UP: The Umbrella Project, created by Pilobolus in collaboration with the MIT Distributed Robotics Laboratory, premiered on Friday, October 12th at PopTech in the Camden Harbor Amphitheater in Camden, Maine. Functioning as individuals in a group - or pixels on a screen - participants wielding umbrellas fabricated with multi-colored LED lights, created a performance piece together that was projected in real time on a large screen.
Starring the PopTech conference attendees and the Camden community, this Pilobolus piece, like all of the modern performance company’s work over the last 42 years, was borne out of its proven method of collective creativity.
“If 20 percent of the land goes under water, which may happen in the next 10 to 20 years, where will these people go? We don’t have enough space, enough land. People have to live on the water in some way.”
Climate change is exacerbating flooding in waterlogged Bangladesh. Already, hundreds of schools get wiped out during the monsoon season. Mohammed Rezwan builds floating schools, healthcare facilities and libraries.
Architecture for Humanity Chicago helps improve food access and eating habits in inner-city areas by buying up an old Chicago Transit Authority bus and retrofitting it into a single-aisle grocery store. Dubbed the Fresh Moves Mobile Produce Market, it travels through the Windy City’s “food deserts,” selling fresh produce and offering classes on cooking and nutrition.
See more smart ideas for fixing cities: 12 Innovative Ways to Rethink Our Cities.
Mobile participatory budgeting helps raise tax revenues in Congo
In a world awash in data, connected by social networks and focused on the next big thing, stories about genuine innovation get buried behind the newest shiny app or global development initiative. For billions of people around the world, the reality is that inequality in resources, access to education or clean water, or functional local government remain serious concerns.
South Kivu, located near the border of the Democratic Republic of Congo, has been devastated by the wars that have ravaged the region over the past decade.
Despite that grim context, a pilot program has born unexpected fruit. Mobile technology, civic participation, smarter governance and systems thinking combined to not only give citizens more of a voice in their government but have increased tax revenues as well. Sometimes, positive change happens where one might reasonably least expect it.
A freshly painted colourful street by members of a market community initiative in Athens, Greece.
With their most recent project, they hope to inspire others to reclaim the beauty of pedestrian streets of the degraded downtown and historical center of Athens.
Watch now: Consumer psychologist Simonetta Carbonaro implores us to think differently about consumption. A consumer-hungry outlook for cheaper and faster has gotten old. We now know that consuming and producing less, in fact, creates more jobs, more free time, and more happiness.
There’s always something brewing in the PopTech community. From the world-changing people, projects and ideas in our network, a handful of this week’s highlights follows.
- This week D-Rev: Design Revolution, which is run by 2011 PopTech Social Innovation Fellow Krista Donaldson, was highlighted in Fast Co.Exist. D-Rev bringing state-of-the-art, user-centric products to empower the lives of the four billion people living on less than four dollars a day.
- In food tech news, 2011 Social Innovation Fellow Erica Block’s Local Orbit was featured on Xconomy.com. Local Orbit provides one-stop-shopping with an online platform that provides customized websites with e-commerce, management, and marketing tools to help streamline the local food supply chain.
- Earlier this week, Jay Parkinson (PopTech 2009) talked to CBS This Morning about Sherpaa and his ongoing journey to reimagine health care delivery.
- CNN produced a great video on 2011 PopTech Fellow Dominic Muren, his design laboratory Humble Factory, and the makers movement.
- Jad Abumrad (PopTech 2010) wrote a manifesto on how Radiolab was born for Transom.org. For more about Radiolab and sound be sure to watch Abumrad’s 2010 PopTech talk where he shares examples of how sound has been used to make scientific strides as well as convey failure or express error.
- Finally, here’s a free collection of MP3s from Alexi Murdoch, Valgeir Sigurðsson and Nico Muhly that commemorates their collaboration at the PopTech Iceland 2012.
If you’d like to receive a stream of these updates (and more) throughout the week in real time, follow us on Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, sign up for our newsletter, and subscribe to the PopTech blog.
Image: Simon Rankin
PopTech alumna Jessica Hagy on The 6 People You Need in Your Corner
Inspiring start for the Wangari Community Gardens in Washington, DC.
There’s always something brewing in the PopTech community. From the world-changing people, projects and ideas in our network, a handful of this week’s highlights follows.
- This week Soundcloud released a video that explores the four effects sound has on us – physiological, psychological, cognitive, and behavioral – with familiar faces Imogen Heap (PopTech 2008, 2010) and Radiolab host Jad Abumrad (PopTech 2010).
- Join Imogen Heap (PopTech 2008, 2010) as she performs live from her garden on Earth Day, Sunday, April 22nd.
- On Thursday, PBS’ Media Shift blog profiled community builder and PopTech 2011 speaker Milenko Matanovic. Matanovic uses collaboration to transform communities nationwide.
- Tech site Mashable takes a look at 2010 Social Innovation FellowYasser Ansari’s Project Noah and declares, “If Charles Darwin created Foursquare, it might look like this.”
- Finally, do you create data visualizations? Yes? Brian Eno (PopTech 2006) wants to give you $30,000.
If you’d like to receive a stream of these updates (and more) throughout the week in real time, follow us on Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, sign up for our newsletter, and subscribe to the PopTech blog.
Image: James Vaughan
