Alpha One Labs hackerspace was founded in the summer of July 2009. Boasting radical inclusivity, Alpha One Labs superb design aims to provide a safe, clean space for users of all ages and interests to work on projects together.
NYC Resistor is a hacker collective with a shared space located in downtown Brooklyn. We meet regularly to share knowledge, hack on projects together, and build community.
Kits for an Encounter is an exhibition that examines artists’ kits that instigate or trouble the notion of a (social) encounter. Providing the equipment needed to initiate a situation, kits can be characterized by their promissory quality, embodying potential and containing the possibility for transformation. ‘Wearable Mosque’ by Azra Aksamija unfolds from a fashionable women’s semi-formal wear into a minimal mosque which the artist-architect spatio-temporally demarcates as a prayer rug for two, head covering, compass, and prayer beads. Aksamija, born in Sarajevo and living between Austria, Bosnia, and the United States, comments that the wearable mosque “explores various ways of negotiating spatial relationships between Islamic traditions and modernity in the US and Western Europe.” An allegory about the impossible fulfillment of an imagined identity, Noam Toran’s ‘Objects for Lonely Men’ is a film that depicts a male protagonist vaguely resembling Jean Paul Belmondo’s character in Godard’s 196o film classic “Breathless (Au bout de Souffle).” Both likeness and difference is heightened as the protagonist interacts with a kit whose components, a steering wheel, mannequin head, dinner, cigarettes, allow him to simulate the filmic narrative from the comfort of his living room.
Many kits provide the sculptural and performative components needed to frame a social encounter, functioning as the control to unforeseen variables. Lize Mogel’s ‘Public Park: Personal Planning Kit’ contains instructions and signage so that any denizen can turn their private property (from a parking space to a front lawn) into public space. Judi Werthein’s ‘Brinco’ is an athletic sneaker equipped with a flashlight, compass, painkillers to enable those illegally crossing the US-Mexico border. Sold at a hop boutique shoe store or to art collectors, the proceeds support the free distribution of the ‘crossing trainers’ to border crossers.
By implying a situation, many kits either invite, enable, question, or obviate the future. Limor Fried’s ‘Minty MP3′, a portable listening device made from simple electronic parts and an empty Altoid mint case, presents a $50 do-it-yourself alternative to an iPod that questions the relationship between fetish and access. Janice Kerbel’s Deadstar (2006) is a city plan for a ghost town with all the necessary information for its realisation. Replete with topographic and geological data, water, vegetation and buildings, the city plans prominently feature the graveyard. With neither roads nor hospitals, the city is an area so poorly planned for human living that it is doomed to die before it’s been built. Vahida Ramujkic’s ‘Assimil’ is a text book whose exercises and lesson plans ‘teach’ non-European Union citizens how to properly enter and assimilate into the EU.
Based in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, UnionDocs is a 501 (c) 3 non-profit organization. Our mission is to present a broad range of innovative and thought-provoking non-fiction projects to the general public, while also cultivating specialized opportunities for learning, critical discourse, and creative collaboration for emerging media-makers, theorists, and curators.
Our local screenings, exhibitions and lectures attract people from New York City and beyond, promoting dialogue about significant social questions and expanding popular awareness of the documentary arts. Expert panels and discussions from these events are recorded, archived, and made available online to growing national and international audiences. For individuals in their early careers, The UnionDocs Collaborative is a program that deeply engages current modes of non-fiction and facilitates the annual production of a group project.
UnionDocs seeks to support compelling, creative work in this field because we believe that documentary art, when paired with thoughtful context and open debate, is an invaluable tool for understanding the complexities of contemporary life and creating a better society.
fixcity.org is about taking small steps to fix your city. Our first endeavor, FixCity:Bike Racks, is a social mapping application designed to “crowdsource” community and government collaboration in the gathering, planning, and implementing new bike racks.
This application encourages residents and community organizations to suggest new bike racks, verify suggested locations, gather statements of support from the broader community, and finally submit a “shovel-ready” bulk order to the Department of Transportation. This application is designed to use the best of today’s web technology to enable smart ways to meaningfully and efficiently match residents’ wants with city services.
The University of Pittsburgh Center for Learning in Out-of-School Environments (UPCLOSE) is an academic home for informal learning. We explore what it means to learn in informal settings. We tinker with innovative designs to support informal learning. We document how museums and community organizations learn and change. And we bring research and practice together through collaboration and field-building initiatives.
Wow – this is so crazy….
In June, 2007, thereNow was funded by the U.S. Department of Education’s Institute of Education Sciences to further develop the observational component of thereNow’s cognitive apprenticeship model.
The objective of this $850,000 Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant is to design and research the hardware and software necessary to enable classroom observation. This system is called IRIS.
Big brother…professional development, K-12, Utah Dept of Education style? We need to do a project about this! Institute Faculty assemble…
Urban Utopias is a lecture series and blog organized by MIT. The MIT Visual Arts Program hosts a cross-disciplinary lecture series that includes speakers from art, architecture, urbanism and technology from around the world. These speakers will start a discourse to imagine tomorrow’s urban living conditions.
Conflux is the annual New York festival for contemporary psychogeography, the investigation of everyday urban life through emerging artistic, technological and social practice. At Conflux, visual and sound artists, writers, urban adventurers and the public gather for four days to explore their urban environment.
People from a wide variety of backgrounds and cultures come together at the festival to re-imagine the city as a playground, a space for positive change and an opportunity for civic engagement. The Village Voice describes Conflux as a “network of maverick artists and unorthodox urban investigators… making fresh, if underground, contributions to pedestrian life in New York City, and upping the ante on today’s fight for the soul of high-density metropolises.”
STACKD helps people in office buildings get in touch – for business or beers. We would like to think that it’s the people around you that should be part of your social network: people you meet in the elevator rather than on Facebook, people you follow to the 14th floor instead of on Twitter. Online social networks are great for what they are. We built STACKD to tap the potential of the place you stick around most: the office.
