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Goodbye Idea Channel. Hello Idea Channel.
PBS Idea Channel is a recently-ended online show that examines the connections between pop culture, technology and art hosted by Mike Rugnetta. Even though no more content will be produced, there are still a number of videos available to watch and the videos will still exist for the foreseeable future and if it’s new to you, it’s new. These were my favorites and maybe you’ll find a favorite too.
This Episode Was Written by An AI
The Vague Horror of Face Swap
How NOT to Spot Fake News
Are Netflix Series Our Most Important Media?
Has The World Already Ended? Or Just History?
How Is Everything Interconnected?
Why Do Nintendo Games Look Like That?
☠ Yarrr! Content ☠
Are You Getting Enough Sleep?
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Stock Photos Who Believed In Themselves Enough to Become Memes
The following images all came from the humble beginnings of a stock photo universe. Through hard work, perseverance, and a little luck, each one of them achieved the pinnacle of imagedom known as meme. Make sure you support stock photos whenever you see them because you never know which ones have the potential to reach the top.
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Pollution Art
Looking at art and creative projects addressing and/or inspired by air pollution, light pollution, littering, noise pollution, soil pollution, radioactive pollution, visual pollution, and water pollution. I picked a couple of projects I naturally stumbled upon and conducted some research to find the others, avoiding “sculptures made from upcycled and/or recycled materials” since those are too common and entry-level for this post.
Air pollution
Smog Brick by Nut Brother
https://www.instagram.com/p/BLnE4F9hFCP/
Light pollution
Mutant Weed by Luz Interruptus
Anonymous art group Luz Interruptus showcased light pollution in Madrid with “mutant weeds” – fluorescent sticks placed in the green light glow of pharmacy signs.
via treehugger
Littering
Trashconverter Van by Hubbub
Noise pollution
Buitenschot Landscape Art Park, A Soundscape for Schiphol-Hoofddorp by H+N+S Landscape Architects and Paul De Kort
H+N+S Landscape Architects and artist Paul De Kort designed a park to curb noise pollution coming from Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport.
via Works that Work and H+N+S Landscape Architects
Radioactive pollution (+ soil pollution)
The Materiality of a Natural Disaster by Hilda Hellström
“In 2012, Swedish artist Hilda Hellström created dishes made from radioactive soil culled from the evacuation zone of Fukushima, Japan. Hellström stayed with Naoto Matsumura, a rice farmer and the last person living in the zone, for four days and collected soil from the contaminated rice fields. She took the soil back to UK to mold it into dishes to display at the Royal College of Art in London’s graduate show as symbols of memory and devastation. The series of food vessels attempt to speak to the wasted agriculture of the area.”
via Vice Creators
Visual pollution
Way Out West by The Art City Project
“Way Out West revisits the California experience by transforming outdoor advertising into new space for art to live and breathe. The month-long installation — which spans billboards, transit shelters, bus takeovers, and other alternative space throughout San Francisco’s transitional inner Mission neighborhood — features art from contemporary artists with roots in California.”
via Hello Art City
Water pollution
#PollutedWaterPopsicles by Hung I-chen, Guo Yi-hui, Cheng Yu-ti
Reactions
Smog Brick by Nut Brother (air pollution)
This was one of the projects I remembered from when it first broke news. Deceptively simple idea that transformed the Beijing air problem into something tangible and even usable.
Mutant Weed by Luz Interruptus (light pollution)
Light pollution goes under the radar since many people are so immersed by it and it’s not as visceral as something like smog yet it poses serious health risks for humans and animals alike. This project calls attention to how antithetical this light is to life by creating these fictional plants “nourished” by this artificial light.
Trashconverter Van by Hubbub (littering)
This is an artistic anti-littering campaign rather than an art project but I think it was a creative way to create positive reinforcement by offering rewards for picking up litter.
Buitenschot Landscape Art Park, A Soundscape for Schiphol-Hoofddorp by H+N+S Landscape Architects and Paul De Kort (noise pollution)
The largest scale and most practical project on here since it actively reduces an instance of noise pollution issue rather than merely bringing attention to it.
The Materiality of a Natural Disaster by Hilda Hellström (radioactive pollution + soil pollution)
Potentially the riskiest form of pollution to work with yet one of the most important forms to address. The article I found this project in also showcases five other projects involving radioactive source material.
Way Out West by The Art City Project (visual pollution)
Much like light pollution, visual pollution seems like a nonfactor for the environment but there are a number of detrimental health effects through exposure to visual pollution. The most surprising to me included decreases in opinion diversity (what?) loss of identity (what!) and loss of feeling of civility. This was an interesting way to change the content of billboards but I’d be interested in seeing something that could remove visual clutter which is difficult to do.
#PollutedWaterPopsicles by Hung I-chen, Guo Yi-hui, Cheng Yu-ti (water pollution)
Probably my favorite project on the list and one I found recently and inspired this whole post. It’s an amazing way to frame the issue since I can basically taste these popsicles and they are disgusting.
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@baseballcardvandals
@baseballcardvandals is clever. Clear name, reliable premise, works for insta.
Let’s deconstruct what’s happening here: nostalgia since these are all older, 80s/90s era cards, nostalgia since baseball cards are usually more popular in childhood (I care about this more since I grew up playing and loving baseball), nostalgia since baseball cards are like a retro, analog, dying/dead medium, different color backgrounds, silliness, consistency in posting with 2,346 posts since December 2016, a process that imposes a creative limitation and driver with the baseball card + permanent marker, remix culture.
Does deconstructing this stuff ruin the magic or does it deepen the appreciation a la that one Richard Feynman lesson?
Reminds me of Newspaper Blackout Poems. Both of these are visual. Baseball cards and newspapers allow for a very large supply to work from. How long do these card drawings take to do? What was the inspiration behind starting the project?
“Beau and Bryan Abbott, two brothers born in the 1980’s in a town called Springfield, spent their entire childhood obsessing over baseball cards. For well over a decade, every last dime of their allowance money went to funding their beloved collections. But as anyone who collected cards in the 80’s and 90’s knows, roughly 99.9% of these once sought-after collectibles are now barely worth the price of the cardboard they’re printed on. What to do then with the remnant boxes, binders and heaping mounds of these worthless, hilarious, irresistibly charming relics? Well, a long time ago these two artistically-inclined weirdos picked up their Sharpies and their most mediocre cards and began scribbling strange jokes all over them in endlessly shameless and shameful attempts at making one another laugh. Inexcusably, they’ve continued to do this into adulthood, and they recently decided to share their work with the outside world. The result is http://www.baseballcardvandals.com, the most ardently irreverent, beautifully nonsensical, brilliantly gross and sometimes surprisingly sublime thing on the internet.”
And of course there’s The Simpsons.
@baseballcardvandals, andre the giant, art, art project, baseball, baseball card collection, baseball card vandals, baseball cards, Beau Abbott, Bryan Abbott, cards, collectibles, collection, collections, culture, design, humor, internet, MLB, moe szyslak, nostalgia, pop culture, pro wrestling, remix, sports cards, sports collectibles, the simpsons, wwe, wwf -
“…and this odd nostalgia for memories of the future.”
vaporwave engenders, via reddit: “Nostalgia for places I’ve never actually been. Nostalgia for memories that aren’t mine. And this odd nostalgia for memories of the future.”
why a reddit user loves vaporwave: “Vaporwave is one colossal worldbuilding endeavor.”
two accurate assessments i agree with
some vaporwave feels:
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TRAPPED IN DEJA VU TV
TRAPPED IN DEJA VU TV is an ebook of original visual poetry about the already seen. Available August 1st. Pay what you want.
Download TRAPPED IN DEJA VU TV Now
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back again
cooking up lots of new goodies
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simple cyborg pleasures
curfew is the stale ring
stalling street lights red
raising fire escape ladders
stilling the once chatter-filled sidewalksinsomnia is the refusal
to lay stiff and walk inside visions,
opting for a soupier experience
with reality’s dark-skinned cousinweek after week
i stick forks in electrical sockets
and poke the drawn-up fire escape ladder
outside my apartmentthe signal feed to Fred says
“I’m ready for a tour”
his growled excitement is his readinesswe’ve cancelled continuing ed
curriculums with the way
we bend fences and dent
curfew-struck denizensi’ve denied myself the
simple cyborg pleasures for
too longthey call us fossil freaks
but we’re too sweet to be buried
underneath and undiscovered with
the quick brush strokes of a
neatly packaged archaeology studenti’ve broken peaces with most
who look backwards then down
at me for holding on with
my hydraulic handthey tease me as if i’m
afraid of an armed raced
to the graveyard monster mashi go there all night
fast and in fashion -
“Blah blah blah” he accused.
“Blah blah blah” he said.
“Blah blah blah” she said.
“Blah blah blah” he accused.
“Blah blah blah” she refused.
“Blah blah blah” he maintained.
“Blah blah blah” she explained.
“Blah blah blah” he addressed.
“Blah blah blah” she digressed.
“Blah blah blah” he fawned.
“Blah blah blah” she yawned. -
Dear God Four
Dear God,
I’ve never wanted to be anything other than a stream of consciousness. I want to use “I” less in writing. I want an apple. I want Aleppo to be saved. But you’re no miracle worker. Isn’t there a tuning which makes farts more sustainable? I don’t know how to peek over the hills of an atom bomb. You all asked for the nuclear holocaust. Maybe the animals will save us.
Love,
Tyler
Tyler Fugazzie 