fab gbu

Green Design is IN. Psychiatric Help 5¢.

Green design is a great keyword to use to appeal to someone’s HIPPIE IDEALS. But if someone is really 100% Hippie, they’re not going to buy your stuff anyway.

This means, fortunately, that they lie somewhere towards the left on this chart: [W. McKenna, 2006]

Anyone with knows that design is COOL. But here’s one for the thinkers:

The real question is how to make

That’s why SMART designers will make things using the method.

The right type of WIT will get something popped on a blog:

LCD screens have become much cheaper in the last few years. And when you finally buy one, you’re probably just going to take that hunky old CRT and throw it in the trash. Out with the short and stout, in with the sleek and thin. ”Alright,” you say to yourself. Now my desk can look flat and clean like this one:
.

But are you thinking about this? This is more…messy.

Let’s face it: the earth is a mess, but can we make it a designed mess?

YES. Here’s how. Or HOWTO, if you like.

This is an old CRT monitor tube that I transformed into a shimmering teapot that will be the envy of all your guests*.

This unique item can be yours today! Inquire for price.

* Artist, Media Lab, and MIT are not responsible for poisoning, lacerations or other injuries sustained from the CRT-pot item.

The fight is on. Thanks to the propagandists at ”Save Our Sound,” it’s a dirty war of attrition and paperwork. Here the Q.T.:

A private company, Cape Wind, proposed the construction of ‘America’s first offshore wind farm’ in 1999. The project is expected to regularly cover 3/4 of Cape Cod’s energy needs.

Save Our Sound was quickly formed to stop the project in any way possible: legal snowballs, altering public opinon, etc. Interestingly, most environmentalists (including the infamous Massachusetts Audubon Society) support the project — SOS would probably argue otherwise. They are a group that famously represents rich landowners, taking any argument neccesary to flimflam the project, to ‘protect the view from their shoreline mansions. As ‘Clean Power Now!,’ an advocating organization proclaims, ”It’s not the view, it’s the vision!” Right now, it looks pretty good for Cape Wind. It’s still a clash (probably the most violent public opinion schism the Cape has ever seen), but Cape Wind has a growing majority and represents progressivism, reason, and sustainability.

Cape Wind (home)
Cape Wind (wikipedia)
Clean Power Now!

Save Our Sound
NIMBY (wikipedia)

The highest tip of each windmill would reach 417 feet, more than 100 feet higher than the Statue of Liberty. SOS uses a diagram of this comparison to make people scared of the size. In my opinion, the use of this comparison in a bad light is ironic. Just as the Statue of Liberty commemorates America’s freedom from oppression, the windmills would be monuments to the dawn of a new level of independance and freedom from external (and unclean) energy sources.

Usually when I have a design project assigned for, say, next Wednesday, I let the assignment ferment and steep in my head for a while. Something comes to me by Monday, and on Tuesday night I make it. This was not the case. I had let the assignment sit in my head, but instead of developing into a noble concoction with hints of freshness and wit, it had grown mold and sort of dried on the outside. I had no idea what to do for this assignment. So I went to studio and, by midnight, finally came up with a really boring concept, but it would have to do. I would lasercut a groove onto a piece of plexi and its mirror image onto another, then thread acetate in the grooves and have an ‘architectural light-diffusing unit.’ It took me a few minutes to cad, and then I went, slightly depressed with my poor efforts, to the lasercutter. ”Yeah, I’ll probably be done a little early,” said the dude who was using it. So I waited around until it neared 2 o’clock, and he hadn’t finished. Then the 2-4 am person came, and they said they were going to use their whole slot. Great, I said. Thanks. I went home and sat around brainstorming for a while. I decided to use an idea that I had discarded because it was unrealistic: Pineapple paper. I went to bed and set my alarm for when Star Market opened, a whole 2 hours later. I bought a pineapple and an orange, and I blended those suckers up and poured them out onto a mesh that I found in a closet. I had one test made from just pineapple, and one from pineapple plus orange. I sat there blowing a hairdryer at them until classtime. They were both still wet during class, and also stuck to the screen tenaciously. The fruits were fibrous enough so it stayed together, and I bet if I had done it on some smooth surface, like the hood of a car, I could have peeled them off. I don’t like pineapples because they seem so harsh — they have a tough spiked skin, are incredibly acidic, and are fibrous and tough. It was these properties that made me think that it would be good for paper — the acidity would prevent bacteria and stuff from growing on the paper, and the fibrousness would hold it together. It was a good test because I know that this actually would be possible. That is the first pineapple I’ve ever bought and probably the last. Unless I have a daughter and she has a luau-themed birthday party or something. Then I’ll buy one. But I won’t like it.