thingsorganizedneatly:

SUBMISSION: Cash Drawer

note the title. Imagine these as currency. Go.

bearandtheboat:

I need to chill out. Sorry for the constant updates about my freak outs just lacking some self confidence at the moment, it will pass. Anyway went to another artists talk today, this week was Susan Stockwell. She does some incredible work with recycled material from loo roll, rubber tyres (writing tyres like that looks really odd) and computer components to maps and money. I will probably post some more of her work in the next few days as it was brill. The above is made from computer parts. She also makes some awesome dresses from maps, paper and more recently money she bought off ebay? I didn’t know you could buy money off ebay ha. 

this is going in the dissertation. A whole interview with this artist; she is new to me.

(via fuckyeahcartography)

"

It has become commonplace to regard the high-tech and creative industries as part of a new cosmopolitan wave in which difference is not just tolerated but welcomed, and many have argued that diversity is at the foundation of its success (Saxenian, 1999).

However, one study takes the archetypical post-ethnic world of the software industry in west coast US (Reitman, 2006) and holds it up to scrutiny. Meredith Retman argues that the vaunted multiculturalism of these ‘creative class’ businesses is based upon the laid back and very liberal, but nevertheless unyielding, assumption that the accepted codes of behaviour and cultural values for all the black, brown, yellow and white colleagues will be those of the boys who have been brought up in all white schools and who live in all white neighbourhoods. She argues that claims of ‘colour-blindness’ in such workplaces are based upon the ‘whitewashing’ out of racial politics of inequality leaving behind a shallow and exotic multiculturalism of food or music.

"

The Intercultural City, Phil Wood & Charles Landry (p. 144)

(for me to study more on, thanks, Tricia!)

(Source: http, via culturalbytes)

"A macroscope is something that helps us see what the aggregation of many small actions looks like when added together. My favorite example is that everybody in Melbourne, Australia, is crazy about building small concrete patios in their backyard as a kind of mini fashion item. When you add all those thousands upon thousands of little bits of paving stones and cement together, it turns out that more of the earth is being sealed off from the rain and nature than all the road and airport building programs put together in the same area. This aggregation of small actions is often invisible to us."

John Thackara: Cultural Theory | Metropolis Magazine (via kenyatta)

(via kenyatta)

"The four economists wanted to create a new currency that was stable, dependable and trustworthy. The only catch: This currency would not be real. No coins, no bills. It was fake.

“We called it a Unit of Real Value — URV,” Bacha says. “It was virtual; it didn’t exist in fact.”

People would still have and use the existing currency, the cruzeiro. But everything would be listed in URVs, the fake currency. Their wages would be listed in URVs. Taxes were in URVs. All prices were listed in URVs. And URVs were kept stable — what changed was how many cruseros each URV was worth.

Say, for example, that milk costs 1 URV. On a given day, 1 URV might be worth 10 cruseros. A month later, milk would still cost 1 URV. But that 1 URV might be worth 20 cruzeiros.

The idea was that people would start thinking in URVs — and stop expecting prices to always go up.

“We didn’t understand what it was,” says Maria Leopoldina Bierrenbach, a housewife from Sao Paulo. “I used to say it was a fantasy, because it was not real.”

Still, people used URVs. And after a few months, they began to see that prices in URVs were stable. Once that happened, Bacha and his buddies could declare that the virtual currency would become the country’s actual currency. It would be called the real.

“Everyone is going to receive from now on their wages, and pay for all the prices, in the new currency, which is the real,” Bacha says. “That is the trick."

Single most interesting thing I’ve read in ages. And makes me slap my head, staring down the etymological origins of the Brazilian Real. 

How Fake Money Saved Brazil : Planet Money : NPR

(via slavin)

(via slavin)

johnxlibris:

Poet hijacks Atlanta streets with haiku advertising campaign | guardian.co.uk

@extraface, I bet this is a friend of yours.

(via johnxlibris)

halfletterpress:

MOBILE STRUCTURES: Roam - a moving cultural space in East London

This isn’t the most interesting mobile structure, but still worth checking out. Too much corporate funding involved for me to get all that excited. I do enjoy the rambling incoherence of the guy who started the thing. He clearly is excited and his energy seems to be driving this thing. Plus, seems like a lot of folks are turning out for the programming.

—-

Free to Roam: mobile arts van is streets ahead

Laura Barton steps inside Roam – an old mobile library that has been transformed into an arts and culture space that brings music, literature and ideas to anyone who’ll come on board

http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/video/2010/jul/28/roam-mobile-arts-van

Psychogeography →

bobulate:

Defined in 1955, psychogeography is:

“The study of the precise laws and specific effects of the geographical environment, consciously organized or not, on the emotions and behavior of individuals.” [Or] “a whole toy box full of playful, inventive strategies for exploring cities … just about anything that takes pedestrians off their predictable paths and jolts them into a new awareness of the urban landscape.”

Desire lines, are one common example, but see this extraordinary hand-drawn map of London as another.

[via]

"

Many of the ways we talk about augmenting reality focus on reducing risk. By adding information to the bookstore, we reduce the risk that we buy a boring title and overpay for it. Augment the grocery store and we reduce the risk that we buy endangered, unsustainable fish or toxic glass cleaner manufactured by a gay-unfriendly conglomerate. Surrounding ourselves with information online – from authorities, friends, from the crowd – we make decisions in the physical world with increasing assurance that we’re getting the best deal, value or quality.

I worry about a world with less risk. With four stars shining over this trendy sushi bar, will I miss the unrated Uzbek teahouse down the street? Or the admittedly crappy dive bar that becomes a sentimental favorite? In a world rich with information, will I still stumble and explore? I don’t want to go back to a world where I can’t pull up record reviews on Allmusic.com… but I fell in love with music buying $2 cutout LPs in the back room of my local record store, stumbling through a forest of forgettable music to my own passions and tastes.

Geocaching augments reality in a different way. It adds a layer of the magical to the mundane.

There are at least 100 caches hidden within ten miles of my house. I’ve found fewer than 30 of them. Driving to the post office or the grocery store, I pass by them and smile at the secret knowledge I have that my neighbors lack – the specific stone that needs to be moved to reveal the hiding place. How many other stones have secrets hiding under them? What other games are played throughout the world, with secrets hiding in plain sight, invisible to us because we don’t know to look?

"

Ethan Zuckerman, Geocaching: Augmenting Reality for Enhanced Serendipity, February 2, 2010

http://www.ethanzuckerman.com/blog/2010/02/02/geocaching-augmenting-reality-for-enhanced-serendipity/

(the whole post is wonderful, and continues to inspire on a second read)

hdma:

POPOS: Secret Spaces of San Francisco Strange Maps #441