Creative Endeavors

The Hyperbolic Crochet Coral Reef

Christine and Margaret Wertheim’s Coral Reef Project is another one of the CSPA’s favorites to date. It combines creative endeavors seamlessly with scientific thought and a social initiative. It brings to light issues of global warming and ecological sustainability without being didactic.

If you’re in New York city, you have a month left to view it at the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum. That exhibition closes in early January.

If you are in Washington DC, please visit the temporary exhibit on the the First Floor of the Sant Ocean Hall, OCean Focus Gallery at the National Museum of Natural History. It is on display through April 24th of next year 2011.

Margaret Wetheim’s TED Talk

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zGEDHMF4rLI

At The Science Gallery in Dublin

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RsKhi0x4Ni41

A recent interview with Margaret Wertheim

View the video at Smithsonian.com

More information

Hyperbolic Crochet Coral Reef
The Institute for Figuring

The Planet Gets Funnier.

Hooray for making planet-saving funnier. The American University just closed an Eco-Comedy Contest together with the Environmental Film Festival. Bless them for hunting down the funny in this sea of green seriousness. They received over 70 entries, and while the finalists included hardcore bikers, suggestive trash and some lewd vegetarian lyrics, the judges finally went with Green My House by Neeru Productions in Ireland (nobody likes sarcastic redheads).

Green My House is a look at some of the incredibly baller ways you can pimp your house green. Have you ever, for instance, tried the ever-sexy “swapping out your light bulbs”? Okay, so maybe we’re not ready to start a green SNL (or Whitest Kids, or The State, or Big Gay Sketch Show, or some other sketch comedy show you think is funny), but at least we’re moving past Artic Circle. Into creative endeavors that are actually amusing.

grist.org, for instance, has finally decided to let professional comedians, like Eugene Mirman and Aziz Ansari, donate some funny to their cause. Thank you, grist– you were killing us. Other semi-hopeful glimpses of a Sustainably Funny Future include the chuckle-inducing Green Shaman, or the “funny ’cause it’s true” work from Annie Leonard. She just finished a new video, the Story of Bottled Water, that will have you tearing up. With laughter. Okay, so maybe it will be the laughter of a deep and tortured pain. But funny is funny . . . right?

Go to the Green Museum