Biosphere 2 remains a fascinating experiment in sustainability, and there have been a number of worthy examinations of the project in the media recently:
Matt Wolf's documentary Spaceship Earth details the history of how Biosphere 2 came to be.
Avery Trufelman covered Biosphere 2 on her excellent podcast series about failed utopias, Nice Try! As with anything Trufelman produces the entire series is well worth your time too.
A few notes on some recently encountered awesomeness:
Ian McDonald
Matt Connors
-Ian McDonald, Matt Connors, and Gregory Lind at [ 2nd floor projects ]. McDonald's muted ceramic sculptures were a perfect foil to Connors's stacks of vibrantly-painted canvases with a beautiful edition by Gregory Lind to accompany. I've said it before and I'll say it again: I love this space and how thoughtfully Margaret Tedesco puts together each show.
-Carl Lipo and Terry Hunt seminar hosted by the Long Now Foundation. Lipo and Hunt shared their paradigm-shifting research about what they believe really happened on Easter Island. For example watch the video above to see how the statues were likely moved across the island, and read their book The Statues That Walked for the full scoop.
Will Tait
-Will Tait, Rebecca Fogg, and Sgraffito Studio in Emeryville. If it weren't for my best friend's cat Tagalong deciding he liked them I never would have met this very talented artist couple or gotten a peek inside their amazing studio and gallery on San Pablo. You might have seen the outside, with its twisting metal vines in place of bars. Inside is a metal- and wood-working shop with enough specialized machinery and engineering cleverness to make me grin with glee.
-Three Shows curated by Jackie Im and Aaron Harbour at Royal Nonesuch Gallery. Mounting three shows in three consecutive weeks might destroy the average curator, but Im and Harbour have a lot of fun with the task they've set for themselves. I enjoyed the work by "two Bensons" when I was in the gallery Saturday, and this coming weekend is the final show: Object Oriented: An exhibition of obscured, misdirected, and/or autonomous objects and sites.
Jon Gourley
-Translocura: Art on the Brink of Madness at Headlands Center for the Arts. Curated by John Jota Leaños, this group show offers work by local artists that is in turn funny, disturbing, and contemplative. Well worth the drive, especially if it's a sunny weekend.
We Care Solar
-MLK Day of Service with WE CARE Solar at the Tech Museum of Innovation. Bay Area students building "solar suitcases" to send to schools in Sierra Leone and an orphanage in Uganda? Dr. King would have been proud.
Through July 6 - George Pfau at Royal Nonesuch Gallery. RNG is owning their stretch of Telegraph Ave this summer. Not only are they scheduling the shorts for Temescal Street Cinema again this year, but they're also conducting a bad-ass summer residency program, 3 for 3, right in the gallery. I am beyond psyched about the July and August artists (Veronica De Jesus and Amanda Curreri respectively), but George Pfau has already kicked the series off to a way solid start here in June. The artist is making himself available during "office hours" so that anyone may drop in for impromptu discussion, and Friday night he also organized a gallery lecture by Dr. Bradley Voytek, a bona fide neuroscientist who also happens to be a self-styled expert on the zombie brain. Pfau's current practice focuses on zombies, delving into their cultural popularity as a means of revealing deeper truths about our humanity. Voytek similarly uses the zombie angle to show his audiences some real live brain science, and during his lecture he described what parts of the brain might cause zombie-like behaviors such as aggression and certain kinds of amnesia. Pfau and Voytek both believe zombies make good metaphor, encapsulating societal ills as well as our sensations of fascination and disgust when it comes to our physical bodies. The ways in which zombies procreate so bloodily and decay at such a heightened rate of speed certainly can trigger a squirm or two even amongst undead aficionados. As for my own boundary of squeamishness I did just fine during the lecture through clips of fake zombie gore and genuine brain surgery alike but then almost passed out during the Q&A thanks to a passing reference to torture porn. So ask me over to see Shaun of the Dead but never Saw is what I'm saying.
There is so much about the Iraq War that makes my heart hurt, but one of the more painful images for me was of the deputy director of the Iraqi National Museum sitting on the floor of his building among the broken and looted remains of myriad priceless artifacts with his head in his hands. So it seems nothing short of a miracle to hear that the museum reopened a few weeks ago with many of its major pieces recovered (some by US troops no less) and restored. However, Maev Kennedy says that there is a sad note that must be considered along with the happiness:
In the joyful headlines over the recovery of iconic pieces such as the
5,500-year-old Warka Mask, a serenely enigmatic alabaster head smiling
faintly at the absurdities of human folly, it was almost overlooked
that thousands of small metal and clay pieces, inscribed tablets and
amulets, seal cylinders, easy to smuggle, hard to trace, of little
commercial value but priceless to historians, have almost certainly
gone for ever.
Still, what a wonderful thing to have some treasures and relics from thousands of years of culture back where they can be enjoyed by visitors. And may the individuals who pilfered the smaller items and then did not return them be tormented by vengeful ghosts.
The classics nerd in me did a little bounce of joy to see the images that have been released by architect Jacques Rougerie of the proposed underwater museum in Alexandria's harbor that will allow visits to Cleopatra's palace by the scuba-disinclined for the first time since the 5th century. It's a brilliant idea to construct a fiberglass tunnel to the site instead of trying to move the fragile artifacts (which reportedly also contain remnants of the famous Alexandria lighthouse), though the project faces concerns about funding and whether proper site surveys will be conducted before construction begins. Jack Shenker talked to Naguib Amin, local site manager for the Supreme Council for Antiquities, about some of the questions being raised:
Amin rejected claims that money would be better spent giving a makeover
to the city's crumbling downtown buildings, most of which feature
stunning colonial-era architecture. "We view the museum as an integral
component of revitalising the city as a whole," he said.
If everything comes together properly the museum should be open to the public within five years, at which point I will be on the first plane to Egypt to go walk under the water.
This morning I point you to some tantalizing images from the (expensive) exhibition Queens of Egypt that just closed at Monaco's Grimaldi Forum. The show focused on a topic near to my heart, the role of women in ancient Egypt, especially those who held positions of power. Grégoire Allix talked with curator Christine Ziegler, formerly of the Louvre's Egyptian antiquities department, who attempted to balance scholarship with accessibility in the exhibition to highlight what we know about these intriguing women:
She believes that women enjoyed an unusual position in ancient Egypt.
"Monogamy was the rule for ordinary subjects. Women... were allowed to
work, own property and bequeath it, and they could be priestesses." But
royalty was a masculine preserve. Only a very few, like Hatshepsut or
Cleopatra, succeeded in rising to the rank of pharaoh and ruling in
their own name.
I was obsessed with Hatshepsut when I was a little girl, and of course Cleopatra has fascinated authors and artists alike for centuries with her famous sensuality, so awesomely portrayed recently by Lyndsey Marshal in HBO's Rome. I love the queens' depictions in the ancient art as well, so powerfully serene. I think I might need to pop into the Art Institute's Egyptian galleries when I'm in Chicago next week...
Besides making me giggle inappropriately every time I heard its name, Hurricane Gustav did mercifully little damage to either people or property when it hit Louisiana this week, which is good because like everyone else I was watching its progress with nauseated apprehension. However, while the oil platforms fared all right, the area's natural wetlands took a severe beating. From Grist:
"The last thing on anyone's mind during a hurricane is how the wetlands
are going to do," says activist Aaron Giles. But since happy and
healthy wetlands act as storm barriers, "wetlands are a critical piece
of keeping coastal Louisiana safe." Heavy storms toss around fauna in
marshes and deposit saltwater where it ain't supposed to be.
Louisiana's wetlands have been severely eroded by natural disaster and
development; some estimates hold that healthier wetlands could have
knocked Gustav's 12-foot tidal surge down by three feet. The hurricane
shut down oil and gas production in the Gulf of Mexico, but at first
look it seems the storm has not caused any serious structural damage or
significant spills on offshore platforms, leading President Bush to
reiterate Tuesday, "This storm should not cause members of the Congress
to say, 'Well, we don't need to address our energy independence.' We
need more domestic energy. One place to find it is offshore America.''
Oil and gas companies are still assessing damage however, and have said
it could take weeks to determine the full extent of the storm's impact
since most of the gulf's 717 drilling platforms haven't been examined
up close yet.
I'm also looking forward to the day when "energy independence" doesn't automatically translate into "offshore oil drilling", but that's just me.
Also:
Measles uptick! Even as the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are urging more measles vaccinations with cases at a 12-year high, some parents are not vaccinating because they fear a possible link between the vaccine and autism. With such conflicting information if I were a parent I have no idea what I would decide to do.
Inexplicable speed! The performance of world-record-shattering Jamaican Usain Bolt in the Beijing Olympics has scientists scrambling to explain how he did it, positing factors like a hereditary disposition toward fast-twitch muscles and long stride. Even as a former sprinter myself I can't begin to wrap my brain around the fact that people keep getting faster and faster.
Augh not the pikas! Environmental groups Earthjustice and the Center for Biological Diversity filed a lawsuit this week in which they claimed that climate change could cause mass pika extinction and that the fuzzy little guys should therefore be put on the endangered species list. From Grist:
The pika, a rabbit cousin characterized by inordinate cuteness and a squeaky call, is "the polar bear of the Lower 48," says Greg Loarie of Earthjustice. Pikas live in alpine meadows and spend their summers gathering vegetation to sustain them through the winter. "Global warming threatens pikas by shortening the time available for them to gather food, changing the types of plants that grow where they live, reducing the insulating snowpack during winter, and, most directly, causing the animals to die from overheating," says CBD. The lawsuits say pika habitat should be protected and that carbon dioxide should be regulated as a pollutant. That won't fly with the Bush administration, which has declared that the Endangered Species Act should not be used to force greenhouse-gas regulation.
Augh, I say again.
Also:
DNA testing concerns! Privacy advocates want to make sure genetic profiling will not become a new way for employers and insurers to discriminate. Given human nature, I think tougher laws guarding this info are a fine idea.
Oceanic dead zones! Nitrogen runoff is killing the oxygen in the water in coastal regions around the world, which means sea life cannot survive in these areas. Marine biologists are saying government intervention is needed to reverse the problem, so basically I don't have a hope in Hades.