NYPD: Not Your Police Department?

Last night, I was a first hand witness to the naysaying of the New York Police Department, which I never had a reason to believe. A disturbance call was made after a football-sized brick was thrown through my friends front door by a drunken passerby, and my friends and I, who happened to be standing on the roof, watched the squad car pull up to the house, stop, look directly at the smashed door and giant brick on the ground, and proceed to drive away. Thanks for the help guys, its good to see that a phone call does some good.

PUBLIC RECEPTORS: BENEATH THE SKIN A TEXTILE INSTALLATION BY NEW YORK PRIZE FELLOW GABI SCHILLIG APRIL 2 – 17, 2009

PUBLIC RECEPTORS: BENEATH THE SKIN
A TEXTILE INSTALLATION BY NEW YORK PRIZE FELLOW GABI SCHILLIG
APRIL 2 – 17, 2009

OPENING RECEPTION: THURSDAY, APRIL 2, 6:30 P.M.
VAN ALEN INSTITUTE, 30 WEST 22ND STREET, NEW YORK, NY 10010
RSVP@VANALEN.ORG | WWW.VANALEN.ORG


Van Alen Institute is pleased to announce Public Receptors: Beneath the Skin, a textile installation by New York Prize Fellow Gabi Schillig, a conceptual artist and architect based in Berlin. Schillig’s wearable spatial structures mediate between private users and public spaces, provoking new relationships between bodies, clothing, and the built environment Redefining the garment as tactile architecture, Schillig explores the potential for soft geometries and surfaces of textiles, conventionally associated with individual bodies and human scale, to generate alternative arrangements of social space and modes of interaction in the urban fabric. For Schillig, multiple users, desires, and urban contexts are necessary to materialize her work. Designed to be interconnected and shared, her second skins evolve an architecture built upon the creativity of its participants.

Over the course of her fellowship residency, Schillig has developed a new set of textile structures she calls public receptors, and she has conducted a series of site-specific experiments for their implementation in New York City. Made from felt, latex, and a variety of fastening devices, the structures are designed for attachment to specific building surfaces and street conditions, to be improvised and appropriated for clothing, furniture, habitat, or other uses. Upon contact, they transform in geometry, texture, and color from two-dimensional and often camouflaged elements in the city to three-dimensional interfaces that sensitize and reassociate urban bodies to environments at multiple scales. Public Receptors: Beneath the Skin assembles Schillig’s textile structures in Van Alen Institute’s gallery for staged and spontaneous performance, interaction, and play. They are presented alongside footage of Schillig’s experiments in the city, with documentation of her research processes and material investigations.

The Van Alen Institute New York Prize Fellowship is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts, a state agency. Public Receptors: Beneath the Skin was made possible with the additional support of Johanna Daimer e.K., Filze aller Art – Deeply Felt, Munich. Special thanks to Barbara Barone, Parsons The New School for Design, for her assistance with the production of the textile structures, and to performers Lydia Bell, Khalia Frazier, and Stephanie Fungsang.

Algae: The Newest Alternative Bio-Fuel

"Algae is the ultimate in renewable energy." Glen Kertz, president and CEO of Valcent Products, told CNN while conducting a tour of his algae greenhouse outside of El Paso, Texas. He is not the only one who believes this. The next wave in alternative fuel funding is going towards algae. This vertical growing method has been patented by Kertz, who believes that greenhouses like this are the wave of the future for alternative sources of fuel. The idea of algae as fuel is not a new one. The US government funded several experiments in the late 1970s up until the 1990s, but the ethanol craze (which happened to be a total failure) took away from those funds. Apparently algae are something like 50% oil based, and that oil can be converted into a type of fuel that can run a diesel engine. Crazy. If you want to learn more about this check out 

www.oilgae.com 

pjh

Not only Arnold Believes in da Powa of Stem Cells

Last week, Mayor Bloomberg released his official statement to President Barack Obama's decision to lift the federal restrictions on stem cell research. This is a smart move on Obama's part, with huge incentives to provide a much needed boost to our economy, especially the pharmaceutical sector. Bloomberg stressed the need for doctors, researchers and scientists to take research to the next level, urging them to make New York a center for this new field of study. Here is Bloomberg's Official Release

Stella D'Oro Workers on Strike, and for good reason

While working on a project, i recently walked by the Stella D'Oro factory on Broadway and 230 something street in the Kingsbridge section of the Bronx. I expected to come across a smell that i associate with the delicious cookies that they produce, but i was met by a group of workers protesting outside of the gates. They said that the company has hired workers to come in for cheaper labor while they strike. This has been going on for months. But the factory looked closed while i walked past it. If anyone can fill me in on more details about this situation i would like to know. thanks and good luck to the workers

pjh

And for all this, Nature is never spent... An Exhibition of Environmentally Themed Art in the Bronx

"And for all this, nature is never spent..." is an art exhibition curated by Jo Anna Isaak at the Pelham Art Center, in Pelham NY. The exhibit is to include various types of mixed media installations, from artists such as Bronx native Alan Sonfist and photographer Subhankar Banarjee who earned much praise for his incredible aerial photographs of arctic wildlife such as elk and geese. Other artists include Sue Coe, Christy Rupp, Jesse Potts, Chris Sollars, Mark Jones, Stephanie Lempert, Sam Kunce, and Susan Unterberg. I will put a few of the images here, but i dont want to give too much away. The exhibition begins on March 13th and runs through April 25th at the Pelham Art Center. There is a Metro North stop very close to the venue. This event is being ran by Fordham University students. For more information check out www.pelhamartcenter.org   .... See you there

Urban Farming in New York

The term "sustainability" has been the topic of the various design professions for the past two decades, but now there is a new term or idea that is coming to light. The idea of resiliency. There is a lot of literature coming out in the future about this. When I first heard this term, I thought about how this word is actually more suitable for describing certain aspects of environmentally efficient design and practices within communities. Urban farming is one activity that has and will continue to be a cornerstone of community development and environmental literacy. New York City has had its share of small organizations that have realized this. One very interesting example is WORK Architecture Company's design of PS 1 in New York. This functional urban farm is located at a public school, where children are educated and food is grown. This is an excellent example of how intelligent architectural design and environmentally resilient thought processes can be put on display for the public, and more importantly for youth. This design was released in June of 2008.