Author: Organikos

The Lights Are On by Sylvia Moritz

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As noted yesterday, we will continue highlighting the best of the Young Creatives for the Do The Green Thing campaign. Raxa Collective’s operations teams at various properties can relate to Sylvia’s challenge to all of us to collaborate on conservation of electricity, whether in the hospitality community, the traveler community, in our residential home community or wherever:

Graphic designer and illustrator Sylvia Moritz wants to spell an end to the stupidity of leaving lights on in empty rooms.

“Electricity is a daily comfort we take for granted,” says Sylvia. “It is our sun when it is night, it is our means of living out our modern daily lifestyles. To recklessly exhaust this energy source, to squander something so integral to our survival, is wasteful. I hope this illustrated idiom can switch people’s behaviour.” Continue reading →

Still Counting On Do The Green Thing

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Since we started highlighting these posters only during its final week or so, there are many other posters to highlight and we intend to do so in the coming days. Not all, since not all creative output is created equal. In this final campaign poster, about reduction of light pollution, the Young Creatives series concluded on a cosmic note:

The shining star of our 29 Posters for the Planet campaign is Rebecca Charlton, the winner of WWF and Do The Green Thing’s Young Creatives competition. With her intricate and dazzling illustration, she reminds every person in every building in every city that stars not bulbs are the best sources of light in the night.

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Birds In A Coffee Shop

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Thanks to the folks at this fun aggregator site, we learned of Piip Show, a collaborative initiative bright to us by several artists and Norwegian Radio that allows a community of animals to gather in a setting familiar to many in modern urban landscapes around the world:

The story of Piip-Show

When the internet was just a baby sleeping quietly in its cradle, NRK broadcasted live from a bird house decorated like a little dollhouse. The year is 2003, and the mastermind behind the project, freelance photographer Magne Klann, receives attention even from the British Broadcasting Corporation, BBC.

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Do The Green Thing Countdown 29/29

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29 Posters Final Template

Today’s the day this series was designed for, and Shiv’s “Less Light” provides a fitting conclusion about doing the green thing this evening:

Illustrator and art director Shiv uses a blend of photography and computer trickery to create a bewitching image to get us warmed up for Earth Hour tomorrow evening. Her poster urges us to switch off, save energy and enjoy the the galaxies above. Shiv said:

“I moved out of London nearer the countryside a couple of years ago and what I love is how much of the sky at night i can see now. I think Earth Hour is a great opportunity to see the stars while the urban lights are down, and that everyone should take advantage of this.”

Why?

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51 Salutes Switchel

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We first heard of them, and heard them, on one of our favorite Public Radio (listener- and taxpayer-funded, thank you citizens of the USA) podcasts here:

Up with Switchel, Herman Melville’s Energy Drink

When we heard, at the end of the conversation with these entrepreneurs, that Melville was a switchel drinker, or at least that he mentions it in one of his books, we started thinking about a new 51 signature beverage. Melville, of course, knew a thing or two about sailors. And 51 is located within the property of Spice Harbour which, in a previous lifetime, was a “chummery” for ship captains coming in to Fort Cochin harbor.

Chummery, in Indian English from an earlier era, is akin to saying “boarding house for chums (male friends, buddies, guys what have you)” so it seems plausible that a captain who knew the drink switchel from a Caribbean or North American port of call might have once introduced this drink in the biggest harbor on the Malabar Coast. Even if none did, we will. In doing so, we salute our fellow entrepreneurs, and Melville, and the sailors. Also, we like what we read About them (the Vermont guys):

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Do The Green Thing Countdown 28/29

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“Let’s Ride” is a cool, clean visual that says it all, whether you are already a member of the biking community, or yet to become one:

Josh Higgins built and led the design team behind Barack Obama’s 2012 presidential campaign and is now Communication Design Manager for Facebook. Using fresh colours and geometrical shapes, his poster rallies the world to do more bike riding and less driving.

“I have always loved cycling and rode a bike since age 6 because it is fun,” says Josh. “Now I am a bit older I realize it is so much more. Riding a bike is a proven stress releaser. It is great for our environment and whether you are riding purely for pleasure or to get from point A to point B, you will arrive feeling relaxed, energized and happier about the world.”

Why?

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Add Cello To The Trinity Of C-Words

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Welcome To Yo-Yo’s Playhouse…Watch the superstar cellist Yo-Yo Ma and many of his close friends from all over the world in action at a theatrical props warehouse in Brooklyn.

Ever on the lookout for stories that have one or more connections to our primary interests–community, collaboration, conservation–we are particularly fond of bifectas and trifectas, double-dips and triple plays. Versatility and eclecticism are signatures of Yo-Yo Ma, so no surprise that today we see a bit of all our interests combined in this story on the National Public Radio (a USA radio network funded by listeners, corporate/foundation donors, and taxpayers) website:

by ANASTASIA TSIOULCAS

When you’re lucky enough to have cellist Yo-Yo Ma and members of the Silk Road Ensemble, some of the world’s premiere instrumentalists and composers, gather for an afternoon of offstage music making, you’ve got to think long and hard about where to put them. And we decided that the perfect match would be ACME Studio, a theatrical props warehouse in Brooklyn.

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If You Happen To Be At Yale

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Vincent van Gogh, Le café de nuit (The Night Café) (1888). Photo: courtesy Yale University Art Gallery.

 

The intersection of these three names–one, a painter who is known to have influenced a community of influential fellow-painters during his own brief lifetime (not to mention since); one, a community of revolutionaries; and the other (how many ways can we categorize Yale according to the communities it represents?)–is as oddly appealing as the painting in question:

Van Gogh Painting Seized by Bolsheviks Will Stay at Yale

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Do The Green Thing Countdown 27/29

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“Better By Bike” speaks again on the topic of bicycle power, in the interest of Earth Hour as promoted by WWF and which Raxa Collective’s community will be participating in:

Today we are delighted to present a poster from a man who needs no introduction, but that won’t stop us from introducing him anyway. Sir Paul Smith is one of the most admired figures in the world of fashion: a style guru, a gentleman and a mad keen cyclist. He has created a piece of heartfelt pro-pedal propaganda featuring one of his own cycles and a message in his own writing: “it’s better by bike”. We agree.

Why?  Continue reading →

Do The Green Thing Countdown 26/29

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Today’s is a dark one, darker than our normal post content but in the spirit of going with the flow we link out to this poster appropriately called Extermination Workshop:

Step forward Michael Wallis, a left-field thinker and co-founder of branding agency Corke Wallis. In this satirical poster-cum-drama set in the future, he speculates on the totally ridiculous idea of standby mode, and makes us ask ourselves: “why on earth would humanity come up with such a hopeless invention?”

Michael says: “I’m supporting Green Thing and Earth Hour so that when the apocalypse comes it is at the hands of something really epic like aliens or cyborgs or giant reptiles from another dimension, not DVD players.”

Why?

 

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Do The Green Thing Countdown 25/29

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Continuing our promotion of Do The Green Thing’s campaign on behalf of WWF for Earth Hour, we point you to Switch Off Engine by Harry Pearce in which he:

…takes a warning sign from the depths of the car world and reuses it to create a messages that instructs us to step away from our vehicles and go by foot instead.

“The visual language of obedience demands our attention and compliance,” says Harry. “Maybe the car industry should follow its own rules.”

Why?

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Libraries Old And New, Big And Small, At The Core Of Communities

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Cover_The_Public_Library_bookThis book by Robert Dawson pays attention to one of the institutions we care most about, libraries–specifically public ones. Why do we care so much about them? Because of the essential role they play in so many communities, both small and large, with regard to education and egalitarian opportunity.

Toni Morrison’s assessment of the book is that “Robert Dawson’s work is an irrefutable argument for the preservation of public libraries. His book is profound and heartbreakingly beautiful.”  From the author/photographer’s own website the text that introduces the work is a mix of promotion and fact:

This project is a photographic survey of public libraries throughout the United States featuring essays on libraries and the public commons from prominent American writers. The book The Public Library: A Photographic Essay will be published in April, 2014 by Princeton Architectural Press. ISBN 978-1-61689-217-3

Smallest library, now closed, Hartland Four Corners, Vermont

There are over 17,000 public libraries in this country. Since I began the project in 1994, I have photographed hundreds of libraries in forty-eight states. From Alaska to Florida, New England to the West Coast, the photographs reveal a vibrant, essential, yet threatened system.

For the past two centuries public libraries in America have functioned as a system of noncommercial centers that help us define what we value and what we share. The modern library in the computer age is in the midst of reinventing itself. What belongs in a library? Continue reading →

Recycling’s Rare Odd Find

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We should recycle, re-use, waste less just because. Occasionally there are distracting stories about other reasons for these more eco-efficient behaviors. A copy of the USA Declaration Of Independence found in a “junk” sale–that sort of thing. These rare occurrences just make it more fun to do the green thing:

When a scrap metal dealer from U.S. Midwest bought a golden ornament at a junk market, it never crossed his mind that he was the owner of a $20 million Faberge egg hailing from the court of imperial Russia.

In a mystery fit for the tumultuous history of Russia’s ostentatious elite, the 8-cm (3-inch) golden egg was spirited out of St Petersburg after the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution and then disappeared for decades in the United States. Continue reading →

Do The Green Thing Countdown 24/29

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We will walk the walk until March 29, when Earth Hour comes, and talk that walk too. To infinity, and beyond, if possible. Yesterday, when this campaign first came to our attention, we posted three samples from the campaign linked from Phaidon’s article. Today, straight from the source:

Our motto is Creativity vs Climate Change. Our product is a feed of beautiful, subversive and delightful inspiration made by great creative talent from around the world. Our aim is to inspire as many people as possible to live in a less selfish, less consumptive, more imaginative and more sustainable way. Try it. You might even like it. Continue reading →

Pro-Environment Posters For WWF’s March 29 Earth Hour Initiative

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Walk the Walk by Marina Willer for 29 Posters for the Planet

Walk the Walk by Marina Willer for 29 Posters for the Planet

We appreciate collaborative efforts to raise awareness about environmental issues, especially when they come from places where the focus is not normally on conservation. Design agencies are generally designed to sell more stuff. Publishers are generally designed to use ex-trees to communicate stuff. But some designers are on the other side of the consumer behavior-influencing fence. And some publishers use those ex-trees to publicize a more tree-centric future.  Ethics sometimes prevail over ambition. Education sometimes jumps the line.

Professional communities–whether design firms, publishers, hotel companies or take your pick–all have latent collective action lurking in their futures. We hope nature and culture are the beneficiaries. Thanks in particular at this moment to publisher Phaidon, which is in itself worthy of a post on its series of environmentally-friendly books and initiatives, for bringing this initiative of design firm Pentagram to our attention:

Pentagram’s carbon free foot print

Design agency works with Do The Green Thing charity on environmentally friendly posters

The gulf between our high-consumption lifestyles and the kind of sustainable world many of us hope to inhabit is vast. Yet the changes that could take us there aren’t unthinkable, as our recent book, The World We Made, makes clear. Continue reading →

Sophie Olsen, Come To Kerala!

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It has been a while since we extended one of these invitations. More frequently than we realized, these invitations have some connection to water. This exhibit on Sophie Olsen’s website, which came to our attention due to a blog post by Jessie Wender on the New Yorker’s website, leaves us wanting to learn more about the people she has photographed. With the photograph featured in Wender’s post there is just a small bit of context:

OLSEN: Diving down to the ocean bed without any equipment, Ngui is searching for fish to bring home to his family, on the Surin Islands, off the coast of Thailand. This photograph is part of a larger series about the sea nomads called the Mokens. Traditionally, one Moken family lives for as many nine months of the year on a boat; their children learn how to swim before they can walk.

So, what better than to invite Sophie to come to Kerala and tell us more in person. Until then, on the Dazed website there is an archived blurb about this exhibit that looks like about as much as we will learn for now: Continue reading →

If You Happen To Be In New York City

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Charles Marville: Photographer of Paris
January 29 – May 4, 2014

Rue de Constantine fourth arrondissementteaser

…As the exhibition of his photographs at the Metropolitan Museum makes clear, Marville was the right man for the job. For starters, he was a local. His father was a tailor, his mother a laundress. He grew up on a cramped street near the Louvre that later vanished to make way for one of Haussmann’s imperial avenues. Like Baudelaire, his contemporary, Marville honed his eye on Paris; the city taught him to see…

Brought to our attention by a post on the New Yorker’s website today, from which the snippet of text above is taken (and where you can see 10 excellent images from the collection the text describes), this exhibit catches our eye because it has to do with both the history of photography and the cultural heritage of a lost form of Paris:

Exhibition Location: Galleries for Drawings, Prints, and Photographs, Second Floor, Galleries 691-693
Press Preview: Monday, January 27, 2014, 10 a.m.–noon Continue reading →

Energy, Development and the Global Environment

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Bosch is testing the viability of electric cars in Singapore. Photograph: Samuel He/Bosch

Bosch is testing the viability of electric cars in Singapore. Photograph: Samuel He/Bosch

Normally we avoid articles that look strictly like press releases promoting a PR firm’s client.  However, in this case, a couple of exceptions were allowed.  First, we like the storyline because of its relevance to three years’ worth of posts on our site.  Second, there is not one iota of obnoxious flimflam, which is what normally forces us to avoid press releases.

But, an additional component to this one really made the difference. Nearly one year ago two of Raxa Collective’s contributors had the opportunity to visit Duke University and sit in the office of the founder and director of their Center for Energy, Development and the Global Environment. A conversation that was meant to last 15 minutes continued for hours that day, because of the credible commitment that Center and its leadership are making to ensure that future business leaders see sustainability as serious business. So, we gladly pass this newsworthy article on:

When it comes to sustainability ambitions, Singapore might take the prize. The island nation, which currently relies on neighboring Malaysia for its water, is aiming for water self-sufficiency by 2050, with 55% of its water needs met via recycled water and 25% from seawater desalination. Continue reading →

If You Happen To Be In Denver

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We are always on the lookout for more information about counter-intuitive relationships between various communities of outdoor enthusiasts–including those involving people with guns, bows & arrows, and fishing rods–and their collaboration with/as conservationists. An op-ed article today on the Atlantic‘s website, by Tovar Cerulli, got us thinking about posting something we would title “Hunters, Anglers, Conservationists:”

For many environmentalists, the word “hunter” suggests a mindless brute, an enemy of nature who loves guns, kills for fun, and cares nothing for biodiversity or ecological integrity. For many hunters, the word “environmentalist” suggests a self-righteous tree-hugger, an enemy of freedom who hates guns, has no respect for hunting, and imagines nature as a Disney-like fantasyland where humans should not tread.

Though these stereotypes contain grains of truth, hunters and environmentalists aren’t as separate as many imagine. The Nature Conservancy counts many hunters among its members and staff and works closely with hunting-conservation organizations. Likewise, Pheasants Forever has thousands of non-hunting members who appreciate the organization’s work on behalf of native prairie habitats, wetlands, butterflies, and clean water.

Then we clicked through his byline to see that he is affiliated with this organization that is hosting an event this weekend in Denver and decided this would make a more interesting post: Continue reading →