Material Science makes Yahoo!?

Today I found this article on Yahoo!'s front page. A new lattice structure of metal created to make ultra light materials from the researchers of HRL Research Laboratories, The University of California at Irvine, and the California Institute of Technology .  It is certainly nice to see something AWESOME instead of the lives of celebrities int the headlines.  I would love to know if other people are interested in this, and how our collective knowledge would be effected if this is the news we were given?

Why I like bright colours

I think I have found a good theory to explain my two year obsession for an almost fluorescent lemon yellow:

"when faced with a new situation, we tend to attach ourselves to the objects, to the flavour of the most recent past. We look at the present through a rear view mirror. We march backwards into the future"
- Marshall McLuhan, The Medium is the Massage

Subtle Stephanie, really subtle...

So I'm usually a fish out of water, acting a ridiculous fool most places I go - mostly because I don't really understand the dynamics; an outsider (or more encouragingly an Outlier).

This past week I went to the conference Subtle Technologies in Toronto. I think I found my people. It was amazing, and so full of people doing amazing things, and all wanting to work together in some way. It was the first time in two years I felt as if I was with my tribe, and that people were behind me, and likewise I wanted to get behind whatever they were doing and support them. Someone mentioned that the Subtle Tech people become like a family - it certainly felt that way, in the best possible light.

PS - thanks for the photos Jenny - I stole it from the Facebook.

Seriously?

I was looking at my blog this morning, and I noticed something really weird. It was an advertisement. Not just any old ad, but one promoting investment in oil.I think the the Google bots/spiders/whatever got this one wrong - and not just a little bit but A LOT wrong. It shocked me at first, and now just makes me laugh a little bit.

I got run over by a car... and I blame it on design

So, as I'm sure most of you who are my fb friends know, I got in a car vs. bike accident on Sunday (me being bike). Definitely not fun. So how do I blame design, well... this is not the first accident I've been in, its the second, and the first one was at the very same intersection. So first of all I blame the weird signs that no driver seems to notice at every intersection on the bike path:

The next thing I blame, is the damn tourists - this time for real, not because they are clogging the sidewalks, but because I screamed at one for cutting me off this week when they were trying to park (have you heard of a signal light?), and then because it was another car from Ontario that was the one that was the cause of this accident.

So let me tell you the whole thing. I had a weird morning, and decided to forgo my initial plans to take a bixi up to the market, and then over to work from the north. I needed to stop downtown to get some supplies for work (both our double needles broke the day before during my Serger class), so I went downtown at around noon. It was raining, but more sprinkling than raining, so I didn't worry too much about the rain, I usually only stop biking when its so bad my glasses get too wet to see properly. So I decided to take the bike path (aka the death trap), because I was too lazy to go up the hill to Sherbrooke, and Sherbrooke had been filled with Ontario drivers all weekend (parent's weekend at McGill I think). So I continued as per normal, and went straight, and I was running a bit behind schedule, so I was bootin' it. I had about 3 green lights in a row, so I had a bit of speed, and I was coming up to my 4th, when the driver turned left in front of me. I slammed on my brakes, but the less than 5m wasn't enough to stop, and I ended up hitting the back of the guy's car and falling on the pavement, and hiting my head on something in the process (which I only knew because I have a nice big dent in my helmet - Thank You Helmet!!!). The guy was beside himself upset. Initially I was alright (shock and adrenaline is my guess), and we traded contact information, and I went off, made a couple of hysterical phone calls, and went to work, and taught the weirdest workshop (sorry everyone, but I hope your zipper skills are good, and if you need any help ask again, and I will certainly help!). I started to feel it at around 8pm, just tenseness... and I woke up with some severe nausea and dizziness, so spent the wee hours of the morning in the ER, and was deemed alright, and have spent the majority of the days since in bed, still rather sore...

So how could have design fixed this - better bike lanes for certain. Left turns only on a signal light would work too, and I would be dreaming, but a whole street without cars, but a safe haven for bikes in this city.

For now, I will refrain from biking until I feel better. And then I'll continue to ride across the city on Sherbrooke (a 2-way street), at least cars are paying attention there.

Recycling is BullSh*t

I couldn't agree more (see this treehugger article for the real deal) - but you want to know what's even more of a load of bull - 'recyclable'. My question always comes to where - and what will it become, and what will the rate of recycling actually be (I believe that its under 9% of plastic is recycled in the UK). There are tons of designers who work with discarded goods - but they certainly have not been recycled in the truest sense, and more importantly are only a small amount of what is actually disposed of. Lets stop fooling ourselves, our green bins are just another version of a garbage can. We need to move past all of this rhetoric in order to actually make a dent on the future solid waste, material sustainability etc.

Pondering

How is one to live a moral and compassionate existence when on is fully aware of blood, the horror inherent in life, when one finds darkness not only in one's culture but within oneself? If there is a stage at which an individual life becomes truly adult, it must be when one grasps the irony in its unfolding and accepts responsibility for a life lived in the midst of such paradox. One must live in the middle of contradiction, because if all contradiction were eliminated at once life would collapse. There are simply no answers to some mof the great pressing questions. You continue to live them out, making your life a worthy expression of leaning into the light."
- Barry Lopez, Arctic Dreams

Thank you to Paul Hawken's book Blessed Unrest (of which I am in the middle of reading) for this quote.

Fabric

I wonder if anyone could have guessed that I love fabric. Not in a minor way, but with a bottom of my heart kind of way that I can't accurately describe... the fabric shop is the best place in the whole wide world (followed up closely in second - stationary shops). I'm having a love affair with antique linen at the moment... oh the excitement of printing on it, and thinking of all the things it could be. ahhhh fabric.

Anyhow, I think I might have found a kindred spirit of sorts in the blog True Up. Give it a look!

PS. Image above is some of my new fabric... I'll have more info up here soon - I promise on what it is and how amazing it really is.

Top 10 once again

Woot! Another top 10 list. this one on being a designer by Milton Glaser.

10 Big, Really Hard Things We Can Do to Save the Planet

So I personally am really annoyed with the 'little' things that are supposedly going to save the world. I'm pretty sure just boiling one cup of water everytime you make a cup of tea isn't going to save the world. And the language that goes with this movement is rather ridiculous - one of the sayings that really bugs me is 'do your bit', which is borrowed from the propaganda for war time sacrifices. This movement cannot be about little sacrifices and small annoyances for the 'good' of the environment, it will never work. So I really liked this list from Worldchanging. Its about some hard stuff we are going to have to do. I'll start on Empowering Women, and something that isn't on there, material sustainability, and you take stabilizing the bottom billion, let me know how that goes.

Post MA confusion

So... I'm coming up to the final days of my MA (well, the last 6 months anyhow). And I'm thinking about what I want to do when I grow up... and I've decided I don't want to grow up (shhh don't tell my mom or sister). So I'm looking into a phd. Just not sure where to do it. All the opportunities are here in Europe, but I want a tiny bit of my real life back (the outdoors, friends, and most importantly FOOD!). The one thing I have found out - is that within North American institutions there is seemingly no slot for my research - the inbetweens of science and design hasn't made it to NA so much - and now I don't know what to do and where to go. I was thinking about MIT - but looking through their departments and research units, I don't fit into any of them really... then I was thinking of UofC Berkley, and I don't really fit in there either. I was thinking maybe I had to get back to my roots and look at design institutions - and the phd's aren't really all that developed at RISD - which is the only place I was considering. Ahhhhh!!! I think I might need to call in some reinforcements. Either that or convince someone to start a department for me. :)

I don't want a band-aid solution

I've been thinking about design and the environment a lot lately. I think it might be part of the MA ethos - think too much, and live inside your head. So I'm letting this thought out into the wide-wide world. I have been thinking about how much stuff is being done to make people in the western world 'aware' of climate change. But we need solutions, not just words. All the solutions may not be right - but its a step in a forward direction at least. I personally don't need more gadgets that tell me stuff about the world (like this toy airplane that tells me the air is polluted). Wouldn't it be better if we put more effort into making the air NOT polluted, instead of telling people its ? I know measurement is an important thing to deal with making people do something - but do you think that really changes people's awareness really changes their actions? I have doubts. I'm working on my own little solution - I don't know if its really necessary, but I'm thinking about it.

About Nothing in particular

I thought I would post about nothing in particular - as I have reader(s?) that I need to entertain. Hmmm... Let me think of all the things I've done this week and do a little recap. On Monday - I can't remember what I did, I was at college I remember that, oh yeah, now I remember - I had a terribly unsuccessful artwork making day. boo to that. Tuesday I had a successful artwork making day, and I even did a couple of digital prints. Wednesday I went to a boring meeting, where I heard a great deal of stuff about the college, but I remember only one thing that Louise said that really stuck with me - that there needs to be room for glorious failure within education. I love the idea of glorious failure! It sounds absolutely beautiful, and intriguing and not safe at all. In the afternoon I played with the heat press in the print room. On Thursday I went to some lectures - one sucked and the other one was great. The one that was great was about Social Enterprise - and it was so great to hear about all sorts of ideas that can be made commercially viable, but make the world a slightly better place. Today I did some work, and I went to the bank, and I had a design epiphany - which I can't give away yet, because that's no fun, and I wouldn't want someone else to do it before I had a chance to do it. I guess that's it, and I hope you enjoyed my mini ramble about stuff you probably didn't care about. Oh the photo is from my galavant to the Tate Modern on Sunday where I indulged in my very favourite London activity - getting tea at the Tate, and wondering what colour combination of mug and teapot I'm going to get. Its the true highlight of my life (I must live a boring life... either that or I'm odd - I'm going to go with odd).

Addicted to the Internet

So here I am in Berlin. And what do I do. Stay at my sweet hotel and hang out on the internet. Well not all day - just in the evening, after the conference I'm attending. I think I have an internet addiction, I couldn't get a connection all day and the only thing I could think about was checking my email. Its pretty sad if I do say so myself... I promise tomorrow I will be better - I will go out in the evening and see things I've never seen before. I will shed the heaviness of a day full of information and look and listen to the things I don't understand. My favorite thing so far about Berlin is the 'walk' and 'don't walk' men... To which I have learned is called the "Ampelmann" - and he has his own shop and everything!

What a difference a year makes

Just had a little moment of thinking about the past year, and its been one crazy ride. I seemingly know quite a bit more than I did before, but its still not enough! Another submersive year of textiles and science and design... Now all I have to do is stop reading and get started!

Michael Braungart Lecture and my scanner is broken...

How exciting its is to go to lectures by people you hold in high regard. I recently got the opportunity to go to a lecture put on by the Design Council and MADE at the RSA featuring Michael Braungart. I was so glad to have been able to go. I often use Cradle and Cradle principles as a starting point for my design process - thinking about how things could be better. I've scanned in my notes for any of you who might want to read them. I must say so many things stand out as being little gems of wisdom - I think my favourite is "[sustainable design is] not about being less bad but more good" - if that make any sense out of context. PS - my scanner is broken so the notes have had to be slightly touched up in photoshop. The pic above is a raw scan of the cover of my notebook - kind of interesting I must say.

Relevance

Sometimes I need to focus on this kind of information. I'm so happy to have seen this lovely little post-it drawing by Marc Johns. via Swiss Miss

“Let us stop talking falsely now, the hour is getting late.”
via this article from Treehugger, quote by Dylan.

Happiness is...

After a long summer in London - I took a vacation. Two vacations actually - and I rediscovered what makes me very happy. The first one was a trip to Paris, where I spent 3 days wandering around and just discovering things. The second vacation was HOME. Every moment spent with my friends and all their little people made me so very happy. Highlights include witnessing Luca's FIRST STEPS, Matteo's adorable motioning meaning glasses, and cuddles while reading stories, Malcolm and Emery's giggles (baby giggles are absolutely delicious), Pheonix's amazing break dancing at the Studio 54 room at the Andy Warhol Exhibit, and cuddles with the sweet Earnest. And how could I forget the one thing that is so important, but its hardest to grasp, the absolute joy of being home, surrounded by familiar things and people who really like me. And the landscape and air. Oh my goodness, how nice it was to breathe actual oxygen - I'm not sure what I'm breathing in England, but it doesn't seem like air in comparison. The mountains were gorgeous, I loved every second - thank you to all of my lovely friends who made my time in Montreal so wonderful, give me 8 months and I'm going to try my very best to be back!!!

Desperately seeking SPACE!

I'm not sure if it has anything to do with where I grew up - but I have a huge desire and yearning for space.  Lots of space, as far as the eye can see kind of space.  I wonder how this fits in with the urban me?  I've lived in large urban centers for the past 9 years, I grew up in suburban Calgary (bored out of my mind if I remember correctly), but now yearn for a bit of rurality.  The closest I got to the best of both worlds was Montreal - living in the urban part, but with easy access to the outdoors.  I understand the yearning for a McMansion - the idea that space is liberating, but my logic tells me they are a bad idea.  I know that sharing is good in theory (resources split between people etc...), but I don't really like sharing.  What's a girl to do?  If anyone has any suggestions I would love to hear them!