The Monkey King of China

An ancient Chinese legend comes to life at Chicago Children's Museum! This traditional tale describes the curious Monkey King’s adventures through foreign lands as he causes mischief in the emperor’s palace and finds himself trapped under a mountain for 500 years. This interactive exhibit lures you in when the courageous Monkey King is given a chance to redeem himself by escorting a monk to India. You can learn lessons the Monkey King reveals as you help him overcome the perils he encounters in his journey.

Become a mischievous monkey and try to steal the emperor’s peaches before he catches you. Play pranks at the dinner table in the Heavenly Palace. Fly over China, climb through Buddha’s fingers, and extinguish the flames of a burning mountain with the goddess’s fan. Discover China’s mystique in this imaginative, one-of-a-kind exhibit!

Asian American Social Network: Special Partner of Chicago Children's Museum.

[Photo from Adventures in Chinese Culture: The Monkey King's Guide, the East Asia Program at Cornell.]

Blueball Mania

Need a reminder of what efficincy and teamwork is all about?
Check out this wonderful animation at blueballfixed.ytmnd.com.

Rube Goldberg meets SimCity.

[Thanks to Leah Silverman.]

From Book to Blog: Creating An Online Journal

Saturday, January 28, 2006
10:30 AM-3:30 PM
RSVP and advance required (space is limited).
To register, please call 412.231.3169 or write to education@mattress.org
Act 48 credit available.

Cost: $20 ($15 MF members, students/seniors); box lunch included.
Led by new media artist Liz Perry.
Information: www.mattress.org

Participants should bring a sketchbook, journal or artist's book created or in progress, to share online with a larger audience. Participants will learn a range of techniques for creating online books and walk through the process of setting up a free, online illustrated journal, using a digital camera, scanner and free online software. Participants will complete a personal art blog and learn to upload images and text. If possible, participants should bring a laptop and a digital camera. Workshop includes a guided, behind-the-scenes tour and discussion of Messages & Communications.

Elizabeth Perry is a writer and new media artist working at The Ellis School, where she helps teachers integrate technology into a K-12 curriculum, and teaches classes in digital media. She is a founding editor of the award-winning Pittsburgh Signs Project, an online public art project documenting the visual landscape of western Pennsylvania (www.pittsburghsigns.org). Think Cool Thoughts, a children's book she has written, was published in 2005 by Clarion Books. Her formal background includes a BA in English from Yale, and an MFA in fiction writing and PhD in cultural and critical studies from the University of Pittsburgh. Her sketchbook journal may be found at www.elizabethperry.com/woolgathering.

Get all your Monkey News on the Ricky Gervais Show

Thank Zues! Steve Merchant, Ricky and their producer Karl Pilkinton (who is perhaps the most twisted mind of the troica) have a podcast through Guardian Unlimited.

The finest element is the spiraling delivery of "monkey news", featuring unconfirmable recounts of philanderous simians, a tolerant zookeeper (and his wife), and rampaging chimps.

official site | RSS | iTunes

When my wife and I became new parents, one of the best gifts we were given was the first season of The Office, brain-child of and vehicle for the man himself, Ricky Gervais.

With only 2 seasons and one bonus Christmas show, the ride was over too quick. Now there is the American version of the office which is... eh... OK, I guess. Plus the HBO series, Extras. But nothing close to the mania and mayhem of the BBC original.

Except this!

The Next Generation of Digital Craftsman

Over 500 Years ago, craftsmen rarely worked for a company. They were contracted for a period time and then moved on to the next contract. To remain competitive in such an atmosphere, many formed “guilds” or organizations designed to provide networking, ongoing training, standards, certification, and even some social services among their members.

Kings did not post jobs in the classifieds to find craftsmen, they contacted guilds who did not compel the employers to hire their members but simply were the only ones who could produce the work.

As “Chief Architect” of PixelCorps, Alex Lindsay merges the very old idea of a guild system made up of independent craftsman with the demands of mastering new and emerging media. PixelCorps serves as a guild for the next generation of craftsmen--digital craftsmen.

They are currently transfering skills in digital imaging and animation to regions in the developing world, so that those citizens may capitalize on the coming media revolution.

In order to survive as a craftsman in this new mediascape, PixelCorps believes companies and individuals must be able to solve the following challenges: inexpensive and on-going training, standardization, access to resources, true production experience and networking with other practitioners.

Globeshakers host Tim Zak talks to Alex about the PixelCorps goals and challenges. Tim wanted to know whether the model can broaden into other areas of technology (ex. medicine, infomatics, engineering, robotics)?

Tim asks: "As someone from the for-profit world of broadcast media, what changes did you have to make as a social entrepreneur?"

Alex shares his experience in working with corporate partners such as Apple, Adobe and others from the film and broadcast world. As the founder of a social-purpose company, he ends the conversation with advice to others who may have an equally audacious vision.

"For me, why bother doing anything else? When you're out there to make a difference for a lot of people--a profound difference--oftentimes many things pop up to help you move further down that path."

Bathtime in Clerkenwell

Need something to get you through the first week back after the holidays?

Our long lost freind, Joe Bill Mathews in North Carolina sends us this absolutely charming and zaney animation that redefines the nursery rhyme "four and twenty blackbirds".

Absolutely family (and co-worker) friendly, it'll have you tapping your feet and singing:

"A doodly-bum-dee-bum-dee-bum-dee-homey!"

Bathtime in Clerkenwell
Animation: Alex Budovsky,
Music: the real tuesday weld with stephen coates based on "sweeter then shugar", by the Mills Brothers

>>play video

From the equally charming video blog, Rocketboom with Amanda Congdon.

Social Enterprise & Time Magazine's Persons of the Year

This may be the year of social enterprise awakening.

With megadisasters Katrina, Rita, the Asian Tsunami, the Pakistani Earthquake, Avian Flu, the AIDS Pandemic... there is a swelling urgency to find fast, effective business models to respond to--and possibly prevent--such wide-spread devastation.

Time Magazine has selected a trifecta of megastars in this field: rock band U2's frontman Bono alongside Bill & Melinda Gates.

The accompanying suite of articles gives an intimate glimpse of daily life for these three who are focused on massive systems, namely health and economics.

From Persons of the Year By NANCY GIBBS

And so another alliance was born: unlikely, unsentimental, hard nosed, clear eyed and dead set on driving poverty into history. The rocker's job is to be raucous, grab our attention. The engineers' job is to make things work. 2005 is the year they turned the corner, when Bono charmed and bullied and morally blackmailed the leaders of the world's richest countries into forgiving $40 billion in debt owed by the poorest; now those countries can spend the money on health and schools rather than interest payments--and have no more excuses for not doing so. The Gateses, having built the world's biggest charity, with a $29 billion endowment, spent the year giving more money away faster than anyone ever has, including nearly half a billion dollars for the Grand Challenges, in which they asked the very best brains in the world how they would solve a huge problem, like inventing a vaccine that needs no needles and no refrigeration, if they had the money to do it.

Important Holiday Travel Update

Thank godness our family stayed home for the holidays!

For those unlucky slobs who had to fly out of familial guilt, make sure you check in with the updated TSA guidelines [posted on the Onion].

Scher Mapping New Shores

Forget Google Earth!
For some visceral inspiration, check out the work of Paula Scher.

Her hand-rendered maps blend sardonic commentary, maticulously reserached data, and more than a touch of Rev. Howard Finster madness. These 5' x 7' canvases have it all: meaning, abstraction, information, all compressed in a highly satuarated atlas.

from Metropolis:

In the early 1990s, renowned graphic designer Paula Scher began painting small, opinionated maps--colorful depictions of continents and regions, covered from top to bottom by a scrawl of words. Within a few years, the maps grew larger and more elaborate. "I began painting these things sort of in a silly way," Scher, a partner at the Pentagram design firm, said in a recent conversation. "And I think at one point I realized they would be amazing big. And I wondered if I could even do it. If I could actually paint these things on such a grand scale, what would happen?"

See Hillman Curtis' brief but beautiful video on Scher and her work from the 70s and 80s. In it, her face glows as she describes her love of appliqued letter forms, distressed textures and typography that serves as animated illustration.
From Apple.com:

In any field, to keep working in fresh ways after 30 years requires the ability to continually solve problems in creative ways. For Scher that means “the power of ideas have to drive the work.” Styles come and go; technologies are constantly changing, but “there’s no other way to stay alive in this profession without being able to think.”
Three decades after designing her first record covers at CBS, Scher still gets excited about the future. “My favorite job is the one I’m going to do tomorrow,” she says.

from Z+ Partners Blog:

Although perhaps better known for her graphically designed "retro-look" album covers and corporate logos, Paula Scher is also the painter behind a collection of the world's most disorienting navigation aids. Her maps chart an emotional terrain of swirling nation-states, swooning islands and claustrophobic oceans, providing a beautiful impressionistic view of globalization.

Paula Scher's bio

In the 1970s and early '80s Scher's eclectic, period-oriented typography for records and books became widely influential and imitated. She has often been credited as the major proponent of "retro" design. However, her body of work is broader and more idea-based than this suggests. She uses historical design to make visual analogies, and for its emotional impact and immediate appeal to contemporary audiences.
Scher has developed identity and branding systems, promotional materials, environmental graphics, packaging and publication designs for a wide range of clients including The New York Times Magazine, the American Museum of Natural History, the Asia Society, the Brooklyn Museum of Art, Phillips-Van Heusen, Anne Klein, Citigroup, 3Com, Herman Miller, Metropolis and the New York Botanical Garden. In 1996, Scher's highly influential identity for the Public Theater won the coveted Beacon Award for integrated corporate design strategy.