The young, talented graphic designers of Project M, founded by John Bielenberg, have started a unique fundraising project entitled “This is Not Grass” for the creation of a green space in East Baltimore that will inspire others to think about the importance of open spaces in our lives.

In their own words:

(from the thisisnotgrass.com)

During the Summer of 2006, a small group of designers drove from the rural coast of Maine to the urban center of East Baltimore with one goal…

to make a positive and significant impact on a blighted community.

What they discovered when they arrived, was that they were in way over their heads. The social and political machines had been in motion long before they stepped into town and the scale of the problems were staggering. There seemed to be no hope and little they could do as designers to help a city stricken with such alarming poverty and hopelessness.

However, they learned of several efforts by people who truly love the community of East Baltimore and have dedicated their lives to improving it. These heros have inspired hope and enriched the lives of people that many have forgotten.

One of the symbols of this hope was a field of grass, lined with daisies and guarded by hand painted totem poles. The word love was spelled out with flowers, designed so that the news helicopters would photograph it from the air. What once was a haven for drug dealers and vandals, was now the pride and joy of a community. This green space transformed vacant lots and back alleys into a living part of the neighborhood that lifted the spirit of the community.

Now, these designers want to continue the efforts started from within, by asking for help from abroad. Most people take things like yards, parks, and gardens for granted, but the social and psychological impact of green space is very real. With your help, the designers of Project M 2006 hope to fund the creation of another green space in East Baltimore and inspire others to proceed and be bold.

PROJECT M 2006
John Bielenberg, Bernard Canniffe, Erik Cox, Christian Helms, Brian W. Jones, Bruce Lindsey, Dana Malas, Jim McNulty, Victor John Penner, Jillian Perez, Anne Marie Purdy, David Stychno, Charlotte Sullivan, Kodiak Starr and Mike Weikert

The folks at Project M printed a “This is Not Grass” book in February 2007 and will distribute it soon.

Pop!Tech encourages you to go to their site and contribute to their project.

Addendum (May 29, 2007):

Also check out this post about Project M’s past and upcoming projects.

Members of Project M were also the ones who did the amazing design work for the Pop!Tech 2006 Artifact book . The Artifact is a full-length book documenting the 2006 event and was printed and shipped to all participants within days of the conference ending.

In October of 2005 Claire Nouvian, journalist, producer, and film director, took the trip of a lifetime traveling aboard a research submersible to the depths of the ocean.

“That was the most amazing, the most incredible moment of my life; as if I had been offered a trip to the moon … I thought of nothing else for months before it happened. Afterwards, for weeks I couldn’t talk about it without crying. I’m still not entirely over it … It was so beautiful and so intense, it changed me forever.”

Nouvian, whose interest in the deep sea was originally inspired by a visit to the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI) directed by Pop!Tech 2005 speaker Marcia McNutt, has created a stunning new photo-book, The Deep: The Extraordinary Creatures of the Deep , recently published by Chicago University Press, with the hope of bringing the vastness of the deep oceans and their creatures to a wider audience.

Think you’ve seen images like these before? Think again.

You can purchase the hardcover, 256 page book at Amazon for $26.

Zivanai Masango, who shared his unique sound at the conference back in 2005, has just released a new album titled DUTU-STORM. Zivanai is a guitarist, performer, and teacher of Zimbabwean music and culture. His style is a lively mix of traditional South African sounds with Funk, Rock to R & B, Reggae, Soul and Jazz. Of the album, Zivanai writes, “DUTU-STORM is a result of my being a ‘world-citizen’, and not forgetting that I am Zimbabwean at my very core!”

The album is currently available for purchased as a hard copy or as downloads from his website www.zivimusic.com.

Preview tracks at Zivanai’s myspace page www.myspace.com/zivanai.

Last weekend, new media artist and Pop!Tech 2006 speaker Hasan Elahi was interviewed on NPR’s Studio 360 hosted by Kurt Andersen about Hasan’s website art project, Tracking Transcience.

The website has tracked Hasan’s life in all its mundane glory, in real time, for more than 5 years now. He began the project in response to his experience in an airport where he was wrongly identified and detained as a terrorist and was constrained to report on all of his whereabouts and movements on the days around 9/11 to the FBI. After he was freed of all charges, he decided to voluntarily track his movements online.

Pop!Tech Host and Curator, Andrew Zolli is also on the program to discuss the impact of Hasan’s work and its context in a world with a changing view of privacy.

Listen to it here on iTunes, or visit the Studio 360 website and listen to the episode online.

AND stay tuned for Hasan’s upcoming Pop!Tech Pop!Cast of his 2006 presentation. Check Pop!Tech Pop!Casts for more information.

This weekend, Pop!Tech Balladeer Jonathan Coulton was featured in the New York Times Magazine article “Sex, Drugs and Updating Your Blog” . The article describes how the internet and social networking sites (MySpace, Facebook, Friendster) have changed the relationship between musician and fan. Rock stars need MySpace pages, blog entries, and they need to respond to fan-emails because–they need the fans. Today fans are expecting all these things. No wonder Jonathan has become a poster-boy for this New Music Paradigm. Besides being an extremely approachable human being, he is also a decidedly accessible rock star as well. In fact, his accessibility has become something of a vocation for him.

He says: “People always think that when you’re a musician you’re sitting around strumming your guitar, and that’s your job,” he said. “But this” - he clicked his keyboard theatrically - “this is my job.”

Jonathan’s a kind of Internet Superstar. While standard means of sales and distribution such as retail CD sales, top 20 radio play or MTV appearances still prevail, the Internet has spurned a whole new channel for reaching audiences and has also created a new metric for determining popularity. Jonathan currently has 5,359 MySpace Friends alone - writing notes to him, emailing with him and, more often than not, getting a response back from him. Not too shabby!

Right now, “Sex, Drugs and Updating Your Blog” is the #2 most-emailed article on the newspaper’s site, which translates to a spike in traffic to
Coulton’s blog at www.jonathancoulton.com

The article is also chock full o’ links to videos of Coulton’s songs and a great NY Times exclusive “Decoding Code Monkey“.

Check out Jonathan’s Pop!Tech Pop!Cast of his perfomance at the conference last year.

Earlier this year, Pop!Tech 2005 speaker Cameron Sinclair of Architecture for Humanity (AFH) met up with Natalie Chanin, founder of “Alabama Chanin” - a line of limited-edition jewelry, clothing, home furnishings and textiles that are rendered by hand using recycled materials and local talent. The two discussed AFH’s work to help displaced families and individuals who lost their homes after Katrina.

Chanin was inspired by Cameron’s work on the Gulf coast and decided to support AFH’s rebuilding projects by designing a reverse applique (a
traditional quilting technique) shirt called “Alabama Builds“.

This very special organic couture t-shirt is $75 from Alabama Chanin and 100% of the proceeds are go to benefit AFH’s Gulf Coast Project .

As Cameron said himself, these shirts are for “Eco-warriors, hipsters and all round nice folk”. Check ‘em out.

On the heels of Brian Eno’s Pop!Cast, we are releasing his session-mate Will Wright’s presentation. He discusses how we can understand the complexities of the world around us by understanding its underlying simplicity.

Also released today, Bob Freling, Executive Director of the Solar Electric Light Fund (SELF) explains how bringing solar energy to remote villages can be a key to promoting health, education and economic growth in developing worlds.

Will Wright

Bob Freling

You can watch more Pop!Tech Pop!Casts at www.poptech.org/popcasts.

We also encourage you to share these Creative Commons-licensed videos on
your website, blog or other video website. If you do, please let us know
at info@poptech.org.

Peter Diamandis on the bottom right

On April 26th 2007, famed astrophysicist Stephen Hawking experienced complete weightlessness making him the first person with a disability to have the experience. The historic trip also brings one of the most influential thinkers on the cosmos closer to the stars.

Zero-G the privately held “space entertainment and tourism” company was founded by Peter Diamandis (Pop!Tech 2005 Speaker). Zero-G and The Sharper Image sponsored Hawking’s trip embarked from the NASA Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Flights take place in a modified Boeing 727-200 aircraft.

When asked about the experience, Hawking said, “It was amazing. I could have gone on and on–space here I come!”

The Hawking flight was organized to benefit several charities.

Easter Seals
Starlight Starbright Children’s Foundation
The X Prize Foundation
Augie’s Quest

Two seats aboard the flight were donated by Zero-G to each charity for them to auction off. All together the charities raised $144,000 dollars.

This trip on the Zero-G shuttle is in preparation for a hopeful space launch for Hawking on Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic which launches in 2009.

And if you have $3,500 to spare, you can reserve a seat in one of Zero-G’s upcoming flights.