The Portable Light is a self sufficient and sustainable source of power that can be easily folded and transported. Designed by KVA MATx, each portable light unit generates about two watts of electricity and about one hundred lumens of white light, enough to read a book or do domestic tasks by. It can even be used as a power supply to charge a cell phone, or used in conjunction with other units to increase its power supply so it can charge medical equipment or laptops. This breakthrough technology is great news for the 2 billion people in the world who live without electricity.

The Portable Light is on display at MoMA Feb 24 – May 12 as part of their Design and the Elastic Mind exhibition.

For additional images and video of Portable Light adapting to a variety of different uses, click here.

To hear Sheila Kennedy at Pop!Tech discussing the inspirations for Portable Light, click here.

Courtesy of KVA matx

Peggy Shea Andrews

Just because we civilians have to suffer through meals of stringy beef and stale chicken onflights doesn’t mean that astronauts must tolerate the same.

Even at zero-g, space explorers can get hankerings for something a bit more interesting. This summer, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) unveiled 29 Japanese food products to be used on the International Space Station.

More on the menu here.

But the food of the future sure looks a lot like those pureed fruit bags that caused quite a stir at Pop!Tech 2006.

Our friends at Trollback + Company were selected as winners in PRINT’s A+C=D Business Graphics Review for their Court TV outdoor-advertising campaign and 2006 Pop!Tech conference graphics. The review recognizes the best in design work done for corporate clients across the globe, from print ads and corporate identities to animated short films, websites, interactive games and more.

Trollback’s work will be featured in the September/October 2007 issue of Print Magazine.

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.

The Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum in New York City will be opening a new exhibit that explores designs made for individuals and communities of the Global South. “Design For The Other 90%” runs from May 4th to September 23rd 2007.

One of the designs that will be featured is the much-discussed “Life Straw” and other products that were featured at Pop!Tech 2006.
The exhibit will focus on water, shelter, health and sanitation, education, energy and transportation.

While at the museum, you can also check out the Design Triennial where the design for the Ipuli Medical Center is featured. (See previous Pop!Tech blog entry here)

The Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum
2 East 91st Street
New York , NY 10128

Pop!Tech “Artifact” Project Nominated for Best of Design in New England.

Last year at the 2006 Pop!Tech, we defied time, conventions and perhaps logical thinking to produce The Artifact.

The Artifact was a full-length book documenting the three-day Pop!Tech 2006 conference. The theme, Dangerous Ideas, inspired our objective: capture the essence of the experience. Immediately. And do that on-site, in collaboration with graphic designers and a Pop!Tech guru, and, oh yeah, print and ship the book on a deadline that tailed the close of the conference by a day or two. Could we do it? Crazy, but why not put our talent to the test, work around the clock and deploy some state-of-the-art technology. Why not?

Throughout the conference, an army of contributors (drawn from the 500-plus truly creative and insightful Pop!Tech participants) invigorated us to pull 304 pages together in real time. Participants fed us a constant stream of raw content in the form of wiki comments, blogs, digital photos, scanned notes and tablet PC sketches. Professional photographs and illustrations added an extra wow factor. At last, the complete book was pointed toward the digital printer, an HP Indigo Press 5000 with the variable printing technology to make each copy unique. Then voila! Let’s get this baby shipped to our Pop!Tech attendees—if they take the scenic route home, the book will be there when they arrive.

That’s 600 one-of-a-kind books with content created almost neck-in-neck with the experience. Got a couple more days? Edit. Print. Ship. And make dust of a dangerous deadline. (from AHA’s website).

Well, all that hard work and dangerous thinking did not go unnoticed. Pop!Tech’s Artifact has been nominated for the BoNESHOW7, AIGA’s Best of New England design competition.

The Artifact, along with the other nominated projects will be showcased at a gallery opening on June 7 2007 at MassArts’ Bakalar Gallery in Boston.

Here is a look at the book that made its way to YouTube (thanks to Aaron from Designverb for posting it!)

Finger’s Crossed! and Congrats to everyone that worked on this project!

Last month, at the Design Indaba conference in Cape Town, South Africa, there seemed to be a veritable Pop!Tech reunion. Brian Eno was one of the speakers at the design conference and had personally invited Reggie Watts to perform at the closing of the conference.

Watch Reggie try his hand at some traditional African dancing and some “not-so-traditional” moves.

Brian Eno Enjoys South Africa on Vimeo

Reggie recently sent over a video clip of his gallivanting about town with Eno (who is holding up a video camera and in yet another sharp suit) and in the background you can see Alex Steffen and Cameron Sinclair, other Pop!Tech alums.

Watching this clip never fails to make me smile.

And don’t forget to check out Reggie’s Pop!Cast of his amazing performance at Pop!Tech 2006 and a bevy of other Pop!Tech presentations from 2006 and 2005..

AND don’t for get to check out the recording, ANTIBABEL, that Reggie Watts and Yungchen Lhamo made exclusively for Pop!Tech and to promote sustainability in rural Tibet via the Machik organization. You can purchase the CD HERE.

Architecture for Humanity has announced that they have selected a winning logo from their online design competition. They gathered 65 jurors from across the globe to select finalists from more than 800 entries. The coolest part of it all…the whole competition was conducted on Flickr. You can see the work of all the finalists online. And it’s really interesting to read visitors’ comments on each logo.

The winning entry was made by Oregon based designer Michael DiTullo with his simple design featuring a nice dimensional measurement reference.

Here were the criteria established by AFH:

Criteria

We are looking for a logo that will reflect both the mission and spirit of the organization. A good fit for us would include the following:

1. The logo should be able to be understood globally and inoffensive to all cultures.

2. A logo that is not overly representational as our work overlaps so many aspects of design i.e. Definitely no houses, no people, no people in houses and no houses in people.

3. Neither the mark nor the logotype would use the abbreviation “AFH.” there are too many organizations with abbreviations in the development and reconstruction world you end up getting lost in alphabet soup. Please use our full name, ‘Architecture for Humanity’ in the logotype.

4. The logo must be replicable for all Architecture for Humanity chapters. Therefore the logotype must accommodate everything from ‘Architecture for Humanity Roma’ to ‘Architecture for Humanity San Francisco.’ It is also suggested that entrants also explore chapter logos using both the local dialect and English. (ie. Architecture for Humanity Tokyo should be able to be read in Japanese and English)

5. The design should be able to be reversible and use both light on dark and dark on light.

6. The logo will be used for a myriad of print and online applications. It must be readable from use on silkscreened T-Shirts to dodgy fax machines in far off countries.

AFH following a growing trend in using sites like Flickr and YouTube to generate content such as Davos’ recent call for submissions. The competition, as it opens its doors to the outside design world, is wonderfully in line with its open-source architectural mission.

During his presentation at Pop!Tech 2006 on Emergent Arts, Will Wright (Creator of The Sims) discussed his feeling that complexity is achieved by the accumulation of very simple, basic elements. That is the premise behind his much anticipated game (about 3 years worth of anticipation) Spore.

Popular Science has an in-depth interview with Wright where the gaming innovator discusses Spore , Wii, Second Life, the value of failure and getting back to the metaphorical “sandbox”.

On Spore as an educational tool, Wright says:

“I think more in terms of deep lessons of things like problem-solving, or just creativity–creativity is a fundamental of education that’s not really taught so much. But giving people tools…what it means to be human is to learn to use tools to basically expand your abilities. And I think computer games are in some sense a fundamental tool for our imagination.”

There is also a quote that stood out in the article that resonated with the Pop!Tech ethos. Wright discusses his plans for a more “relevant” gaming experience in his next endeavors–games that play on cultural parameters such as:

“politics and economics and environmentalism, all these things as these horrendously complicated things with a million variables. But yet there is a limited level of understanding of the climate, of politics, of economics, that we could take anybody and make them five points smarter in any one of these dimensions. And just making everybody in the world five points more educated on each of these dimensions I think would have a tremendous impact on the system as a whole.”

If you missed the sneak peak of the game presented at Pop!Tech, you can see more images here at the Spore Image Gallery.

The game is slated to be released in the Spring of 2007…(fingers crossed).

AND

Don’t miss the Popular Science Podcast with Pop!Tech’s Official Balladeer Jonathan Coulton and Spore designer Chaim Gingold here.

We recently received an update from Neema Mgana on the amazing Ipuli Medical Center project. There are some really exciting developments. Neema writes:

Dear all,
Greetings from Dar es salaam, Tanzania! The weather has been very irregular and we are currently suffering from extreme heat and humidity. I have been doing some traveling and a lot of writing about the project in Ipuli village and wanted to give you an update on where we are.

First the most recent news. The Iramba district (Ipuli falls into this district) has now been divided into West and East (for political reasons). We just found out that the main governmental district office for both regions will be built just next to the Medical center. This means that there will be additional infrastructure (roads, electricity, etc) to the area and we very much suspect that the government will welcome the Ipuli Medical center to be a district hospital. If that is the case, then the government would cover all expenses (including the purchase of drugs and supplies, staff salaries, etc) for the medical center. This is a decision that we have to make if this is the direction that we want to go towards. The attraction would be that funding would be provided but the other side of this is that we want to guarantee the medical center will always strive towards quality in staff and services.
(more of the letter here)

The Iramba district (of which Ipuli is part) has been divided into East and West for political reasons. As a result, there will be two government offices built right next to the Medical center. This means that infrastructure such as roads and electricity will be created surrounding the medical center, making the center that much more accessible to those needing medical care.

Of course there is still much more work to be done and funds to be raised. Property owned by Neema’s family in Tanzania is being converted into a bed and breakfast which will create additional income for the project and serve as a place to stay for people visiting Tanzania or those making the trip from the city of Dar es Salaam to the Ipuli Village(which is a 2 day journey).

Another source of income is from the basket-making business started by the women of Ipuli. Below are pictures of some the crafts made by these women to support the project and can be purchased by emailing Neema directly at

nmagana(at)yahoo.com. And as always, we encourage you to visit the

Pop!Tech Giving

site where you can donate to the Ipuli Medical Center as well as the many other amazing projects that were presented at Pop!Tech last year.

It also looks as though the center is generating some media noise and sources have been interested in the Ipuli Medical story. We can’t wait to hear more updates from Neema as those develop.

For more information on the project see the link to

Architecture For Humanity.