments of natural animal behavior.

Choose your produce wisely...

< "Which Fruits, Vegetables, and other Crops have the smallest environmental footprint?"

A nice accessible article about which produce require the least amount of pesticides, land consumption, and energy. Some observations: eat more soy and beans, avoid raspberries and bananas, and rule of thumb, always buy the cheapest products that usually required less fertilizer, land, energy, and pesticide use.

International Awareness about Alternative, Cleaner

"This is my Australian cousin and she's really environmentally conscious!"

Eleri Mai Harris conducting an interview for RMITV current affairs program, "Newsline." Not entirely sure what the background story is but I overheard some bits mentioning the migration to greater usage of public transportation. Still, most Australians live on the coastline, i.e. major cities, many don't necessarily need a car thus prompting them to use alternative, cheaper modes of transportation. The Aussies on average have lower carbon foot prints than Americans do; they are also hyper-conscious of water shortage and take adamant measures to avoid wasteful consumption.