For more information, to reserve a table or become a club sponsor send email to:  techno.swap.fest@gmail.com

Mapping Poverty in Baltimore. Excellent story, “Two reports illustrate the paradox of Baltimore: a high-poverty city that attracts young, educated,” in the Baltimore Brew this past week about mapping poverty. The interactive map can be reached here.

Today, Alan Grover and I spent a few hours at the NODE working on the singing bowl prototype. Unfortunately, while working out the electricity we electrified the TP120‘s and probably some of the other electronic components that regulate the solenoids. Fortunately, this is not too expensive, except for the time to put the electronics back together.   One very important accomplishment was that we were able to illuminate one of the  wall warts by replace one with a more powerful amperage and wattage.

For the rest of the time we focused on how the wiring will be layed out and reworked with snap together hardware. Top – singing bowl, solenoids stacked on top of the Ikea kitchen can that will be tied to the decorative trash can and the old record player box that will contain all the electronics.

The final the objective is to snap the parts together,  plug & play.

Last July, I had the opportunity to travel to Xiamen, China, Fujian Province. This is a montage of my time spent listening to the different soundscapes where I explored.

Sounds of art@radio returns to a new location and streaming effort employing several  low power radio transmitters embedded at the Chesapeake Arts Center broadcasting trans-local voices and sounds of place. Also broadcast will be excerpts from the a@r archives.  Stay tuned for more information as it develops.

This is an example of some of the sounds of Curtis Bay, south Baltimore City, Maryland. Standing just inside of the Chesapeake CompostWorks warehouse with a steamy 12 foot pile of compost on one side and an open space that expands out towards the Inner Harbor the sounds of trains moving in and out of earshot along with various industries percolating in the soundscape.

Imagining America or IA is scheduled to be hosted by UMBC from October 1- 4, 2015.  

quoted from IA’s site: Imagining America was formally launched at a 1999 White House Conference initiated by the White House Millennium Council, the University of Michigan, and the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation. The name Imagining America reflects the theme of the White House Millennium Council, focused on renewing participation in all walks of U.S. life: “Honor the Past – Imagine the Future.” Conference participants became the basis for what would become IA’s consortium of colleges and universities, and the University of Michigan agreed to be the initial host campus, with Julie Ellison as founding director.

Achievements of IA’s early years include fostering a national network of campus-community collaborators in humanities, arts, and design; developing an analytical framework to aggregate and critically consider the range of nascent artistic and scholarly endeavors; and promoting public scholarship as an important and legitimate enterprise in higher education.

Maree Farring Elementary Middle School,
Brooklyn, south Baltimore City.  

We are working on an interior upgrade to the school to enhance the learning of the young people at MGFEMS.  This will be a collaboration with MICA Design School, UMBC and Maree Farring art students.   We might also have a number of Benjamin Franklin High School students work with us as well.  Maree Farring is a feeder school to BFHS.  We have a deadline of February 1st to hand over a color scheme to the contract painters.  Then we will begin the next stage of the project, which will be to look at integrating “banner” systems to signify what that area of the school is designated as, i.e., kindergarden, the different grade levels, library, cafeteria, gym, main office and so on.   Students will paint onto prepped banners with grommets so that every few months the students can update the subject matter and or messages they would like to present publicly.  

Facing the office: Have we as a society rethought the design of our k-12 school spaces?  Check out these photographs of BFHS not far from Maree Farring.

Food pantry- temporary use of space.  This is where the teacher’s lounge will be located.

Cafeteria.

What is played on these monitors that are mounted in the cafeteria?  

The stairwells- my first time to walk through these particular spaces, the German Expressionist film still came to mind from the Sunrise (1928).

Second floor.

This is outside of the school in a small courtyard – is it a left over garden, or they ran out of asphalt?

This is probably left over from some kind of sports court?   The courtyard presents an interesting opportunity to incorporate an outdoor classroom that might include different forms of play, music chalk based games. These look like paintings by the Spanish artist, Antoni Tapies.