CJ Maupin is a communications strategist, marketing writer and event producer. Starting her career in politics and government (working on Capitol Hill and with many politicians, notably Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi), she migrated to the private sector to apply her community organizing, issue development and policy articulation skills to the communications challenges of new and long-standing companies.

She has broad experience having developed and directed worldwide programs in market development, co-marketing, events, corporate identity, creative services, public relations, advertising, and employee and executive communications. She worked for Apple Computer for 10 years, five as speechwriter to CEO John Sculley and executive team, and five leading corporate communications for the company’s Europe, Middle East, and Africa division. She did stints on the agency side as well working for innovation and change firm Stone Yamashita Partners, and venerable advertising agency Ogilvy & Mather.

CJ’s sense of principle and positioning make her a valued communications counselor and writer for many leaders in business and government, and her cross-disciplinary and multi-cultural experience make her a sought-after director of integrated, international marcom programs. She has directed communications efforts for a wide variety of companies and individuals in the North America, Europe and Asia Pacific regions.

Mark Shepard is an artist, architect and researcher whose post-disciplinary practice addresses new social spaces and signifying structures of contemporary network cultures. His current research investigates the implications of mobile and pervasive media, communication and information technologies for architecture and urbanism. (full bio here)

Sawad Brooks is an award winning designer and internationally recognized media artist who creates and transforms social/information spaces. He consults on exhibit, product, and interaction design.

Sawad has received numerous commissions and awards, including an ID Magazine Silver Interactive Design Award, and was named a finalist for the inaugural SFMoMA Webby Prize. In addition, he has received grants from respected institutions, including Creative Capital, the Jerome Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the Walker Art Center. His work has been exhibited internationally, including shows at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; the Johannesburg Biennale, S.A; and the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam. Sawad’s work has been collected by the Walker Art Center and the Whitney Museum.

His team, bbc art + architecture, was a finalist (chosen by a jury from over 5,000 other competitors) and awarded “first runner-up” in the World Trade Center Site Memorial Competition. According to accounts published in the New York Times, the team’s design was edged out only during the jury’s final hours of deliberation. The team is featured in Paper Magazine’s “Beautiful People 2004″ issue.

Zach Eveland is an electronic and physical interaction designer. His company, Blacklabel Development, creates innovative prototypes and products for clients in the assistive technology, education, entertainment, consumer electronics, and consumer medical industries.

Sarah Scaturro is the textile conservator at the Cooper-Hewitt. She is also an independent curator and researcher, as well as an instructor in FIT’s Fashion and Textile Studies MA program. She most recently curated the exhibition “Ethics + Aesthetics = Sustainable Fashion” at the Pratt Manhattan Gallery.

Miriam Songster grew up near Boston, has lived in London and Sydney, and currently calls Brooklyn home. She received a BA in Economics and worked professionally as an economist before attending graduate school, where she earned a Master’s degree at NYU’s Interactive Telecommunication Program.

Miriam’s artistic pursuits began with documentary film and video, starting with her involvement in a women’s video collective and ultimately leading to the scripting and production of documentaries, public service announcements, and video installations such as that for Boston’s “First Night” festival. Her interest in installation grew during her time with Reclamation Artists, a group of Boston-area artists and architects working in transitional urban spaces.

Since completing her telecommunications degree Miriam has been working professionally as a digital project manager, while also producing web-based artworks and immersive, multi-sensory installation pieces. Her most recent work includes the installation “Dirt” for ArtSpace New Haven, sculptural light pieces completed during a residency at the Santa Fe Art Institute, and the recently completed blog project “We Are Having Weather.”

Dr. Paul Pangaro consults at the intersection of product strategy, prescriptive innovation, and organizational dynamics. His career spans roles as technology executive, professor of cybernetics, entrepreneur, and performer.

Through prototyping, lecturing and writing, Paul focuses on the cognitive and social needs of human beings. His clients include Nokia UX London, Poetry Foundation, eight inc., Citigroup, and Dubberly Design. He taught a course at Stanford University for seven years and has lectured at MIT’s Sloan School of Management, Graduate Center of the City University of New York, London’s Bartlett School of Architecture, São Paulo’s Instituto Itaú Cultural, École Nationale Supérieure des Mines de Paris, Art Institute of Boston, Ontario College of Art and Design, and University of California Berkeley and Santa Cruz.

Paul spent ten years in Silicon Valley as CTO of startups and as a strategy consultant. At Sun Microsystems, he directed the first integration of all developer websites to common processes and information architecture, including 100,000 pages at java.sun.com. He was founding CTO of Snap.com, working with Bill Gross’s Idealab team to develop alternative search experiences.

Paul studied computer science and humanities at MIT, where he made award-winning computer-generated films. Nicholas Negroponte hired him to work in what became the MIT Media Lab. He earned a Ph.D. in cybernetics and conversation theory at Brunel University with Gordon Pask. Paul has performed in college and community theatre in straight plays, musical theatre, and his own cabaret productions. He is member of the Board of San Francisco’s Artship Dance/Theater, and Chair of the Trustees and Fellow of the American Society for Cybernetics.

Before spring break we got to present our thesis to outside guest critics.

http://www.marcocastrocosio.com/blog/?p=1026

After having presented my idea to many other critics on the previous week.  To my surprise, the critics were very optimistic about the project.

I was very nervous I must say.

here is what my classmate Elizabeth, who was writing the feedback for me.  heard from the critics.

Like the brevity of the presentation:

fascinating idea

see how this seed of an idea can spread

on the one hand, if it is the MTA, think of it as a network of mobile service and interact with stationary surfaces.

Consider this in terms of the urbane heat.  Green roofs offset the heat and absorption.  This could have a significant effect by soaking up this heat in the entire region.  MTA is happy about how green they are, but it would also offset expenses

So, yes, lots of busses!

Focus on one bus TYPE is a good idea.  Think of one agency.  But consider the aggregate effect of one

875 lbs, think about all the extra fueled and waste used to lug these around.  Wants actual numbers to prove the benefit outweighs the cost.

Like the passion of it and the compelling story.  In the end, however, if the buses had these things, tell them what the outcome is.  What is the impact.  it would be a good conclusion to your presentation.

Insulation

CO2

also consider the value of the emotional satisfaction as an echo of your beginning

also, an image of the busses as green would be a good visual for the end.

Who would do the upkeep??

Looking at low maintenance roofs.

After the 1st year they should be able to regenerate themselves.

structural failure could be a problem about this.

consider pulling busses up to schools

good to bring in objects to pass around

the project is wonderful and wacky, from that point of view, many projects are not meant to be realized.  The concept is so strong that it doesn’t really need to ever be built.  From that point of view, what else can you do with it?  you have been quite thorough but possibly too practical (Elizabeth disagrees)

Think about meaning, how you can decouple a landscape from its setting.

THink of your work not only as a piece not only geared toward mass transit but to a museum.

Solve what the actual landscapes are.  Those relationships may engender interesting critiques.

So important questions?  weight!  and getting a bus or vehicle.

For this weeks Softness Assignment we were assigned to discuss around the body and space. We saw the painting by the dutch painter who was commissioned a painting for a church, in which he painted Christ inside the coffin. It was not very well received. The painting was very interestingly painted, it had a claustrophobic feeling to it.

I was still thinking about how we used space, how it relates to our body. what it means to walk around a space and take it in, or run through it. Could you absorb a space, do you actually need to walk a space to take it in? Could you just see it, to know how it feels? Why do babies taste and bite everything when they are discovering the world around them?

I still had the salt and charcoal in my mind. I looked at the use of charcoal and salt. The connotations. the use of salt as currency. The chimney cleaners, the salt mines. the salt statues.

So I remembered a story that Vik Muniz tells in his book about Juárez. and talks about how sculptures are copies and not really faithful to the original. I looked at Harvard’s Statue of Three lies, the statue of John Harvard. (http://www.bu.edu/mfeldman/Harvard/statue.html

During Spring break I went to the MIT Museum, I walked through the exhibitions at the moment.
robots

http://web.mit.edu/museum/exhibitions/robots.html

holograms
http://web.mit.edu/museum/exhibitions/holography.html

kinetic sculptures (Arthur Ganson)

http://web.mit.edu/museum/exhibitions/ganson.html

It was interesting to match these exhibitions to the readings about the humans and their senses.

so in thinking this is was brought back to the myth Narcissus. It was amazing to see how we were really good at creating versions of what we think we look like, and sometimes we forget that humans are ourselves wonderful sensory and moving beings. And everyday I feel we have not come to know everything about ourselves.

I really fixated on how monuments and paintings plant a body in any given space for people living around it to react to that monument, change and mold their lives around the qualities or story of static stone person.

So for class I thought of three projects.

please forgive me if they might offend, it is a brainstorm and still a work in progress.

In the spirit of how man is the measure of all things, and monuments being something to look up to.
a) why not make monuments for the animals in the city, famous animals in history. A rat in the subway to the Unknown Rat who died in combat against the Subway Cars.
b) Would a mirror in the trash cans or by the trees be a monument with which the squirrels and rats could identify with?
c) Why not go the opposite way and blow up a monument of a rat or cat. Sometimes there is monuments to people who we know less about. At least rats and cats are animals we see around the city more often than dead people.
d) I looked up the story in the Bible about the woman who turned back and was turned into a salt statue. Why do we keep turning back and bringing up monuments if we are not learning anything from them. Is history just meant to be repeated just like parrots do?

I looked at lot at paintings, sculptures and works of art. While thinking about how great humans’ bodies are, I though why not make the human body a work of art. It has been immortalized in marble by the Greeks, by the Romans, Michelangelo, painters, in new media. but it is always there in still life. Why not celebrate the living people.
With a mirror pointed at a bench in the park to reflect the sun and a museum index card. Have any body who comes to sit at the bench be a work of art. Have a bunch of tourists come and be amazed by it, or disgusted.

So with these thoughts into account, I remember walking into the Natural history Museum and under the Giant whale feeling so little. and also remembering very clearly the smell of the ocean. however it was not there. Two days later, while in Boston, I smelled the ocean and then remembered the whale.

It was very fun.

So I thought why not make something with smell, it is after all a very neglected sense.

Why not provide with a humidifier a smell different to the ones found on the street?

My latest idea was to make people look down, people look down when they find a coin, they see as good luck. So why not put scented coins when even if the coin might not be necessarily lucky, it will provide with relaxing scents and one second of change to the lucky picker.

For this week’s assignment, we had to think about the body and the space. Preferably a public space.

For last week’s assignment, we had to think of a new material or new uses for material. I was thinking a lot about salt and charcoal.

I got interested in this materials initially when we had to replace the tap water filter at the apartment. So we had the filter so as not to waste plastic in water bottles, fuel in transporting them and as for myself I just refuse to buy bottled water.

http://www.dietsinreview.com/diet_column/wp-content/uploads/2008/09/brita_filter.jpg

However when we replaced the filter, I noticed it was just a brick on the faucet. With no way to open it, no way to recycle it or reuse the parts.

I googled everything. No luck I emailed the company, just to receive a “we are trying” response. They can only recycle the filter for their pitchers.

http://fakeplasticfish.com/2008/01/take-back-brita-filter-campaign/

So I looked up if if there was anything on hacking it, or breaking it apart.
I found this
http://www.instructables.com/id/How-to-refill-a-disposable-Brita-brand-water-pit/?ALLSTEPS

and then I remembered that once in Dubrovnik Croatia, they served a water pitcher with a lump of coal a a filter. It was great tasting. I also remembered the which tasted like Coal but worked very well in filtering the mouth.

So I thought why not use a lump of coal to filter water. That would not look nice and is not an elegant solution.

why not build a charcoal pitcher. to put on a white linen. and then I grew interested in charcoal as an sculpture medium.

From there I thought how that would be great but there has to be a way to coat the coal in something organic.

So I remembered since long I have noticed how when at home, when cooking the porkloin for tostadas de lomo, they bake the porkloin in salt and the salt is rendered tasteless afterwards.

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/dailydish/2009/03/pork-on-pork-at.html

this is something similar.
I always thought if that leftover salt could not be used for something else. I asked Sara. (Sara is an amazing woman, cook, chef, psychologist who lives with my family) if we could put the leftover salt for the plants. She said it would burn the plants. So at the time I sadly threw away the salt.

how cool it would be to use that crusty salt as a medium. It is a leftover material. if we could only bind the salt together, get the meat in the shape needed.

So one idea Im still working on is how to bake salt sculptures.

Back to the pitcher. I thought a very cool idea would be to make a salt pitcher with a charcoal inside as a filter.

I researched more into how the meaning and use of charcoal and salt has changed over time.

A short film thatI remember has always interested me.

En el espejo del cielo (Carlos Salces)
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