Iraqi Bomb Barrier Murals

An Iraqi artist carries a ladder as he walks past mural paintings on a concrete security wall in Baghdad's Saadun street April 29, 2007. REUTERS/Mahmoud Raouf Mahmoud

"BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraqi artist Murad paints a flower-covered balcony overlooking a tranquil ocean view, but his work on a long stretch of blast walls in central Baghdad seems a world away from the tension that surrounds him.

Wailing sirens and gunfire from speeding official convoys frequently scatter the slow-moving traffic that fills the air with exhaust fumes in Saadoun street, a major commercial road where a 600 meter-long (1,968 ft) concrete blast barrier protects a hotel and banks from bomb attacks."

[ read Iraqi artists bring color to dull blast walls | Reuters.ca ]

PopCasts

Since 2004, I have had the privilege of being the Pop!Tech House Scribe, creating large paintings and drawings while lurking in the upper balcony of the Opera House in Camden, Maine.

[ see artwork from 2005 and 2006 ]

Exposure to the people and ideas that appear both on the Pop!Tech stage and in the audience have changed the course of my life. In this forum, groundshifting concepts on energy, demographics, technology, design and society are shared, and only months--or years!--later do they end up arriving as front page news announcing that a new worldview has arrived.

Now you can see and hear these exciting and sobering presntations on-line. From Andrew Zolli, Chief Curator of the annual Pop!Tech conference:

Pop!Tech, the extraordinary thought leadership forum and social innovation network that I'm involved with, has just released it's first twenty-two Pop!Casts -- free, online video and audio presentations that you can watch online or download to your iPod!

Available at www.poptech.org/popcasts, and on iTunes, the Pop!Casts feature provocative and engaging presentations from leading and emerging thinkers from many different fields -- and we'll be releasing new ones ever two weeks throughout the rest of the year!

The initial batch includes fantastic presentations by such renowned folks as:

Thomas Friedman — Pulitzer Prize winning author and New York Times Columnist.

Serena Koenig — Global health leader and Director of Haiti Programs for Partners in Health

Brian Eno — One of the world's leading pop musicians

Richard Dawkins — World renowned biologist and evolutionary theorist

Zinhle Thabethe — Renowned AIDS activist from South Africa

Chris Anderson — Editor in Chief of Wired magazine and author of "The Long Tail"

Sinikithemba Choir Performance — South African Choir of Zulu men and women who provide support to persons with HIV/AIDS

Bunker Roy — Founder of the Barefoot College in Tilonia, India

Carolyn Porco — Chief Imaging Scientist on the Cassini Mission to Saturn

Erin McKean —Editor-in-chief of U.S. Dictionaries for Oxford University Press and self-proclaimed "word geek"

Juan Enriquez — Leading futurist and bestselling writer on the future of nations

Neil Gershenfeld — Director of MIT’s Center for Bits and Atoms

Jonathan Coulton — Singer/Songwriter and the official Pop!Tech Balladeer

Thomas Barnett — Strategist and expert on national security and best-selling author

Jesse Sullivan and Todd Kuiken —Jesse Sullivan and his doctor, Todd Kuiken, work together to make Jesse the world’s first bionic man

Martin Marty — One of the most prominent interpreters of religion and culture

Theo Jansen — Dutch "kinetic sculptor" who creates wind-powered robotic "animals"

Marcia McNutt — Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute director

Reggie Watts - Human Beat-Box Polymath Musician and Comedian

Marian Weems — Artistic director of the new media theater ensemble The Builders Association

Homaro Cantu —Inventor, entrepreneur and molecular gastronomist

Lester Brown — Preeminent environmentalist and head of the Earth Policy Institute

Kent Nichols — Co-Creator of the wildly popular website and podcast AskaNinja.com

These Pop!Casts are brimming with ground-breaking ideas, and are being made available to the world with the help of our friends at Lexus, with production support from Yahoo! To encourage their distribution, we're releasing all of these as open-source, non-commercial Creative-Commons licensed content.

You can also subscribe to Pop!Casts within iTunes -- available by going here:

http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=251125472

The Robot Falcons of England

From Rob Beschizza on WIRED Gadgets:

As much as that headline sounds like a the title of a steampunk epic, it refers to something absolutely real. Liverpool, Europe's Capital of Culture for 2008, needs to get rid of its legions of flying rats (and their leavings) in time for the celebrations. Robot falcons will be in their campaign's vanguard.

Essentially, they're animatronic scarecrows, whose presence, it's hoped, will scare away the city's now-unwelcome pigeons. The team of 10 "Robops," as they're inexplicably named, are modeled on Peregrine Falcons, which eat pigeons, and will look around, flap their wings and utter menacing squawks.

Liverpool apparently has 8 workers on full-time guano-cleaning duty, the slick white smears ultimately costing the city $320,000 a year to deal with.

I wish that I could have attented the council meeting in which all this was approved, so that I could have suggested that the robot falcons be equipped with sidewinders and lasers.

Here's some video, at the BBC.

Robotic birds scare 'fat' pigeons [BBC]

The Art of War

Art Collection, National Museum of the Marine Corps

From On the Media, an online interview with an artist who re-enlisted in order to capture accurate, artistic images of American soldiers in Iraq. The mission of a Marine combat artist, dating back to World War I, is “Go to war, do art.” Combat artist Sergeant Kristopher Battles talks about the challenge of drawing a picture while escaping sniper fire. The artist describes his experience creating drawings and paintings in a war zone at kjbattles.blogspot.com.

Designer Rock Anthem: Make the Logo Bigger

From Under Consideration... [thanks to Bo Maupin]

A rock anthem for every designer who has ever heard these cruel, cruel words. This is two minutes and thirty-six seconds of the rockingest rendition of Make the Logo Bigger that you will ever hear.

This classic rock ballad has been composed and performed by Burn Back for I Have An Idea's Portfolio Night 5. And may we recommend some reading to go with your easy listening.

Underground Comix Come of Age: An Interview with Kim Deitch

From AIGA by Steven Heller:

Miraculously, most of the great underground comix artists of the late ’60s are still alive and kicking. Compared to the burnt-out, drug-slain rock stars of the same era, their unscathed record is rather amazing. Now in their late 50s and early 60s, many are also doing their best work. Along with R. Crumb, Art Spiegelman and Bill Griffith, Kim Deitch is one such exemplar of the art of underground “funnies,” an author and illustrator who transcended his beginnings in the age of sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll to become a mature comics storyteller.

Currently, his collection Shadowland (Fantagraphics) is earning critical acclaim, and anticipation is high for Alias the Cat (Pantheon Books), due out in April. We caught up with Deitch to discuss the longevity of comics, the dubious term “graphic novel” and his constant growth as an artist.

LVHRD

from Studio 360:

A creative community called LVHRD, pronounced "live hard," hosts Iron Chef-like contests for creative professionals. Lu Olkowski attended a special LVHRD challenge: two teams of landscape architects going head to head, designing in cheese.

• Listen to podcast
  
• LVHRD's website
• Balmori Associates, Inc.'s website
• Field Operations's website
• SLIDESHOW: LVHRD's Arch Duel III

Orangutans Play Video Games

From Forbes.com via Associated Press:

Four-year-old Bernas isn't the computer wizard his mom is, but he's learning. Just the other day he used his lips and feet to play a game on the touch-screen monitor as his mom, Madu, swung from vines and climbed trees. The two Sumatran orangutans at Zoo Atlanta are playing computer games while researchers study the cognitive skills of the orange and brown primates.

The best part? Zoo visitors get to watch their every move.

The orangutans use a touch screen built into a tree-like structure that blend in with their zoo habitat. Visitors watch from a video monitor in front of the exhibit.

The computer games, which volunteers from IBM (nyse: IBM - news - people ) spent nearly 500 hours developing, test the animals' memory, reasoning and learning, spitting out sheets of data for researchers at the zoo and Kyle Frantz's team at Atlanta's Center for Behavioral Neuroscience, a partner in the project.

paraSITE: Inflatable Shelters for Urban Bedoins

This piece about installation artist/activist Michael Rakowitz is amazing. It serves as a case study in problem solving (shelter for the homeless); product design (portable inflatable dwellings); and systems thinking (waste energy from HVAC units recycled as life-giving heat and humidity for the homel

From Worldchanging blogger, Sara Rich:

paraSITE is an exploration of temporary urban living spaces, with an historic point of inspiration, and a more utilitarian/humanitarian purpose.

Michael Rakowitz traveled to Jordan in the mid-90s on a study program where he focused in part on the nomadic tradition of the Bedouins, and the architecture of their tents. When he returned to Boston, where he was a student at MIT, the presence of the homeless population in the city triggered a quandary for him regarding the contrast of a nomadic lifestyle by tradition versus by necessity. The nomadic patterns of the urban homeless, particularly in the cold months, were dictated by the location of heating vents releasing exhaust from HVAC systems inside houses and buildings. Many of these systems had been designed like boxes, such that a person could sleep on top of the vent and stay warm; but viewing this as a problem, the city had begun installing vertical vents which slanted downward off the building, making it impossible to rest on them.

ECO-LA Driveby Art Gallery

from Worldchanging LA local blogger, Eliza Thomas:

ECO-LA’s driveby art gallery brings me so much joy. Officially opening on Earth Day, the exhibit, “Off the Wall 3,” will feature original paintings on reclaimed vinyl billboards. These 14’ by 48’ works of art will display both inside ECO-LA’s Gallery, and outside on the buildings exterior. But curator and founder Peter Schulberg is most stoked by the space LA billboard owners have donated — five billboards in choice spots around the city on which he’ll display several of the pieces during the months of April and May, before the paintings are taken down and sold to art lovers in a “Back to Earth” event at the gallery.