Seen: I Am Here

http://www.iamhere.org.uk/

background

i am here is a public art work generated from within an increasingly transformed residential area in Hackney, East London. It is a direct response to the experience of living in an estate in the process of being regenerated. The Haggerston estate, andSamuel House, is located alongside Regents Canal in-between Kingsland Road and Victoria Park in Hackney, London.

Boarded-up and half-empty housing estates have become familiar landmarks in the contemporary urban landscape. Their façades have come to function as projection screens for collective fears and fantasies of troubled and dangerous environments that may lurk behind. This perception is all the more emphasized when rapid redevelopment encircles such estates with new luxury loft apartments and live-work spaces.

Whilst this rapid transformation has been going on in the area, nothing much has changed on Haggerston & Kingsland Estate since the early 1980's. That is, except from an ongoing steady decline due to lack of maintenance and a gradual emptying of the estate. Since at least 2004 no new residents have been accepted, and instead, vacated flats have been boarded up.

intervention

Without any prior warning in April 2007, 5 months before the stock transfer vote, bright orange boards were promptly fitted over the windows of all the vacated and empty flats on Haggerston & Kingsland estate. This rather bold visual statement even further underlined the dilapidation of the estate. The blocks now dotted with orange boards rapidly turned into an object of curiosity, especially for the passers-by using the increasingly popular towpath along Regents Canal for daily commuting to and from work, or for weekend strolls to Victoria Park and Broadway Market.i am here was initiated by artists who are themselves long-term residents of Samuel House. Through their open windows, facing on to the canal, they often overheard passersby speculating on reasons for the buildings demise and its current state. The installation aims to disturb this one-way interrogation by replacing the 67 bright orange boards with large-scale photographs of residents on the estate: onlookers no longer stand unchallenged, as their gaze is met and returned by a multitude of faces consisting of current and former residents on the estate. Thus the project literally humanises a piece of architecture on its final journey.

Philip Glass - Sesame Street - Geometry of Circles

Visited: DesignersBlock @ Farmiloe Building, Clerkenwell

The work on show was what you'd expect but the location was amazing.

http://www.industri.uk.com/farmiloe-building/

Visited: Just Do It @ Prince Charles Cinema

Just Do It - a tale of modern-day outlaws

http://JustDoItFilm.com/

Visited: Power of Making @ V&A

http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/exhibitions/power-of-making/power-of-making/

http://we-make-money-not-art.com/archives/2011/09/the-power-of-making.php

The unsung sense: How smell rules your life

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21128301.800-the-unsung-sense-how-smell-rules-your-life.html?DCMP=NLC-nletter&nsref=mg21128301.800

"What's more, it is becoming clear that the brain's olfactory centres are intimately linked to its limbic system, which is involved in emotion, fear and memory. That suggests a link between smell and the way we think.

The power of smell will be no news to estate agents, who often advocate the smell of baking bread or brewing coffee to promote the sale of a house. But there are more subtle and surprising effects too. For instance, when Hendrick Schifferstein from Delft University of Technology and colleagues pumped the smell of orange, seawater or peppermint into a nightclub, the revellers partied harder - they danced more, rated their night as more enjoyable, and even thought the music was better - than when there was no added scent (Chemosensory Perception, vol 4, p 55). Rob Holland and colleagues at the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands, meanwhile, have found that the hint of aroma wafting out of a hidden bucket of citrus-scented cleaner was enough to persuade students to clean up after themselves - even though the vast majority of them hadn't actually registered the smell (Psychological Science, vol 16, p 689)."

New York Calling

http://www.core77.com/gallery/talk-to-me-2011/24.asp

City: What a Hundred Million Calls to 311 Reveal About NYC

Originally published in Wired magazine in 2010, Pitch Interactive's data visualizations illuminate complex sets of information in a way that is dynamic, accessible, and visually eloquent. NYC's 311 call center, which receives more than 50,000 calls each day, offers citizens information on school closings, recycling rules, etc. and fields complaints on anything from property taxes to rodents. In an undulating, colorful graphic, Pitch Interactive plotted the most common complaints by time of day, exposing what irks New Yorkers at all hours of the day and night. www.pitchinteractive.com

Design: Wesley Grubbs and Mladen Balog

Read / Write Genes

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-14919539

PUSH / PULL (my luck is your misfortune)

Find more videos like this on artreview.com

By Pascual Sisto - http://pascualsisto.com/

Orange Object

Visited: 'The Price of Altruism' @ RSA

"Survival of the fittest or survival of the nicest?

Since the dawn of time man has contemplated the mystery of altruism, but it was Darwin who posed the question most starkly. From the selfless ant to the stinging bee to the man laying down his life for a stranger, evolution has yielded a goodness that in theory should never be.

Academic and author Oren Harman visits the RSA to tell the moving story of the eccentric American genius George Price, who strove to answer evolution's greatest riddle. Different and driven to succeed, Price was a gifted polymath with a Zelig-like ability to be part of much of the seminal science of the twentieth century. But it was tackling Darwin’s great mystery where he finally made his most dramatic discovery.

Ultimately a homeless recluse, he had caught a glimpse of a deep and scary truth about humanity. From the heights of the Manhattan Project to the inspired, soul-shaking equation that explains altruism, to the depths of homelessness and despair, Price's life embodies the paradoxes of Darwin’s enigma. His tragic suicide in a squatter’s flat, among the vagabonds to whom he gave all his possessions, provides the ultimate contemplation on the possibility of genuine benevolence."

Listen here - http://www.thersa.org/events/audio-and-past-events/2011/?a=411761

George Price

I listened to this after going to a talk called 'The Price of Altruism' at the RSA by Oren Harman and Matthew Taylor.

"Matthew Taylor tells the story of the last eight years in the life of George Price - a scientist who studied the evolution of altruism and who suffered for his faith. With contributions from Price's biographer Oren Harman, writer Marek Kohn, Professor Steve Jones and Price's family and friends, Matthew follows a journey that began with a sensational breakthrough in evolutionary biology and ended in poverty and suicide."

Producer: Peter Everett.

'Humankind' on Radio 4 - http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b012wxyl

Louise Mensch MP calls for Twitter and Facebook blackout during riots

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/8697850/Louise-Mensch-MP-calls-for-Twitter-and-Facebook-blackout-during-riots.html

Fear of the internet

Power of the internet

Internet Vs. Government