The Happiness Project

The Happiness Project is a musical creation inspired by the front-porch musings on the subject of happiness between Charles Spearin and his neighbors. The words of his neighbors become the backbone of an exploration into the sounds and melodies made while speaking, which are then interpreted by instruments. The Happiness Project on MySpace. (via The Post Family)

Update: And a German description that I prepared for class tonight.

Das Glücklichkeitprojekt (The Happiness Project) ist ein musikalisches Projekt von Charles Spearin. Charles Spearin ist ein Musiker und er hat in viele Bänder gespielt, zum Beispiel ‘Do Make Say Think’ ‘KC Accidental’ und ‘Broken Social Scene’. Das Glücklichkeit Projekt hat auf der Veranda von Charles Spearin angefangen. Er hat mit seiner Familie und Nachbarn über das Thema ‘Glücklichkeit’ gesprochen. Sie haben ‘Was ist Glücklichkeit’ diskutiert. Sie haben geredet, Geschichte erzählt, und über Meinungen und Ansichten gesprochen. Spearin hat die Unterhaltungen aufgenommen.

Damals, haben Spearin und seinen Musiker Freunde die Wörter und Stimmen von Nachbarn gehört. Jede Stimme hat ihren eigenen Rhythmus und Klang/Ton. Wenn mann spricht ist die Stimme manchmal fast wie ein Lied. Die Wörter über ‘Glücklichkeit’ waren den Grund/die Basis für die Melodie. Die Musiker haben Musikinstrumente mit den Stimmen gespielt. Und haben die Stimmen und Ihre Melodie interpretiert. Spearin hat gesagt: ‘Die Musik ist zwischen sprechen und singen, zwischen dem Leben und der Kunst. Eine Unfallmelodie’.

Ich Lerne Deutsch...

Last night, a substitute teacher asked her temporary (primary level, beginner, amateur, basic “Trinkst du Tee mit Milch?” skillz) students why it was they had chosen German to learn.

After almost six months of classes, this was the first time we had been asked this as a group.

The question bounced across the rows of desks and I shouldn’t have been surprised to hear that most students’ reasons were to do with love: an Austrian husband; a long-distance boyfriend in Bavaria; tangled family roots; a soon-to-be-son-in-law; newly-weds about to embark on a European adventure.

And then,

a dancer,

a musician (and her friend),

and a writer

for whom the language simply got under her skin.

(via The Literary Piano)

Beauty and the Bike

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M88sF-rvul0&hl=en_US&fs=1&]

A group of people in Darlington, United Kingdom, decided to approach the problem of getting women on bikes by getting girls on bikes. The result is Beauty and the Bike, a book, a documentary, and perhaps most excitingly, a bike-share program…. It’s so wonderful to see how the girls move from skepticism about cycling to exhilaration about how “liberating” it is.

I've always said the moment when a woman can ride her bike comfortably around a city while wearing heels and feeling beautiful is the moment when that city has a real bike culture. Of course, another important aspect is feeling safe and the role of bike lanes in facilitating a sense of safety. The girls from Darlington visit Bremen, Germany to see how a strong infrastructure can cultivate a culture of bikes. (via SomethingChanged: WorldChanging)

The Advent of the Holidays

Tomorrow the month of December begins, along with one of my favorite holiday traditions: the advent calendar. Although the advent calendar of my childhood will always remain my ideal, there are many inventive and creative designs that makes the advent calendar more than just another decoration. The calendar above, by David Fussenegger, is one example.

The Eric Carle Dream Snow pop-up advent calendar.

The Könecke Advent Sausage, designed by Butter, is truly German.

Noix de Coc advent boxes that can have left two sides of the box blank for custom designs (via Bodie and Fou).

A DIY Beer advent calendar.

And Modern Cottage's calendar made from an antique type drawer.

Chalkboard Newspaper

[vimeo vimeo.com/3602427 w=500&h=400] In Monrovia, Liberia, Alfred Sirleaf runs the Daily Talk, a news and information service that uses a blackboard display to show the daily headlines. Volunteers across Liberia send updates to Sirleaf, which he then presents to the public. The chalkboard news feed brings information to people like refugees who want to participate in their local and national community, but don't have the means to stay informed. For those who cannot read, he uses symbols and pictures to get the message across. His long-term goal is to decentralize the Daily Talk and make the information available in other cities across Liberia.

I was reminded of Sirleaf during the final weeks of the World Pulse Voices of Our Future program, which trains women to use social media for citizen journalism. His motivation to inform society about the news that affects them resonates with the ideas presented in the article 'The Power of Information' by Gertrude, a correspondent from Zimbabwe that I had the opportunity to work with during the program. Gertrude wrote about the need for information across her country, interviewing the elder Gogo Moyo from the remote village of Binga.

'Despite all the colourful speeches that we hear from politicians during election campaigns, we are in actual fact cut off from the rest of the world. There are no schools nearby, the roads are poor and we have no clinics. We have no access to local radio and television. We do not know why we have to vote and the effect of that vote,’ adds Gogo Moyo.

The people of Binga do not want to be only recipients of news. The little exposure they have had with the media has made them appreciate the power of information and the positive change that it can bring. There is therefore an urgent need to build local capacities and abilities of marginalised and vulnerable groups in the strategic and creative use of communication to express their needs, to make their voices heard, to manage their own communication, and to participate fully in their own development and bring about long-term social change.

(Chalkboard Newspaper via PSFK)

A Festival of Documentaries

IDFA (The International Documentary Film Festival of Amsterdam) begins tomorrow! One of my favorite events of the year, IDFA showcases an array of documentaries across a diverse range of topics from filmmakers around the globe.  The festival runs from 19-29 November and already a few films have caught my interest:

Constatin and Elena (Andrei Dascalescu, Romania/Spain, 2008) A chronicle of the love of a Romanian couple, married for 55 years, as they fill their days and accept their mortality.

Countryside 35x45 (Evgeny Solomin, Russia, 2009) This documentary follows the man that has to photograph the inhabitants of the remote villages in Siberia, profiling the people he meets along the way, in the process to replace all Soviet passports with Russian identity papers.

Pianomania (Lilian Franck and Robert Cibis, Germany/Austria, 2009) These filmmakers document the work of concert technician and piano tuner Stefan Knüpfer. 'Armed with humor, patience, and a generous dose of creativity, he fiddles with the grand pianos as long as it takes for their sound to seduce the pianists.'

The Red Chapel (Mads Brügger, Denmark, 2009) Comics Jacob and Simon, North Korean by birth and adopted by Danish parents as children, head to Pyeongyang after they receive permission to perform a vaudeville act.

Tapped (Stephanie Soechtig, Canada/USA, 2009) This documentary is a critique of the growing bottled water industry, outlining the environmental problems and the rising power of corporations.

Taqwacore: The Birth of Punk Islam (Omar Majeed, Canada, 2009) Taqwa is an Arabic word that means 'piety' or 'god-fearing'. This film documents the journey of Islamic punks in the United States whose music blends punk and hip hop inspirations with ancient Arabic culture and instruments.

View the full festival program here.

Le Creativ Sweatshop

le creativ sweatshop

"Creativity is something you constantly work on. Some say you are lucky to be so creative, but it's something you work on every day."

— Ndeur (Mathieu Missiaen)

Specializing in paper designs, the conceptual agency Le Creativ Sweatshop (The Creative Sweatshop) works across a spectrum of media that cater to their quest for creativity. (via Yatzer)

[vimeo vimeo.com/5537496 w=500&h=400]

We Feel Fine: The Book

snowy Jonathan Harris and Sep Kamvar, the creators of We Feel Fine, have announced the completion of the book We Feel Fine: An Almanac of Human Emotion heading to stores on December 1. The book chronicles the mission of the project: to aggregate the range of emotions expressed in blogs online and collectively present them for exploration.

The 288-page book contains photographs from over 1,000 individual bloggers, statistics from over 13 million individual feelings, hundreds of infographics, dozens of back stories and in-depth profiles, and countless insights into the ups and downs of everyday life.

The book can be pre-ordered on Amazon.

Oregon Manifest

oregon manifest Pereira CycleLast weekend, I was able to catch the final festivities of Oregon Manifest, a celebration of the bike culture and innovation in Portland, Oregon. Part of the month-long celebration was a design challenge and an exhibition of the winning frame designs. The first place prize went to Pereira Cycles for this design, now on sale.

A gallery in the Pearl District was featuring the exhibition Dreams on Wheels: Danish Cycling Culture for Urban Sustainability, which will make its way to cities around the world including London, Barcelona, and Brussels in 2010. The exhibition looks at Danish efforts to cultivate a culture of cycling through sociological research, urban design and planning, public policy, and educational programs.

A few Danish words for 'bicycle': Stålhest (steel horse) Skærveknuser (bone crusher) Havelåge (garden gate)

bicycle 1bicycle 2

Untrammelled Womanhood

"Let me tell you what I think of bicycling. I think it has done more to emancipate women than anything else in the world. It gives women a feeling of freedom and self-reliance. I stand and rejoice every time I see a woman ride by on a wheel...the picture of free, untrammelled womanhood."

— Susan B. Anthony, American Suffragist, 1886

Twenty Years Later

mauer mob November 9 marks the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall and the beginning of the reunification process of East and West Germany. To remember the occasion, the British performance artist Martin Butler has initiated 'Mauer Mob 2009: Recreating the Berlin Wall'. At 20.15 on November 9 in Berlin, people will line up along the path where the wall stood to recreate its presence.

The Berlin Wall project is about creating a "temporary monument of reflection". When it was created, the wall was one of the clearest man-made divisions of people with different ideologies. For the 20th anniversary of its deconstruction we will rebuild the Berlin Wall, not from steel and concrete, but from people. To remember when Berlin became one again after decades of separations - physically as well as in the minds...

To join the 8279 people already registered, visit the Mauer Mob site and choose a location (via Bas at OY).

The Angst of Creative Dreams

creative angst

"It's time to accept that there's never going to be a perfect sea of endless days when i can write. I will always have other stuff to do. So if that's the case, then i may as well just get on with it. I don't want to be one of those people who talks about the book and never actually writes it. It's time to face up to what's really going on here - blatant fear of failure. Why do our creative dreams cause us so much angst? - and just start somewhere. Even if i do feel like my days are already full-to-bursting, I can still eek out some time. No more talk; it's time to put my pen where my mouth is."

(via inkonmyfingers)

Despite the fact that I actually write a lot — for work, research projects, on my blog, World Pulse, and a dozen other places — sometimes it never feels like it amounts to anything substantial. I have never published a book, although printing my MA thesis did feel like quite the accomplishment. All the research I do for clients is 'protected' under NDAs, never to see the light beyond internal boardrooms. Yet, as much as I relate to this observation, I can't help but think perhaps we're too hard on ourselves.

A recent article in Seed Magazine describes The Writing Revolution in which we all are now authors. Although their definition of an 'author' (someone who has written anything, whether a blog post or Tweet, that has been read by more than 100 people) needs some reworking, the point is that technological changes have enabled us to move from Consumers to Creators. The Seed article is reminiscent of the article We Are All Writers Now. With so many writers and authors running around these days, it's hard for those of us who consider it our profession to not feel a rising possibility of failure. The quote is spot on with its conclusion. What other solution is there than confronting the creative angst and just getting on with writing?