w00t! MIT SENSEable City Lab's "Copenhagen Wheel" takes top US prize in Dyson Awards -

source: www.core77.com

'Top prize goes to MIT's SENSEable City Lab for their Copenhagen Wheel design, a sort of smart wheel that attaches to existing bicycles and transforms them into "hybrid electric-bikes with regeneration and real-time sensing capabilities."

Its sleek red hub not only contains a motor, batteries and an internal gear system - helping cyclists overcome hilly terrains and long distances - but also includes environmental and location sensors that provide data for cycling-related mobile applications. Cyclists can use this data to plan healthier bike routes, to achieve their exercise goals or to create new connections with other cyclists. Through sharing their data with friends or their city, they are also contributing to a larger pool of information from which the whole community can benefit."'

Can't wait for this work to launch!: Highrise 360/ PROTOTYPING an ART INSTALLATION

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A recent update on the NFB/Kat Cizek project, Out of My Window!

"We will soon be launching OUT MY WINDOW: interactive views from the global highrise, our 360-degree documentary.

The interactive work, over a year in the making, will take web-audiences inside 13 highrise apartments, to give an insiders view onto the world through highrise windows. It features stunning photography from 13 apartments, in 13 cities around the world, over 90 minutes of documentary stories, and 3 music videos shot with 360 degree video technology. The work celebrates highrise residents who harness the power of community, art and search for meaning while living in concrete slabs.

Meanwhile, we have gone into development and production of a physical iteration of the work, which would take the form of a large scale projection in gallery spaces. It’s an experiment to see how digital stories (about space) can be translated back into physical space. The spacialization of story. We are working with CFC Media Lab Director Ana Serrano and New Media artists Priam Givord and David Bouchard. In the Fall, we hope to bring on additional New Media Fellows to complete the work.

Last night our team saw a first glimpse of a quarter scale model. Not hard, now, to imagine it life-size, at 10 meters wide and almost 3 meters tall. v. exciting."

gorgeous AND green - (well, gold really): Mirage-like Sculpture Doubles as a Solar-Power Generator

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Excerpt:

'From the New York architects Decker Yeadon comes Light Sanctuary, a massive desert sculpture designed to look like a mirage.

"The precise optical effects of reflection, diffusion, and inversion that are an essential feature of the desert landscape have acquired a reputation of mystery and even of deception. This proposal, instead, brings clarity, utility, lightness, and authentic meaning to the idea of the mirage."

read more deets!

MWill 'Avatar' Sequels Shoot Back-To-Back? James Cameron Weighs In | MTV Movie News

It's not enough that "Avatar" is now the biggest movie of all time, winning three Oscars and grossing unprecedented box-office dollars. To better serve the film-going public, the powers that be at Fox will be re-releasing the film in 3-D and 3-D IMAX on August 27. MTV News was lucky enough to steal a few moments of maestro James Cameron's time to talk about the reported "Avatar" novel and whether he'll shoot the proposed two sequels back-to-back.

"We're still working on deals [for 'Avatar 2']," Cameron told MTV News. "We don't start the movie until we get the deals worked out."

Fair enough. But what about the rumored sequel "scriptment"? "I'm making notes. I'm not sitting idle," Cameron said. "But really, what I'm working on primarily is the novel. I never had a chance to get the novel done while we were making the movie, and I always intended to. I didn't want to do a cheesy novelization, where some hack comes in and kind of makes sh-- up. I wanted to do something that was a legitimate novel that was inside the characters' heads and didn't have the wrong culture stuff, the wrong language stuff, all that."

Cameron went on to say that the novel will serve as a "bible" for other writers to come in and riff on for their own "Avatar"-based stories.

"I don't mind opening the universe, but I just don't want that to happen until I've got more meat on the bones," he said, adding that he'd like to fill in some of the specific details about the company, what's happening on Earth and Grace and Jake's backstories. "That all needs to be filled in before other writers can come in and run with it."

Regarding his plans and discussions about two proposed sequels, we asked if he'll shoot them back-to-back. "We're actually talking about that. That's not a decision yet," Cameron revealed. "That is something that makes a lot of sense, given the nature of these productions, because we can bank all the [motion] capture and then go back and do cameras over a period of time."

He added that the nature of their filmmaking process lends itself more naturally to a back-to-back shooting schedule, versus that of other live-action productions.

"The way these back-to-back productions fall apart is that you're trying to do two live-action films back to back, and you're working on it for a year and a half, shooting. Everyone is dead. It's not humanly possible," Cameron said of live-action shoots. "This type of film, it absolutely would work."

Check out everything we've got on "Avatar."

For breaking news, celebrity columns, humor and more — updated around the clock — visit MTVMoviesBlog.com.

getting it right would be nice for the sequels!

Love this: Yukon artist to show DEW [Distant Early Warnoing] Line project on world stage

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Source: www.theglobeandmail.com

By: Josh Wingrove

When the DEW Line was built, Charles Stankievech hadn’t been born. He was only a teenager when the Cold War ended, and until three years ago didn’t even live in the North.

But this month, the 32-year-old will represent Yukon artists on the world stage when his installation project – an homage to the outmoded yet iconic Distant Early Warning (DEW) system and supported with funding from the territory’s government – makes its international debut.

The DEW Project, an art installation that explores environment and sovereignty in the North, will be displayed at an international art festival in Dortmund, Germany, next week. It’s a hallmark showing for the territory of a scant 34,000 people. Two years ago, the Yukon government created a Touring Artist Fund to support the efforts of its many artists, including Mr. Stankievech, to show their work to a broader audience internationally.

“We wanted to do something where artists get the opportunity to show their stuff outside of the Yukon,” said Laurel Parry, arts manager with the Yukon Department of Tourism and Culture, which contributed just over $5,775 to Mr. Stankievech’s German display. “We just feel that people spend so much time here creating and producing a work of art, that we’d hate to see it just be shown to such a small local audience.”

Read more: www.globeandmail.com