Love

BLDGBLOG: Literary Climatology

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Some fascinating ideas from BLDGBLOG in excerpt form a little while ago, which relate to ideas of ecodrama:

1) Performance Physics 

It was, we might say, not performance art but performance physics: an immersive, urban-scale demonstration of quantum dislocation… constantly out of self-synch in a single setting… the skies of San Francisco temporarily modeling an inter-dimensional event.

2) Sky Forensics

…the passage of the Blue Angels had been setting off car alarms all over the city… the locations of the car alarms always coincided with the physical passage of the airplanes… you could actually reconstruct the aerial trajectories of the planes through entirely indirect means.

In twenty years’ time, then, forensic historians could reconstruct the skies of Fleet Week 2011 using nothing but data from parked cars.

3) Literary Climatology

…we briefly got onto the subject of skywriting… The idea of blogging in the sky through the medium of artificial weather—chemically produced, aerodynamic clouds draping the city in a haze of literary climatology…

Of course, it’s worth the whole post….

via BLDGBLOG: Literary Climatology.

Modular Designs We Love

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Boxetti wall unit incorpates desk, lounge chair and storage

We are always on the lookout for cool ways to conserve space; we’re especially interested in modular design ideas for furniture and fixtures that can fold into the wall or transform into something else.  These ideas were shared with us by Dovid Feld, the SCI-Arc student who is design for our trailer was featured in a another post.

In the YouTube video below, Michael Harboun’s  “Living Kitchen” features kichten fixtures made from nanobots, devices made from materials that transform along a programmed path then fold back into the wall when no longer needed: 

This post is part of a series documenting Sam Breen’a Spartan Restoration Project. Please see his first post here and check out the archive here. The CSPA is helping Sam by serving in an advisory role, offering modest support and featuring Sam’s Progress by syndicating his feed from http://spartantrailerrestoration.wordpress.com as part of our CSPA Supports Program.

4 1/2 Hours: Across the Stones of Fire

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4 1/2 HOURS: ACROSS THE STONES OF FIRE

Produced by The Coal Free Future Project benefiting The Appalachian Community Fund

Written by Jeff Biggers

Directed by Stephanie Pistello

When Marie and Hovie’s 150-year-old family homestead is threatened by a planned mountaintop removal operation they must come to grips with their conflicting fates. Will their love for each other and the land survive an epic journey “Across the Stones of Fire?”

Films & Visuals by Ben Evans

Purchase Tickets Here.

Running time: 60 minutes, no intermission

Venue: The Gene Frankel Theatre, 24 Bond Street

Performance dates:

Tues 6/8 @ 5:30pm

Wed 6/9 @ 7:30pm

Sat 6/12 @ 12pm

Sun 6/13 @ 7pm

via 4 1/2 Hours: Across the Stones of Fire (Planet_Connections).

Declining newspapers: arts moving into empty spaces

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Artists love disused space. Artists And Makers have been tweeting me about the Empty Shops Conference they’re running on October 19. Meanwhile here’s another example of a street artists moving into a disused property. The collapse of the newspaper market in the US has been even more precipitous than it has been here in the UK. Print ad sales fell by a horrendous 30% in the first quarter of 2009; titles have been disappearing at an alarming speed.  The newspaper is a strange but crucial part of the social glue in the US, a country where there is no such thing as a “national” newspaper outside of USA Today. Americans are losing a major part of the way in which they tell their stories.

Out of decline comes opportunity. Here’s an example of one street artist Bumblebee, who has been opportunistically taking over empty newsboxes on the streets of Los Angeles, to create a series of narrative tableaux, linking the declines of newspapers to that of another endangered species.

The art, it has to be said, is pretty grim. Nice idea, though…

Go to RSA Arts & Ecology

Message vs. Action

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This Post was originally posted to Mike Lawler’s ecoTheaer blog on April 25, 2007. We are reposting it here to share this ecoTheater classic with new readers while MIke continues to regain his health. You can read his blog about his ongoing battle with cancer, The “C” Word, by clicking here.

In 1992, American Theatre ran an article called Green Theatre: Confessions of an Eco-reporter, in which Lynn Jacobson traveled to three performing arts companies–Merrimack Repertory in Lowell, MA, the Contemporary Arts Center in New Orleans, and Dell’Arte Players Company in northern California–and wrote about the work they were doing on the allegedly emerging front of “Green Theatre.”

In the fall of this year my first published foray into “greening” our theaters is slated to appear in the pages of American Theatre too–over fifteen years after Jacobson wrote, at the close of her piece, “Can theatre save the earth? I don’t know. But from sea to polluted sea, I’ve seen it trying.” Well, Jacobson was certainly right about one thing: Theater can’t save the earth–at least not alone. But, it does seem that it can make more of an effort than it has. Because, though Jacobson failed to really take it into account in 1992, the greening of our theater isn’t just about putting on ecologically themed work. It’s also about putting on ecologically friendly work, whether it be new, old, experimental, or otherwise.

In my research, I am struggling to find theater artists out there who are striving for a more sustainable approach to theater production. If you are one, or know of one, get in touch with me–I’d love to hear from you.