Catch the beast! 09/19/2010
 © neozoon.org  © neozoon.org  © neozoon.org "There! A human! For heaven's sake! Catch the beast! — Planet of the Apes, 1968. An line that appropriately sums up Neozoon's philosophy. Neozoon is a street art collective based in Paris and Berlin. They seek to heighten our awareness of the way we treat animals, and the relationship we have with animals and birds. Initially the art was flat on the wall, but a recent collection consists of 3-dimensional animals as well. There is something intriguing and chilling about the imagery created. The Bah Bah Blacksheep slaughterhouse area in Dresden has a line of sheep, each one numbered along the wall. It's an artistic expression that also makes you stop in your tracks and think about what we do to animals. It reflects on our heartlessness towards them as well. Though just silhouettes, each sheep is life-like, lively and original, right from their numbers to their yellow ear tags. A street in Paris has shown fur-coat recycling, a streak of life like creatures racing and leaping around the corner. It makes a strong statement, without destroying the character of the area. Lynxes, from the Urban Art Festival Madrid 2010 is also freakishly real. On the tamer side there is Cats (Urban Art Festival Madrid 2010), which is playful, domestic and harmless. There are lambs gazing at you in Berlin. Manteltier in Berlin is one of their 3-dimensional exhibits, and combines and fun and macabre in a surreal way. A kangaroo in Paris might just make you stop while walking by. There is also a bunch of pedigree dogs in Berlin, that you can see on their site, along with magnificent bulls, standing bears, pigs, wolves, foxes and more. A pretty unusual take on street art. All these are created from actual discarded fur coats, which adds to the realism and is truly confrontational for us humans. The location of some of the displays, such as the sheep on one of the oldest slaughterhouses of Paris adds to the meaning. A piece of street art that makes us think about the way we treat animals. The realism of actual fur shaped into life like forms makes the horror of killing animals real. Do visit their site, for more on the furry friends, and check out their videos. You can read more about them here too. How do they make it? Check out the video here. By Armeen Kapadia 2 Comments Stats demystified 05/22/2010
 Gapminder is a non-profit organization, that makes the world's statistics and data available in an easy to understand way. Living up to its name, Gapminder seeks to bridge the divide between statistics, and our understanding of them. Gapminder is the brainchild of Hans Rosling, a global health expert, doctor and professor, who spent many years working in rural Africa. He is also the co-founder of Doctors without Borders, Sweden. Whats so special about how he represents data? Well, its best to see the TED talks, and play the interactive features on the Gapminders website to get the real picture. But simply put, he has developed a software that makes understanding data much more fun, easy and intuitive. The representations are of statistics drawn from United Nations data. Most often, these are long, boring textual sheets, that make reading difficult. It is also hard for users to compare different regions, against different specific parameters. All these things become laborious processes when confronted with the typical statistical sheets. Gapminder however, allows you to see how numbers rise and fall. You can also compare specific regions or countries, or analyze one particular nation's growth. Its easy to understand the population of different nations, by their various sizes, and you can also track the speed of growth. Visit Gapminder World, and hit the play button to see the amazing change in the world since 1800, across different parameters. This is a great way to learn history, and see the economic and social changes through the years. You can also compare countries on a specific topic, such as the USA of 1930 was similar to the South Korea of 2007 when it came to child mortality. In the Downloads section, you can get Gapminder Desktop, an application that allows you to browse statistics without the Internet. There are also pdfs and presentations, if you need to show it to a class. There is Gapminder for teachers, with a whole lot of interesting stuff there, and Gapminder labs, where there are more informative comparisons. Make sure that while browsing Gapminder World, you click the 'How to use' button, as the 2 and a half minute video shows the amazing extent to which you can use the application, and learn a lot about the world's development. Each little bubble is a country, and the size of the bubble shows the population. The bubbles are also colour-coded according to regions. Various buttons allow you toggle between countries, and different parameters. As Hans Rosling says, its not lack of data, but misconceptions among people that was the real problem, and this lead him to develop such an application thats links design to data. Design and animated graphics has helped liberate UN data, to make it much more accessible and understandable to many. Most often data is not accessed due to high prices, passwords, or simply because its boring. In TED talks (4 videos) Hans Rosling also mentions the very significant point that the improvement of the world must be highly contextualised. We cannot do it on regional basis, or by providing generic solutions to vast masses of people. It is also dangerous to use average data as there are huge differences within the same country. Gapminder is an amazing tool for anyone. The software actually visualizes the data, making it wonderfully easy to digest. It can give you the broad picture, or it can zoom you into small details about one specific query. Just with a few minutes browsing you can learn a lot about different countries, and how economic and social growth are closely related. The good news is that on April 20, 2010, the World Bank has revealed that it will offer free access to a huge amount of development statistics. The great news is that Gapminder is going to make all that statistic browsing much more interesting, informative and fun. By Armeen Kapadia A roof over your head 01/27/2010
  http://www.lavoutenubienne.org Ten years ago in Burkina Faso, a landlocked African county, a small change started in the way people built their homes. Today that provides employment to many and is a growing way of life. It involves the construction of a simple vaulted earth roof, which was the traditional way of building for centuries, till it was replaced by other, less viable materials like tin roofs. The Earth Roofs for the Sahel, is a programme that is part of the Association la Voute Nubienne, (AVN) an NGO registered in France and Burkina Faso, in 2000. It promotes the construction of timberless valuted earth brick houses, using a well known technique known as la Voute Nubienne (VN). The VN technique is actually an adaptation of an age old technique of building houses from the Nubian region of Egypt. The country has two seasons, a rainy one for around 4 months, and the rest of the year is the hot season with winds from the Sahara. Traditional building used earth walls, thatched roofs and some timber, but with population growth the use of timber for construction is illegal or too expensive. People often resort to sheet metal or timber beams. These materials drain family resources, sheet metal gets corroded, and they are often imported from outside at high expense. Sheet metal also has poor heat and sound insulation. The first prototype of a VN construction in Boromo, Burkina Faso, was built as a challenge by Thomas Granier and Séri Youlou in 1998. Next year, a VN house was built, and the Association la Voute Nubienne was founded in 2000 to promote the VN technique as a solution for affordable, sustainable housing in the Sahel. The vault roof is built without a timber support. The roof is waterproofed using locally produced plastic sheeting over a smooth coating of mud. This way of building is not only ecologically and economically sound, but also socially viable, and all these three parameters are essential in a country that occupies the sixth to last place on the Human Development Index. Local masons are trained, and they in turn employ apprentices once they become master masons. After some experience, master masons become independent entrepreneurs. The AVN helps them through the process, and helps the entrepreneurs develop a client pool through communication and networking. Till today approximately 235 houses and 20 public buildings (including schools, dispensaries, churches and mosques) have been built. Over 115 masons have been trained and there are currently 170 apprentices. Houses using the VN technique are more comfortable, healthy and durable. They are also safer, less prone to collapse and better in extremes of climate. They can be easily built with local materials and labour, most houses are built by bartering crops and/or labour. The families cover the housing and material cost, with AVN only covering a margin of labour and training costs. Now AVN has to cover less and less, which is a healthy sign of an active, self-sustaining system. The project is generating income and employment for many, and there have been over 7000 beneficiaries till date. The number of apprentices is increasing, which means more masons to carry out further training in the future. The vaulted roof can be converted to a flat terrace roof and the technique allows for later extension of a building, even adding a second storey onto an existing single storey building. The simplicity of this technique, (you can read more about it here) and its involvement of the local community are key to its success. It does not require fancy equipment, skill, or technical know-how. While giving people a better way to live, it also provides a means of livelihood, essential in such places. It has led to a major reduction in the use of imported materials, as it uses local materials, earth and water, and deforestation has also reduced. The poorest of families in remote rural areas are also building with this technique. Money saved by building this way is used for health or education. This technique thrives because it stays as close to the people it was meant for, as possible. It is an innovation not only in design, but also in system. It traditionally comes from their own culture, it draws on local materials and skill, and creates independent entrepreneurs, reducing dependence on the mother NGO, and outside resources. Do have a look at the video below. By Armeen Kapadia Digital Studyhall 06/24/2009
Education needs experiments. In India, especially, we need something entirely different. Digital StudyHall (DSH) is on an experimental trail. They describe their approach as an education equivalent of Netflix + YouTube + Kazaa. MobilEdu powers Stanford 06/02/2009
 MobilEdu on iPhone MobilEdu is a mobile application that allows students to perform a variety of tasks that is otherwise only accessible through secure networks such as adding and dropping courses, tracking on-campus shuttle bus and reviewing their grades. A nascent stage of MobilEdu called iStanford was launched on October 1, 2008. M-Pesa: Bank on your phone 05/27/2009
 M-Pesa affiliate A banking transaction usually involves filling out forms, waiting in queue, and going from one counter to another. That’s if you are lucky and live in a city. If you are in village, you may live hours, or days away from your nearest bank. M-Pesa is a mobile phone based service that is changing all that by allowing users to perform basic banking transactions without visiting the bank branch. Ushahidi: Be the change 05/26/2009
 Ory Okolloh's idea: Ushahidi When there is a crisis, such as an earthquake or riots, a major part of the problem is the lack of valid up-to-date news on the situation. Ushahidi, which means ‘testimony’ in Swahili, is a platform all of us can use, to send information during a crisis. Ushahidi is a free and open source project with developers hailing from Kenya, Ghana, South Africa, Malawi, Netherlands and the USA working on it. Chugging along 05/06/2009
 There are few Indians who have never traveled by train in their lives. Train journeys form an intrinsic part of any Indian's life. When you were young you visited your grandparents by train, or went to your hometown in the summer vacations by train, you went on school or college trips by train, in the not-so-luxurious second class. Train travel was a way of life by itself. In the last five years things have changed rapidly with the introduction of many private airlines flying the domestic sector, but trains still transport the bulk of the people. And in a country of one billion people, that is definitely a lot of people. |   Every monthSeptember 2010 CategoriesAll |
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