Tee hee

My roommate knows me too well:

What's Up Maldives?

The Maldives hosted their first underwater cabinet meeting yesterday. Its the first such meeting ever to take place underwater and was orchestrated by the country's President Mohamed Nasheed to bring some awareness to the country's current and future challenges that are mounting due to global climate change.Due to rising sea levels, the island nation will most likely find itself completely submerged in the Indian Ocean in about 100 years. Clearly, if they want to keep living on their islands, everyone is going to have start getting used to this sight.
While the President of the Maldives pledged in March to have his country be completely carbon neutral by the end of the decade, I don't think that is really going to help their situation at this point.
Nevertheless, the man clearly understands the drastic effects that climate change is having on our planet, and I applaud his theatrics!

Climate Change meet Art

I first was officially introduced to installation art during my landscape architecture theory course at Cal Poly. Each fall for several years LA 320 students rubbed Cal Poly students' faces in the reality of the world outside our little hidden town. We erected these installations overnight and watched students interact with them by day. It was for many the most demanding, overwhelming, emotional, and interesting class we had and for a few weeks each fall we challenged our students to think about green space, gay marriage, pollution, and a host of other issues.

Since that class, art and design installation as a form of activism and education has become near and dear to my heart. Art can be an incredibly powerful tool in bringing awareness of ideas and events to people and provides a great jumping off point to educate people and get them to do some introspective thinking.

Its with a smile on my face that I see artists taking on the challenge of climate change, here are some that have been in the news this year:


January 2009: Eden, a British television channel devoted to all things nature, floated a giant polar bear sculpture down the Thames River in London to bring awareness of of climate change, thinning ice, the demise of polar bears, and their new tv series (got to give it to them, pretty brilliant advertising).

May 2009: the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) placed 200 cardboard sea turtle mockups on a beach in England. While their goal was to alert people to the travesty that is poaching and to teach the public about ways to avoid supporting black market and souvenier animal products, I think it also helps raise some awareness about the diversity of life forms on this rock of ours, and how precarious it all is.

June - October 2009: The Schonbrunn Zoo in Vienna (the oldest zoo in the world, and host to one of the best parties I've ever attended) has let 2 artists loose in 6 of their animal enclosures to show the effects of climate change on wildlife. The images are pretty iconic, and to check out some more, see treehugger.com's coverage. Also, I think this is interesting in that artists are providing environmental enrichment in these enclosures while teaching the public about climate change.

October 2009: Artist Nele Azevedo of Brasil did an installation of 1,000 little ice men perched on the steps of the Berlin Concert Hall. The installation was funded by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) to coincide with the release of their report Global Climate Change. This is not the first time Azevedo has done this installation, she originally did these as critiques of the use of mounuments and public space in urban areas. Nevertheless, little melting men seem pretty provacative and have gotten people talking about climate change.

Fun with Best Friends

One of my very best friends came to visit me for four splendid days this week. The trip included a lot of movies (including a viewing of the newly remastered and amazing Wizard of Oz), tv (yay Glee!), Woodstock's Pizza, Julian Pie, photo shoots (check flickr soon for photos), Oktoberfest, and talking. It was truly a fantastic few days, and I'm so glad she was able to come and visit.

During the course of starting a new little project she and I came across the following poem by Rudyard Kipling called The Female of the Species. It makes me laugh and I find a lot of inspiration in it.

WHEN the Himalayan peasant meets the he-bear in his pride,
He shouts to scare the monster, who will often turn aside.
But the she-bear thus accosted rends the peasant tooth and nail.
For the female of the species is more deadly than the male.

When Nag the basking cobra hears the careless foot of man,
He will sometimes wriggle sideways and avoid it if he can.
But his mate makes no such motion where she camps beside the trail.
For the female of the species is more deadly than the male.

When the early Jesuit fathers preached to Hurons and Choctaws,
They prayed to be delivered from the vengeance of the squaws.
'Twas the women, not the warriors, turned those stark enthusiasts pale.
For the female of the species is more deadly than the male.

Man's timid heart is bursting with the things he must not say,
For the Woman that God gave him isn't his to give away;
But when hunter meets with husbands, each confirms the other's tale—
The female of the species is more deadly than the male.

Man, a bear in most relations—worm and savage otherwise,—
Man propounds negotiations, Man accepts the compromise.
Very rarely will he squarely push the logic of a fact
To its ultimate conclusion in unmitigated act.

Fear, or foolishness, impels him, ere he lay the wicked low,
To concede some form of trial even to his fiercest foe.
Mirth obscene diverts his anger—Doubt and Pity oft perplex
Him in dealing with an issue—to the scandal of The Sex!

But the Woman that God gave him, every fibre of her frame
Proves her launched for one sole issue, armed and engined for the same;
And to serve that single issue, lest the generations fail,
The female of the species must be deadlier than the male.

She who faces Death by torture for each life beneath her breast
May not deal in doubt or pity—must not swerve for fact or jest.
These be purely male diversions—not in these her honour dwells—
She the Other Law we live by, is that Law and nothing else.

She can bring no more to living than the powers that make her great
As the Mother of the Infant and the Mistress of the Mate.
And when Babe and Man are lacking and she strides unclaimed to claim
Her right as femme (and baron), her equipment is the same.

She is wedded to convictions—in default of grosser ties;
Her contentions are her children, Heaven help him who denies!—
He will meet no suave discussion, but the instant, white-hot, wild,
Wakened female of the species warring as for spouse and child.

Unprovoked and awful charges—even so the she-bear fights,
Speech that drips, corrodes, and poisons—even so the cobra bites,
Scientific vivisection of one nerve till it is raw
And the victim writhes in anguish—like the Jesuit with the squaw!

So it comes that Man, the coward, when he gathers to confer
With his fellow-braves in council, dare not leave a place for her
Where, at war with Life and Conscience, he uplifts his erring hands
To some God of Abstract Justice—which no woman understands.

And Man knows it! Knows, moreover, that the Woman that God gave him
Must command but may not govern—shall enthral but not enslave him.
And She knows, because She warns him, and Her instincts never fail,
That the Female of Her Species is more deadly than the Male.

Keeping up with art is hard work...

This article about the graffiti artist known as Banksy is off of Stuff White People Like - a very amusing commentary on a ton of random things.

Being that some of my favorite artists are in the "you look like you're trying too hard and don't know anything" category (i.e. Jeff Koons), I apparently am not really an art fan according to these guys, but at least, according to them, I don't have an art history degree.



I do like Banksy (see above), and I do kind of agree with them about Thomas Kinkade though. It weirds me out how popular he is.

More Cthuhlu :)

I know that a week or so ago I posted a fake ad council ad about this guy, but SCI FI Wire is doing a 31 days of Halloween countdown, and I felt the need to share more Cthulu stuff from their most recent post:


I know he's like the most evil thing in science fiction, but all of a sudden evil is pretty cute! Happy October everyone!