To Rise Above Yourself

Ever since Juan Sebastian Elcano from 1519-1522 circumnavigated the world for the first time, humans have taken the challenge of sailing, flying and even walking (David Kunst) around the earth. Bertrand Piccard talk about his next project is, I think, a great inspiration that we can all put to use in our own personal endeavors. I think his metaphors are accurate and what I like most about them is that they don't stay in that realm but are actually acted upon to become realities and shape history, the way all circumnavigators have done before.

FOODTRACER

Adding to the culinary thread started below this is a project which is very related to what we have been talking about in class. Take a look:

Food Information Transparency from gusepo on Vimeo.

Transparency and Sustainability

Image Source:http://graphico.free.fr/hfr/pollution.jpg

Last class we briefly mentioned the issue of responsibility as designers, and I asked about the carbon footprint of an avatar (which you can see here) as an example of the kind of issues which designers/engineers of this New Millenium must be aware of.

Leonardo Bonnani who teaches Future Craft: Radical Sustainability in Product Design at MIT Media Lab has created Sourcemap, an open source project that is a model of transformative Design.

Where do things come from and what are they made of?