Monthly Archives: February 2011

Solar Powered Art – Craig Colorusso

green art, passive solar, solar, ,

A solar-powered art exhibit? It wouldn’t be the first time we’ve covered something of that sort on the vaunted pages of mnp, but it could be the coolest.

Creating the effect of an enchanted forest of singing trees, Craig Colorusso’s “Sun Boxes” installation can be walked through in a leisurely manner, or run through at full speed in a last ditch and extremely risky move to avoid the approaching enemy.

Sun Boxes is a solar powered sound installation. It’s comprised of twenty speakers operating independently, each powered by the sun via solar panels. Inside each Sun Box is a PC board that has a recorded guitar note loaded and programmed to play continuously in a loop. These guitar notes collectively make a Bb chord. Because the loops are different in length, once the piece begins they continually overlap and the piece slowly evolves over time.

Basically, I imagine this to be one harmonious but constantly changing, amplifying, and diminishing barrage of sound that keeps on rocking (God forbid it’s cloudy out). Although not billed as such, I find this to be a potentially very interesting and mesmerizing marriage of sound and mathematics. Plus, this ninja is from Beantown!

Craig will be at the IMA from March 18-20, for what we hope are 3 beautiful days. We recommend you wander amongst the enchanted sound-forest, put don’t pick the flowers!

We are all reliant on the sun. It is refreshing to be reminded of this. Our lives have filledup with technology. But we still need the sun and so does Sun Boxes. Karlheinze Stockhausen once said “using Short-wave radios in pieces was like improvising with the world.” Similarly, Sun Boxes is collaborating with the planet and its relation to the sun.

More Info Here

Barefoot for a year?

fo' real?, green living, interview

If simply looking at the picture below is enough to make you smell the smell of feet, you are not alone. Arthur Jones (obviously) and English bloke who happened to live in China for a year decided that he was going to also spend a year living barefoot in one of the, from a foot’s perspective, most hectic places on earth.  You can read all about his exploits, trials, and tribulations by clicking on the link after the quote.

“I’ve always liked being barefoot from being a kid,” Jones says, explaining his yearlong experiment, which he is hoping to turn into a film. “It’s turned into something that’s made everyday life more exciting. It opens your eyes. You’re suddenly in touch with everything around. And it feels like you’re a little child discovering the world for the first time.”

Barefooters like to cite recent scientific research showing the health advantages to a barefoot lifestyle. One example is a paper earlier this year in the journal Nature by Harvard University human evolutionary biology professor Daniel E. Lieberman, which found that barefoot runners place less stress on their feet than runners wearing shoes. This happens because barefooters change the way they run, landing on the balls of their feet instead of their heels, thereby markedly reducing the “impact collision” or “heel-strike.” (Read the Rest)

I’m pretty sure this is green as hell, although I don’t recommend it.

Roseanne Barr, Organic Farmer? Cha.

agriculture, fo' real?, organic

Well, I think this is just great… though it’s, like, triple ironic that it’s a “nut farm.”

Remember Roseanne Barr, the sometimes outrageous comedian and former TV star? Well, now she’s a full-fledged farmer.

That’s right. Roseanne, now 58-years-old, has a 50-acre macadamia nut farm in Hawaii where she spends her days farming and writing with her life-partner, Johnny… [Read the Rest]

mnp is for the aminals, sidenote

Since 2006, U.S. honey bee populations have been in precipitous decline, with some estimates suggesting losses as high as 30% per year.1 While that’s terrible, the problem is far greater than just the destruction of a species. Without bees, a big piece of our food supply is in serious danger. Pollination by honey bees is key in cultivating the crops that produce a full one-third of our food.
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Scientists have been scrambling to understand the crisis — termed Colony Collapse Disorder — but have yet to find a single, definitive cause. There are likely multiple interacting causes, and mounting evidence suggests that one widely used class of pesticides may be a critical factor. Click here to find out more.



June Energy

clean businesses, eco-friendly products, solar

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_tGo3Ik3E8[/youtube]

Around the world, there are shortages of food and clean drinking water, but what you may not realize is that there is also a shortage of light for those dark nights in electricity-less areas. A group of students from the University of Michigan have come up with a solution: Emerald, a portable solar panel-powered device that provides 100 lumens of light and power for your electronics.

These engineering students founded the start-up company June Energy. One of the students, Abdrahamane Traoré, comes from Mali where he grew up doing his homework with a kerosene lamp in a poor village. The kerosene lamp doesn’t provide sufficient lighting–only about 60 lumens of light–and can be bad for health. Plus you have to continuously buy kerosene fuel for it which can get expensive.

Emerald will provide 100 lumens of light, a USB charging dock, cell phone ports, and a number of adapters. The device charges in only three hours in full sunlight. It can charge a smartphone in the same time it takes to charge by an outlet, and the device can provide light for eight full hours. The students hope to get the price to under $20. (Source)

Bat Uses Compostable Toilet

mnp is for the aminals

OHHHH NATURRRRE… you came and you gave without takinnnnng… sort of.

No, but seriously, read the article linked below.  This is some James Cameron Avatar shit.

“This is a great study that, for the first time, exposes the mutualistic link between a small woolly bat and its pitcher plant host,” Struebig told Discovery News. “There have been anecdotal reports of this bat species being found in pitchers, but most people considered this to be only a temporary arrangement.”

Struebig explained that bat experts consider such temporary spots to be a “day roost” or a “satellite roost,” “a convenient stop-over on the way to the bat’s main home after a night of busy foraging.” In this case, though, the pitchers appear to serve as the bat’s primary home.

Both he and Grafe now wonder if other carnivorous plants in the region enjoy beneficial relationships with bats and different animals. (source)