Cool Stuff Friday

An enchanted forest! Oh, what a wondrous thing it would be to walk this forest. I love things that can make me feel like a small child, completely lost in wonder, and I had that moment a time or two just watching the video.

Stock up on breadcrumbs and magic beans: inspired by folklore and fairy tales, Foresta Lumina is an illuminated, spellbinding night trail created by new media and entertainment studio Moment Factory. Transforming Parc de la Gorge in Coaticook Canyon, Canada, into a multi-sensory installation, the dark forest becomes the canvas for an immersive public exhibition. Step into this mesmerizing environment in our new documentary, above, and join us on our private tour of the magical woodland—we just hope you’re well enough versed in The Brothers Grimm to find your way out.

Open through October 11th, the semi-permanent installation is a supernatural symbiosis of varying arts media, set along the route of one stunning pathway. As visitors enter Foresta Lumina, they’re brought on a mile-plus-long journey wherein light art, video mapping, architectural installation, and more fuse within one seamless environment. Split into seven sections, each folk tale and character arc is represented by a unique multimedia effect.

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Full Story at The Creators Project.

Pulse Miami Beach: Open Call for Artists.

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PULSE PLAY curators Jasmine Wahi and Rebecca Jampol. Photo by Ventiko.

It can be tough for any artist get their work to a fair, but at PULSE Miami Beach, one initiative is trying to change that. PLAY is the contemporary art fair’s dedicated platform for video and new media work, and for the first time, the 2016 edition will open submissions to the public, allowing artists to bypass the traditional necessity of gallery representation—and the hassle, networking, and expense that can entail—and directly submit their work to the cutting-edge platform.

Works included in PULSE PLAY are curated by new minds each year, and this year, PULSE director Helen Toomer selected Jasmine Wahi and Rebecca Jampol. The duo are known for their 2012 founding of Gateway Project Spaces, a Newark, NJ arts hub with 50,000 square feet of studio spaces, 7,000 square feet of exhibition spaces, and a multidisciplinary residency program. The space morphed out of the non-profit Project for Empty Space, which is now included in the Newark complex. As a curatorial team, Wahi and Jampol tell The Creators Project, they aim to “poke and prod” the audience, showcasing socially-engaged work by artists whose narratives might otherwise slip under the radar.

“We aren’t concerned with whether an artist is the ‘biggest name’ in a gallery’s roster, or if he/she/they has a big social media following. Our big motivator is conceptually strong, aesthetically solid, and technically sound video and new media work,” they explain.

The Creators Project has the full story. This is a great opportunity, artists, jump on it if you can.

Playing with a Portuguese Man o’ War.

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An ex-military photographer, Aaron Ansarov retired from the Navy in 2007, transforming his skills to create commercial work for magazines and focus on his own practice. Fascinated with marine life since his days growing up in Central Florida, his series “Zooids,” focuses on detailed images of Portuguese Man o’ War. Ansarov photographs the creatures on a homemade light table while alive, then immediately releases them back into the wild where they were found.

Once shot and the Man o’ War are returned, each image receives minimal manipulation, as Ansarov makes only slight adjustments to the photograph’s exposure, contrast, and vibrancy to highlight the vivid details of each venomous siphonophore. The completed works are otherworldly, appearing like alien illustrations rather than portraits, with deep blues, purples, and pinks unfurling in every direction.

As if that wasn’t impressive enought, Ansarov does some amazing work with humans, too, which you can see after the jump, because naked people. NSFW.

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This Case Is An Ominous Sign.

CREDIT: AP Photo/Cliff Owen

CREDIT: AP Photo/Cliff Owen

“This case is an ominous sign,” Justice Samuel Alito begins one of the final opinions released on this last day of the Supreme Court term. He then proceeds to complain for 15 pages that pharmacy owners do not have enough control over whether women can fill their birth control prescriptions. Along the way, he manages to imply that anyone who does not believe in a god or gods is inherently immoral.

The political issue underlying Stormans v. Wiesman is familiar to anyone who has paid attention to the Supreme Court’s involvement in the birthcontrolwars. The owners of a pharmacy in Olympia, Washington object to certain forms of contraception on religious grounds, but a state regulation requires pharmacies to “deliver lawfully prescribed drugs or devices to patients.”

So people with religious objections to birth control want an exemption from the law. We’ve heard this story before.

We certainly have. This is one of the more devious RWC moves in their insistence on ruling every part of any person’s life. Contraception? Oh, no, no, can’t have that. It’s sinful. If you sinners are going to insist on this work of the devil, well, you’ll have to pay through the nose and jump through one hundred red tape hoops, and you might have to get your evil fix outside the state you live in, no big deal, right?

Samuel Alito is now weighing in on this issue, and he skews straight into the infamous I am using the Science of Logic territory. He ends up deciding that laws which are in place to protect both consumers and pharmacists are secular, therefore, it’s only right to hold up religious bias.

[Read more…]

Midnighter and Apollo Reuniting this Fall.

The cover of Midnighter & Apollo No. 1, which will go on sale in October. Credit CD Comics

The cover of Midnighter & Apollo No. 1, which will go on sale in October. Credit CD Comics

Gay Pride Month ends today, but DC Comics is giving fans something to look forward to this fall. In October the company will publish Midnighter & Apollo, the first part of a six-issue mini-series that reunites the two heroes, who are gay and have an on-again off-again relationship.

“They have a firmer idea of who they are, and they’ve become stronger and more confident together,” said Steve Orlando, who will write the comic, which will have interior art by Fernando Blanco and covers by the artist known as ACO.

The characters, who made their debut in 1998, were gay analogues of Batman (Midnighter) and Superman (Apollo). They dated, eventually married, adopted a child and, thanks to comics, had their history rebooted. Midnighter most recently headlined his own series, which ended in March. The comic, written by Mr. Orlando, was lauded for its portrayal, which balanced the hero’s volatile global adventures — and a friendly flirtation with Dick Grayson, the former Robin — with a domestic life that included using dating apps and being sexually active.

I’ve never been much of a DC fan, but when they do something like this, I’m happy to get onboard. Way to go, DC! Full story here.

Cleaning the Plastic Ocean.

Boyan Slat wants to start the largest ocean clean up ever with the help of nets and ocean currents. He began testing his prototype this month.

Boyan Slat wants to start the largest ocean clean up ever with the help of nets and ocean currents. He began testing his prototype this month.

Boyan Slat was just 16 when he realized he wanted to rid the oceans of plastic. It all happened after he dove into the problem in the most literal way while snorkeling in Greece and finding more drifting plastic than fish swimming.

“I thought, that’s a real problem. How can we come up with a solution for that?” Slat recalled during an interview with ThinkProgress.

Indeed, the problem is real and large. Around eight million metric tons of plastic waste enter the oceans every year, according to a 2015 study. In addition, recent research found so-called garbage patches in every major ocean. Plastic is so pervasive that it’s been found in sea ice, and also inside 50 percent of all species of seabirds, 66 percent of all species of marine mammals, and all species of sea turtles.

Once back in his native Netherlands, Slat delved into the topic as people told him that cleaning up the ocean was impossible. Still, Slat, a young inventor who by then already held the world record for most high-pressure rockets simultaneously launched, persisted until he found what he was looking for.

“I saw this animation where they used computer models to show that plastic actually moves” through ocean currents, Slat, now 21, said. “And then I thought, why should you move through the ocean if the ocean can move through you.”

Slat, chief executive officer of The Ocean Clean Up, has taken his eureka moment and turned it into a collection system based on floating barriers attached to the sea bed that use the ocean’s energy to gather plastic waste. After obtaining over $2 million through crowdfunding and more from Dutch government financing, Slat unveiled the first prototype last week in the North Sea, just off the coast of Netherlands.

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I am so impressed, I just don’t have words. This is so very important. There is much more at Think Progress.

Mississippi Business Fights Back.

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With its seasonal parfaits, Indianola pecan pies, and multi-layered cakes as tall as hatboxes, Sugaree’s Bakery is well known among the foodies of Mississippi. The proprietress, Mary Jennifer Russell, named the small-batch bakery after a Grateful Dead song and has always run her establishment with a spirit of openness and love. So she was outraged when, last April, Governor Phil Bryant signed a hotly contested and far-reaching piece of anti-LGBT legislation into law.

Before the ink had dried on the bill, Russell had called her contacts in the hospitality business, asking what could be done.

“Our strengths in Mississippi are cultural — food, art, and music,” Russell says. “This is a slap in the face to most of that cultural base.”

[…]

Mississippians like Russell are joining together in hopes of reversing the damage to the state’s economy and reputation. Mike Cashion, executive director of the Mississippi Hospitality and Restaurant Association, has launched a new public-service campaign titled “Everyone’s Welcome Here,” telegraphing an industry-wide message of inclusiveness, which includes providing decals declaring acceptance. “This campaign is about more than a sticker on your door,” says Cashion. “It’s about the values of our industry — values of hospitality and nondiscrimination. Now we’re working with the Mississippi Economic Council,” he notes. “So even more folks are signing on.”

Other campaigns backed by local LGBT rights groups include the “If You’re Buying, We’re Selling” drive. It has been embraced by more than 500 businesses in Mississippi, which have affixed welcoming blue stickers to their doors and windows.

Mississippi native Knol Aust, who designed the sticker, said it was encouraging, albeit surreal, to see local businesses featuring his work. “When you travel to places like the Castro, you see rainbow stickers everywhere,” he says. “But we’d never had that before. So it was exciting to see this pop up in places I never would have expected — like hardware or liquor stores, which typically don’t get involved in politics.”

It didn’t take long for fundamentalist organizations to push back. Buddy Smith, a spokesman for the right-wing advocacy organization the American Family Association, which is based in Tupelo, Mississippi, said, “It’s not really a buying campaign, but it’s a bully campaign, and it’s being carried out by radical homosexual activists who intend to trample the freedom of Christians.”

It’s a sticker. A sticker which speaks to the owner not being a tiny-brained bigot, but a decent, inclusive person working for the greater good. And the campaign is not being carried out by radical homosexual activists, it’s being carried out by your fellow Mississippians, oh my. Somehow, I just can’t work up the tears for you poor, persecuted Christians.

[Read more…]

My Rights Are Being Nailed to the Cross!

Rick Tyler (Rick Tyler for President)

Rick Tyler (Rick Tyler for President)

Alternate title: Waaah! You meanypants are unfair! Remember Rick “Make America White Again” Tyler? He’s very upset that people are being so mean and unfair as to do things like boycott his restaurant, due to his bigotry.

A new billboard campaign explicitly rejects the Donald Trump-inspired message of a Tennessee statehouse candidate — who said he appreciates the attention.

Rick Tyler, an independent Congressional candidate for Tennessee’s 3rd District, is facing a boycott of his restaurant business after he advertised his candidacy with racist billboard messages saying, “Make America White Again.”

Other residents of Polk County were disappointed with the national attention Tyler’s message attracted, and they wanted to counter the racist slogan to show not everyone agreed with the candidate, reported the Times Free Press.

“I really wanted to avoid the perception that residents in this region feel that way or treat one another that way,” said Josiah Vacheresse, executive director for Court Appointed Special Advocates for Children. “That’s not what we’re about, that’s not what we’re for.”

So Vacheresse asked family, friends and online supporters to help him buy advertising space on billboards in the county, where drivers will see inspiring quotes from Nelson Mandela instead of a more racist interpretation of Trump’s campaign slogan.

[…]

Tyler, who also set up a billboard quoting Martin Luther King Jr. alongside a Confederate flag, said he didn’t mind if the second campaign rejected his message.

“I think it’s great what they’re doing,” Tyler said. “They’re stoking the fire of the story.”

Two of Tyler’s signs were taken down last week by the billboard rental companies, and the candidate said he was disappointed.

“I’m all about freedom,” said Tyler, whose campaign website contains lengthy “conspiracy science” posts about chemtrails and communist plots. “It’s great that they are able to say what they want to say. What’s tragic is that I’m not able to. I’m not allowed to. My First Amendment right is being nailed to the cross.”

No, that’s not tragic, Mr. Tyler, and no one has taken your rights away, which I’d think you’d notice, what with giving interviews and all. You can talk, and write, and try to find a way to put up even more repellent ads, and here’s the great thing – other people are free to respond to all that, and they have. Darn meanypantses.

Full Story Here.