The Relocation of Newtok Residents
Yesterday the Guardian published its first installment of a report on Newtok, Alaska, where an entire village is in the long process of relocating as their home becomes uninhabitable due to the affects of climate change. A report by the US Army Corps of Engineers predicted the highest point in the village will be underwater by 2017. [...]
Solar Plane Flies over San Francisco
On Wednesday afternoon the Solar Impulse, a plane that relies entirely on energy from the sun, made its third and final test flight above San Francisco Bay. Soon it will fly across the length of the United States, ending its trip in New York come the end of June or July. According to the Guardian, [...]
Repurposed Payphones
Following up on our prior post on the New Museum’s innovative use of New York City’s pay phones for their 1993 exhibit, the city is now actually attempting to decide what to do with the relics, rather than send them to the landfills. The mayor’s office has been holding a sustainable design competition for prototypes [...]
Seattle’s Bullitt Center
Just a year and a half since the Guardian announced the construction had begun, the Bullitt Center, Seattle’s carbon-neutral energy and net-zero water building has welcomed its first occupants for its grand opening on Earth Day, April 22nd. Located at the edge of Capitol Hill, the six-story building is estimated to function at 83 percent more [...]
Rockaway SHORE Relief Restaurant
An excellent way to get involved with (or continue to work on) Sandy recovery efforts in Rockaway is to join this Kickstarter campaign for an environmentally sustainable, pay-as-you-can community kitchen providing access to healthy, local food. Check it out! Only 24 more days left to help!
Fracking and Earthquakes
Though the links between earthquakes and human activity have long been discussed, evidence is gathering that strongly correlates the use of fracking to obtain fuels from the earth to these natural disasters. Mother Jones recently published Michael Behar’s account of an unlikely 5.7 quake in Oklahoma in 2011, and the manmade circumstances that appear to [...]
Abraham Cruzvillegas: The Autoconstrucción Suites
Informed by the sociopolitical contexts of Latin America, Abraham Cruzvillegas has garnered much attention for his dynamic assemblage sculptures made of found objects. Interested in improvised building materials and techniques, he roots his sculptural practice within the urban landscape of his childhood home in Ajusco, a district in the south of Mexico City. Over the [...]
The Ebb and Flow of E-Waste
Even though there are numerous facilities across the country dedicated to recycling the technology we use and discard so frequently (cell phones, computers, printers, appliances, etc.), it turns out that sudden shifts in the marketplace are having a profound effect on what can and cannot be lucratively recycled by these industries. The New York Times [...]
SEARCHING FOR THE SEVENTIES: THE DOCUMENTERIA PROJECT
Over the past thirty years, the relationship between the Environmental Protection Agency and the government that created it has been, to be polite, contentious. Born in the early 1970′s and put into implementation by Nixon, it’s often sited by conservatives as being wasteful and econony-stalling. It’s such a hot button agency that it was one [...]
Thierry Cohen’s Darkened Cities
Those who were near lower Manhattan during the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy may have experienced the rare and eerie view of the city’s skyline gone partway dark. Biking through Manhattan at dusk that week, the loss of power made the night feel that much deeper, and the bright sky that much more brilliant. What are [...]
Expo 1: New York, Rockaway Call for Ideas
Via MoMA PS1: In an effort to foster the creative debate on urban recovery after Hurricane Sandy, MoMA PS1 and MoMA’s Department of Architecture and Design are calling out for ideas to create a sustainable waterfront. Artists, architects, designers, and others are welcome to present ideas for alternative housing models, creation of social spaces, urban [...]
We Upcycle
We Upcycle, a blog by Lisa Schultz and Magdalena Akantisz, hosts a wide variety of ideas for creating new and useful objects out of old ones you might have thrown away. The project started when the two students, based in Vienna, decided to post 30 objects they repurposed and reused in creative ways over 30 days. [...]
Building the Perfect Serpent
Romuald Hazoumè, one of Africa’s leading visual artists, will be installing Rainbow Serpent, a 12 -foot arc constructed of recycled jerry cans, at the Newark Museum on Thursday, Feb. 21 from 10 am-3 pm. The sculpture is part of the upcoming African Cosmos: Stellar Arts exhibition, which opens at the Museum on Feb. 27.
Common Ground for our Common Atmosphere
So often in the debate on climate change and global warming, the focus leans so heavily on the debate aspect, the issue itself takes a back seat. No matter the degree to which one believes in the human impact on the environment, we should be able to find some common ground in the idea that [...]
East London Furniture: Sustainability Through Reclaimation
The designers for The East London Furniture company take sustainability seriously — so much so that all their furniture is made from wood they find in their neighborhood. Materials that would otherwise end up in landfills becomes rustic-looking furniture instead. That’s serious sustainability. – via Remodelista.com
India’s Solar Power
Yesterday the New York Times published an interesting article on how India aims to use its solar power effectively. The use of solar power could help reduce India’s reliance on coal, slow the effects of climate change, and perhaps reduce the frequent and sudden blackouts you’d find in every city. In a country where it is [...]
Film Biz Recycling
Ever wonder what happens to a set after shooting wraps? Non-Profit organization Film Biz Recycling is doing the good work by focusing their efforts to divert set materials to local charities and operating a prop-shop and creative reuse center in Gowanus, Brooklyn.(An invaluable source for small budget projects, they have even let us rent props [...]
Landfill Harmonic
Landfill Harmonic film teaser from Landfill Harmonic on Vimeo. What an inspirational video! Landfill Harmonic is an upcoming feature-length documentary about a remarkable musical orchestra in Paraguay, where young musicians play instruments made from trash. For more information about the film, visit facebook.com/landfillharmonicmovie.
Jill Sigman’s Hut Project
Over the summer I was fortunate enough to meet multimedia artist Jill Sigman, just as her exhibition at Arts@Renaissance was closing. She was in the process of dismantling the seventh part of her Hut Project, an ongoing series of site-based activities that explore ideas about sustainability, home, responsibility and questions what actually becomes of the [...]
Dark Rye – An Online Magazine
Dark Rye is an online magazine from Whole Foods that focuses in on local, handcrafted, and sustainable food, design, technology, and community. In addition to boasting a wonderfully-designed site bursting with vibrant images, how-to guides, and profiles, they now have a channel on Vimeo, with well-crafted videos to supplement each story. The videos follow individuals [...]
Forthcoming Exhibition on “Pressing Environmental Issues” at MoMA
Midway through a New York Times human-interest story on curator Klaus Biesenbach’s hurricane-relief efforts comes word of a new exhibition of interest to Harmony Blog readers: The bus unloaded at the Rockaway Beach Surf Club on Beach 87th Street, discharging a group of volunteers that included waifish artists, MoMA members, surfers and a film crew gathering [...]
Climate Change & Sandy
The latest natural disaster presents an opportunity to better understand climate change. The Huffington Post ran an interesting piece about the relationship between natural disasters and climate change. Has anyone seen other good articles on the topic?
“A Simple Fix for Farming”
Mark Bittman writes about an important but ignored new agricultural study in the NYT: IT’S becoming clear that we can grow all the food we need, and profitably, with far fewer chemicals. And I’m not talking about imposing some utopian vision of small organic farms on the world. Conventional agriculture can shed much of its chemical [...]
Sea Orbiter
The Jetsons-esque Sea Orbiter is an ocean going research vessel rumored to launch in 2013. Similar to a space ship, the Sea Orbiter will allow scientists and others a residential (for weeks at time) yet mobile research station positioned under the oceans’ surface. The station will have laboratories, workshops, living quarters and a pressurized deck [...]
