Awesome Foundation - Projects

Los Angeles, CA – Chief Mysterious Officer

2011-01-23T00:00:00Z

I am a lifelong kid, always looking at things with an eye towards wonder and amusement. I started Mystery Trip because I wanted to start exploring the offbeat and fun parts of Los Angeles that maybe had been forgotten (or never even discovered), and figured I might as well drag my friends along with me. It's based on a simple concept from my childhood summer camp: get on a bus, destination unknown. Somehow it always inevitably ended up being cheesy, corny fun. Past Mystery Trips have included, but certainly aren't limited to, the following: Derby Dolls roller derby, a tour of Dodger Stadium, the Bunny Museum, the Industry of Death Museum (Scientology-sponsored...good times!), Hollywood Park, Olvera Street, Museum of Jurassic Technology, Grandma Prisbrey's Bottle Village, Philippe's, a demolition derby, a visit to Target wearing khakis and red t-shirts (wackiness ensued) and many more stops. Each Mystery Trip ends with a worst CD or DVD-from-your-collection exchange, a t shirt to commemorate the experience, new friends and great stories. The feedback has always been positive. People love Mystery Trip as a way to explore the city, meet new people and act like a kid again as they get bussed around playing "2 truths and a lie" reading a haiku about themselves or reciting a limerick about their family. After much encouragement and thought, I decided to offer Mystery Trips to the public, and have started Mystery Trip LA (MTLA). MTLA expands on the idea by working with individuals, corporations, business groups and charities to create custom events that promote togetherness, team-building and a return to a simpler time in our lives by simply letting go, allowing someone else to take the reins for a while to show you a fun time as you experience some of the wackiest and – dare I say – most awesome places and people of Los Angeles. I have also frequently tried to include places that are important to the community, to show that we can all do a little bit more to help out our fellow Angelinos, such as the Homegirl Cafe, where the most difficult to place inner city people are hired in transitional jobs in a safe, supportive environment where they will learn both concrete and soft job skills; Mama's Hot Tamales, a MacArthur Park co-op restaurant where people are taught to make tamales from their native countries; and the Monastery of the Angels, where the nuns help pay their bills by selling pumpkin bread.

London (Inactive) – People's Kitchen

2011-01-23T00:00:00Z

People’s kitchen (PK) is a community kitchen that uses left over/surplus food to create meals for the community; open to everyone, it aims to create a welcoming environment while helping the environment. The kitchen relies on volunteers & donated food. Inspired by the Berlin ‘Volkskuche’, a solidarity idea of people being able to eat for a reasonable price & linked with other food waste projects (Food Cycle, This Is Rubbish, Taste of Freedom, Rhythms of Life & FareShare), the PK is achieving this & is already proving a success! Like many of the best ideas, the concept is very simple and deals with important issues that pervade national consciousness at the moment: waste, community & food. We are becoming a nation of ‘foodies’ with food mentioned everywhere in papers, on tv & in conversation. However, many people still cannot cook, and many still eat badly. The PK allows people to get involved with cooking in an unstressful environment & allows them to eat a jolly good plate of tasty, healthy food for a donation they feel appropriate. Currently based in east London, the PK has been running since September 2010 with the intention preventing food waste while bringing the community together for social good. It has also been known to completely cure hangovers & to provide openings for love & romance.The question that we often hear after a successful event is “why isn't there a PK in every community?"

Washington, DC – DC Diaper Bank - Nonprofit Fees & Website Launch

2011-01-19T00:00:00Z

My academic and professional life has focused on understanding how human minds develop, and how parental expectations and culture form the parameters of a child’s world. I earned a Masters in Cognitive Anthropology in 2005 and studied this issue cross culturally. I am currently pursuing a PhD in Education Policy, studying how the structure of our educational system interacts with families. However, I have found the reality of raising a child is far different from studying it. My first child, Jack was born in Oct 2009 and he was difficult–he cried all the time and rarely slept. Somehow we survived the first year and Jack has turned into a joyful toddler. As Jack outgrew his infancy, I began to think about families who didn’t have the support I did–how did they survive those first few awful months? How do you soothe a crying baby when that baby is hungry? How do you calm an infant in pain from diaper rash if you don’t have money for medicine? I began to think about all I had studied alongside the stats on poverty. As of 2009, 18,000 children under age six live in poverty in DC–and that’s just the official count. How could I help them? Diapers may seem like a strange answer to that question, because, really, what can a diaper do? A lot. A typical baby needs 10 to 12 diapers a day, and a toddler uses about eight. At a cost of $100-$120 per month, diapers are a significant expense. One in twenty moms who has had to cut back on other purchases to pay for diapers has reused a disposable diaper and 36% of mothers living in poverty regularly run out of clean diapers for their infants. Families receiving Food Stamps can’t use this assistance to purchase diapers because they are “hygiene items.” Babies who remain in dirty diapers for prolonged periods can experience diaper rash and infections. Diaper rash often leads to more crying and babies who cry excessively are the most likely to be victims of shaken baby syndrome. A clean diaper is only a little thing to those who don’t have to worry where the next pack will come from. I formed a board and incorporated the DC Diaper Bank in October 2010. We are currently preparing our application for 501(c)(3) status and meeting with potential partners. We begin diaper collection in mid December. The DC Diaper Bank will, through a combination of diaper drives and fund raising, distribute diapers through a network of existing social service agencies already working with families in need in the DC metro area.

Boston, MA (Inactive) – Banditos Misteriosos: Giant Puzzle

2011-01-19T00:00:00Z

Boston is a playground. Banditos Misteriosos is the city's mysterious playmate. We are an organization dedicated to bringing Boston alive with a slew of activities that are free, open to everybody and most importantly, just a little bit out of the ordinary. In the past some of the awesome projects we’ve done have included: a watergun battle, a pillow fight, a Choose Your Own Adventure hunt through the city. We’d like your help in bringing to life our next awesome event: a Giant Puzzle. This giant jigsaw puzzle will be completed by participants in one afternoon. Participants will come to the Banditos location to receive a set of random jigsaw pieces. They will then have to work together to color in the puzzle pieces according to a ‘Paint by Numbers’ scheme. The final step will be to determine the pieces’ location. This will require quiet a bit of interaction with fellow puzzlers as well as passer-bys (who will no doubt want to offer advice while observing from the side). We would like the image of the puzzle to be a detailed map of Boston, which not only goes along with our mission to ‘keep Boston fun’ but also will act as an education tool to teach Bostonians about the geography of their (our) city!

San Francisco, CA – Scarf-a-day

2011-01-18T00:00:00Z

I will make one silly, strange, whimsical, nerdy, electronic, fuzzy, warm, or otherwise totally awesome scarf- each day, starting the 1st of the month if/after getting an Awesome Foundation grant. I will post each of these, with how-to's or at least lots of photos, at either my site or a dedicated Tumblr. I really love sewing on the fly (no pun intended) and have realized that the less I worry about patterns the more silly I can be. I think doing a one-a-day will have me producing some mighty silly scarves. I've done a lot of sewing recently, including a 2-foot-tall Tree hat and matching jacket with interchangable seasonal leaves. I also made the NorthSkirt, a soft-circuit project that, with LEDs, points northward.

Ottawa – The Word According to Youth

2010-12-31T00:00:00Z

My name is Debora Barkun and I've lived in Ottawa for last 4 years. I have a 3 children and my eldest has learning disabilities. She has a hard time with reading, comprehension and expression. In my quest to guide her through this existence, she has shown a love for performing. I kept trying to come up with different ideas of combining performance and literacy. That is when the Word According to Youth a.k.a. The WAY was born. The Word According to Youth (The WAY) is a project that allows young people to use their words and voices to share their visions, passions, concerns and joys about their life, community and world through spoken word. The WAY will hold a series of Saturday workshops throughout January and February on the history, composition and delivery of poetry, spoken word and storytelling. Local spoken word artists will facilitate these workshops. In mid-February, participants will have the opportunity to experience firsthand a live poetry slam or storytelling event. There will also be an evening dedicated to Bad Poetry. Bad Poetry is a fun filled evening in which the worst poets take top prize. It’s a fundraising event for friends and family of youth performers. Participants will experience a day in the life of the poetry slam artist. Performers will laugh and be laughed at, mock and be mocked but most importantly, have a heck of a lot of fun. Finally, on February 19, members of The WAY will take part in their own poetry slam. Ottawa’s Anthony Bansfield will act as event emcee, with music, refreshments and prizes for everyone involved.

Berlin (Inactive) – Wilde Schlittenfahrt (aka Wild Sled Ride)

2010-12-16T00:00:00Z

As snow sets now we need a prepared hill somewhere easy reachable to do the wild rides on a sled, sledge, whatever you call it: Wilde Schlittenfahrt! I want to prepare a hill not far from the next s-bahnstation with a tractor and large drum so it has a hard ground to slide on it. Also if possible I would like to pay a little money to someone from the neighborhood to maintain the hill during days when there is not so much visitors. Promotion for the slide would be trough word of mouth and facebook. We did large public ice-skating events in the last cold winer where we invited people on lakes we tested before and provided drinks and food there. We will do this again but felt the need of a good slide as Berlin and Brandenburg is not very hilly!

Boston, MA (Inactive) – Parts and Crafts -- Community Supported Education

2010-12-15T00:00:00Z

Who are we? The Parts and Crafts Collective is a group of nerds, thinkers, and state-of-the-art weirdoes who like to think about teaching and learning together, it's a summer camp, and it's a Somerville comunity space, makerspace, and open workshop. We run classes and workshops and vacation camps and events and project nights. We build things and teach people and cook meals together and hang out and we do our best to connect creative and curious people of all ages to each other. What is Community Supported Education? A playful reappropriation of local food distribution methods and terminology, and an experiment in nontraditional market/non-market solutions for meeting community needs. An attempt to keep what's good about the DIY "kit" model while losing some of the more isolating, solitary "hacker alone in his/her basement" stuff. Monthly cool projects for kids and others to play with and do! A way for us to fund project R&D and to extend the community of people that we collaborate with outside of the set of people who want to be working directly with kids. Every month you get a box – inside the box are a set of projects! Instructions are included, along with basic components for completion. What might show up in your box? Build your own lightsaber! (PVC, LEDs, and battery pack included) Introduction to lockpicking! How to juggle (and how to make your own juggling balls)! Turn your house into a marble run! Bridge building, soft-circuits, stop-motion animation. A variety of exciting things to make and do and think about. Each month we will send out a major project and a couple of smaller projects and experiments. We will create instructions and package any materials that you aren't certain to already have lying around your house. All of the projects will be developed month-by-month at Parts and Crafts, based on things we’ve tested with kids (or have been developed by kids) in our summer and year-long programs. The other component to the project is a community website where people can share their projects and progresses. If Instructables is like a DIY amazon.com, then the CSE community website is like a local bookclub.

Washington, DC – Fab Lab DC

2010-12-14T00:00:00Z

I'm a problem solver, artist, organizer. Currently, I'm working to establish a Fab Lab in DC. Fab Lab stands for fabulous & fabrication laboratory, where people can learn about digital fabrication & make ‘almost’ anything. Presently, I'm hosting MIT's Mobile Fab Lab at my studio & want to put it to good use by sharing it with the community & supporting projects that encourage creativity, innovation, & collaboration. To make it happen, funding is needed to support programming & materials. During the past couple of months, community members & groups have visited the lab & tried it out; & several collaborative community projects have emerged: • High Tea Girls Project ~ The High Tea Society (HTS) was founded by the Honorable Judge Mary Terrell in 1997, as a vehicle to expose young girls to the rich cultural offerings of the District of Columbia, while also providing a tailored program designed to boost self esteem, inspire academic achievement & create “ambassadors of change.” HTS protégés who attend D.C. Public Schools, are recruited in the 4th grade & remain in the program until high school graduation &/or college acceptance. The Fab Lab Project will provide a “hands-on” experience for the HT Girls using advanced technology & open an alternative “gateway” for the girls to be involved with science, technology, engineering, art, math & entrepreneurial enterprise. • UDC Community College Fashion Merchandising Curriculum Collaboration ~ Students from the Fashion Design Program will return to the lab to experiment with combining technology & design, including new materials. • The "Urban Art & Ecology Project ~ Humanity 4 Habitat": Creative Problem Solving through Art, Design, Digital Fabrication, Community Engagement ~ is a collaborative effort bringing together science, art & technology to foster awareness, & ignite creativity. The idea is to use science, art, design & technology as integral learning tools & to bring people together to enhance the livability of the city & create a unique sense of place. The core team includes local artists, professors, a landscape architect & a migratory bird specialist. The project will enable communities to have access to art, design, digital fabrication technology & a network of resources to create supportive habitats, including shelters & gardens. I’ll pull it off by providing access, instruction, materials, and resources to help facilitate & expand the reach & impact of collaborative projects.

Ottawa – The Great Balloon Launch

2010-11-30T00:00:00Z

We launch balloons to a altitude of over 100,000 Feet, and retrieve them when they've come back to earth. We partner with local schools science programs to help schools make their science curriculum much more interesting. We've a track record of making kids happy! We've done a number of launches so we have all of the equipment required, and lots of volunteers. The main cost for us is the gas, and balloons. Helium is getting very expensive. Each balloon cost hundreds of dollars. Help us make this years launch a success!

London (Inactive) – It's For Monsters!

2010-11-18T00:00:00Z

I’m Lucy (of Ben and Lucy), from the Ministry of Stories, a new non-profit organisation that wants to inspire a nation of storytellers. You’ll soon be able to find the MofS through a secret door behind the store-front of the first shop to supply the daily needs of monsters of all shapes and sizes. All proceeds will go toward funding our writing centre a new home for our writing in East London. We offer young people free workshops and one-to-one mentoring, provided by volunteers: local writers, artists and teachers, all giving their time, skills and talent for free. Back to the monsters. We would use the grant to create the first product line for the shop, working with the extraordinary imaginations of local children and our volunteers. The children would be involved from start to finish, helping us imagine the products, writing for them, helping to price and eventually sell them in the shop. Here are the kinds of things we could produce. I’ll hand you back to the children. Medusa, her eyes as fiery as lava and ears as small as a pin. She would buy hairspray to calm down her snakes on her head (Sajida). The Under-the-Bed Monster would buy a brush for his hairy nose (Julie). The Red Eyed Jackie Chan Mommy, aged 5235, likes to have fun killing people and going on a streak. He could go to the shop for a bottle of blood (Malik). The BuckTooth Chicken Monster has teeth as sharp as knives, fingers like chips and a body small as a mouse (everyone). We don’t know what to sell to him yet but we’ll have an idea.

Boston, MA (Inactive) – Pick-a-Pocket Gardeners

2010-11-17T00:00:00Z

We a small band of guerrilla gardeners in urban Cambridge who tend neglected pockets of parks, treewells and parking lots. We meet weekly mostly in the spring and summer to give these tiny places a chance to be nourished and flourish. About 12 of us with approval of the city's DPW perform the weeding, deadheading, pruning and light planting that DPW staff can't do. We've been doing it for about two years now but want to expand our reach and members.

Ottawa – Vuvuzela Virtuosos

2010-10-31T00:00:00Z

The idea is simple: create an ensemble of Vuvuzela players who will serenade Ottawa with the dulcet tones of the Vuvuzela at a variety of events. We will recruit approximately 50 people to help us launch the Awesome Ottawa Vuvuzela Virtuosos at the Help Santa Parade on November 20th. We will perform a series of Christmas carols arranged for Vuvuzela. We will follow this up with a series of events on the Christmas and Holiday theme through November and December. Here’s what we’re thinking (for starters) Event the first: Vuvuzela in the Santa Claus parade (November 20th) Event the second: Carolling at 24 Sussex. And Rideau Hall. And street corners. And malls. Randomly. Following which: Sparks Street Serenade (in front of the CBC building). Etc.: Vuvuzela out of a parking garage during Christmas shopping season. Etc.: Vuvuzela a random Minor league hockey game. That’s right. We’ll just show up. And make the kids’ day. With Vuvuzelas. The possibilities are endless, really. And we don’t ever really have to stop. We could create new arrangements. Flight of the Bumblebee perhaps. While skating down the canal. Can you see it? I can see it. Anyway. We have enough friends who would get on board. We just need the Vuvus. Please. It would be Awesome.

San Francisco, CA – Hoods To The Woods

2010-10-19T00:00:00Z

A few years ago I worked at FTC skateboard shop and SFO snowboard shop on Upper Haight. There was always a lot of hood kids hanging around from my neighborhood, the Western Addition. They'd always be curious about snowboarding and what it was like. A lot of these kids had never been out of The Bay Area and some of them had never even been out of The City. I grew up in the hood and had a lot of lucky breaks growing up skating with cool older role models and wanted to pass it on. I got some in-kind donations (snowboard rentals, borrowed pants and jackets, etc..) and threw a couple of parties to raise money to take these kids snowboarding. Please take time to watch our first year video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R5MQnFNPtLI (That's me, the scrubby chubby black dude in the passenger seat. We had a cool soundtrack with talking and stuff but youtube cut out the sound for copy right violation. Oops! I put this song in from their archives. It actually works really well. Its an 8 minute movie but I think you should watch the whole thing to really get the zeitgeist of the whole trip.) I did it for a couple of years but now a lot of my kids have became young men. We helped a few of them get jobs and I was a sanctuary for a couple when times got tough in their group homes. I now work at Tenderloin Community School with younger ones and Alvarado Elementary School and have little time to raise money with parties. I have teenagers from The Fillmore always coming up to me asking about "Hoods To The Woods". A thousand dollars would help a great deal because it is almost our whole budget for a weekend. Some notes: Its awesome to witness a 16 year old seeing snow for the first time. Its awesome when we were riding past Lake Tahoe and some kid says "The ocean look hella big right now", not realizing that we're miles away from the beach because Lake Tahoe looks "hella small on the map!" Thank you, Anthony J. Carranza The Hoods To The Woods Recreational Program Mission Statement: “To engage low-income and at-risk youth in San Francisco in outdoor activities. We carry out this mission with the help of volunteers, educators, and community activists who are dedicated to helping teens gain new perspectives through travel, outdoor education, environmental awareness and recreation.”

Boston, MA (Inactive) – Invisible Instruments

2010-10-06T00:00:00Z

Anyways, one of my current projects is the design of invisible instruments. The youtube video was a very early and primitive version of the 'invisible violin.' I designed and recorded it for a college course because I had left my actual violin at home. I would like to continue designing invisible instruments and further develop the current instruments (violin, piano, and drums) to create abilities and effects far beyond the scope of a normal acoustic version. For instance, adding the ability for complex FM, self-harmonization, vocoding, etc, all built into an instrument you can't see. Or maybe a 7-stringed violin. The possibilities are pretty limitless. In essence, you could use the same tools to play a multitude of instruments. Potentially it's an infinitely better version of WiiMusic, and one that could do significant damage (in a good way) to the computer music world.

Ottawa – Ottawa Global Work Party

2010-09-30T00:00:00Z

“It’s time for us to roll up our sleeves and get to work.” Those are the words of Ban Ki Moon, Secretary General of the United Nations, in his endorsement of the 10/10/10 Global Work Party. If you live in the Ottawa area, we have a job for you. You’re invited to the Ottawa Global Work Party on 10/10/10. Yes, that’s Thanksgiving Sunday, and there’s no better giving than the giving-back-to-the-Earth kind. Founded under environmentalist Bill McKibbon’s 350.org, last year, people held events in over 181 countries to work towards reducing carbon emissions by 10%. CNN called it ‘the most widespread day of political action in the planet’s history.’ This year, we’ve organized our own Ottawa Work Party to kick-start action on climate change. We’re organizing a fair to show people how they can live more sustainably. Here’s what we plan to do: - Encourage people to make pledges to reduce their carbon footprint in 2010. - Build a small-scale model of our vision of a green Ottawa using recycled materials. - Invite guest speakers from various environmental organizations to talk about climate change - Invite local artists to perform acoustic sets and display artwork. - Invite local media as well as local politicians. - Invite local businesses to promote their green practices and tips for sustainable living. - Provide form letters for people to contact their MP and ask for climate legislation. The Awesome Ottawa grant money will give us the chance to make this event something special. Everyone is welcome to join us in celebration of sustainable living.

San Francisco, CA – Papergirl San Francisco

2010-09-21T00:00:00Z

Papergirl is a mail-art and delivery systems art project that is participatory, analogue, non-commercial, and impulsive. Submitted artwork is distributed like newspapers - rolled up into bundles and thrown to passers-by from bicycles. Submissions are sent in by mail or dropped off and are exhibited before being sorted, rolled up, and distributed. The project is open to all - there are no guidelines as to format, subject matter, or quantity one can submit, so originals, prints, photos, copies, etcetera come together making each roll unique. Anything can be submitted so long as the art is flexible enough to be rolled up. The Papergirl project has the potential to generate refreshing, unique, and meaningful interactions among local art and bike communities and perhaps more interestingly, among strangers. Papergirl can create numerous opportunities – for artists, for bikers, for pedestrians – if given the generous support of the Awesome Foundation. The project is a creative process, a cathartic culmination and a seed – the nature of the project is a perpetual reinvestment in art, community, and the analogue. Papergirl directly engages the people of this city and invites them to be part of a larger and ever-growing DIY artist community that thrives on word of mouth communication, small favors, connections between strangers, and the “you can do it, we can help” mentality. After hearing about Papergirl-Berlin, the concept immediately struck me as an amazing way to connect to the community (locally and internationally) through art and to do it in a unique, unconventional, and participatory way. I quickly became engaged with the project and corresponded with the Berlin and Santa Cruz organizers. Currently, Papergirl SF consists of a core team of students and artists: Heather Tompkins, Colleen Stockmann, Jessie Chernetsky (of Papergirl Santa Cruz), Molly Goldberg, and Nazir Agah. We have a few great community collaborators including two bike companies based in the city and we are working on reaching out to the myriad community- and art-based organizations that might enjoy what we’re doing. With the support of the Awesome Foundation, we will be able to see this project through and become a catalyst for dynamic interactions and the potent intersection of art, bikes, strangers, and community convergence.

Boston, MA (Inactive) – Gameful

2010-09-15T00:00:00Z

Gameful is an online "Secret HQ" where you can connect with other people who believe in the power of games to make us better and change the world. It will be a free resource -- a place for you to: - Set up a profile sharing your expertise, skills, abilities, and interests - Search the network for collaborators and talent - Spread the word about your new projects - Meet journalists who want to write about interesting games or research like yours - Find new and cutting-edge game projects to inspire you - Join a Gameful book club and discuss big ideas - Join a Gameful game club and play big ideas! - Brainstorm and submit conference panels or sessions together - Plan Gameful meet-ups at conferences and festivals - Nominate your own work, or work you love, for the annual Gameful Awards (in the categories of Reality-Changing, Life-Changing, and World-Changing)

Boston, MA (Inactive) – Ripley Garden for the Hungry

2010-08-24T00:00:00Z

I grew up on a farm in South Dakota. I was in the Armed Forces in the early 70's. I am near retirement from the construction field. I grow a 2000 sq.ft. garden and give fresh vegetables to the elderly in the neighborhood. I have this one acre grassfield I want to turn under and expand the grow area go 20,000 sq.ft. I would be able to supply the local missions with fresh vegetables and fruit. If I can feed a few, I can feed many more.

San Francisco, CA – Sounding the Waters (Sea Change)

2010-07-20T00:00:00Z

UPDATE MAY 2012: "RISE: Climate Change and Coastal Communities." This series of radio documentaries, multimedia webstories and audio tours explores the impact of sea level rise and extreme weather on the lives and livelihoods of people living along the shores of the San Francisco Bay. RISE is great storytelling about real people and a particular place. This local story about a global issue allows listeners to make a connection to their own lives and the challenges we all share. ++++++++++++++++++ from the original submission: SOUNDING THE WATERS is an audio tour -- free and downloadable from the internet -- for people riding the San Francisco Bay ferryboats. This tour will take listeners on a journey of the San Francisco Bay: underneath the surface to swim with the harbor seals and phytoplankton, overhead to soar with a million migratory birds, and along the coast to explore marshlands and skyscrapers that ring the Bay. Along the way, we learn how sea level rise, due to climate change, will affect the contours of the Bay and the human and natural life that depends on it. Finally, we learn what steps people are taking to address this paradigm shift. SOUNDING THE WATERS weaves stories of the men and women who have made the Bay Area their home.

New York City, NY – Hip-Hop Word Count

2010-07-15T00:00:00Z

The Hip-Hop Word Count is a searchable ethnographic database built from the lyrics of over 40,000 Hip-Hop songs from 1979 to present day; the database is the heart of a web based analysis tool that generates textual and quantified reports on searched phrases, syntax, memes and socio-political ideas. The idea to build the Hip-Hop Word Count came out of having hundreds of passionate discussions on the topic of Hip-Hop as a music form: Which was the most popular champagne in Hip-Hop during 1999-2003? Who was the best rapper of all time? Which rapper had the smartest songs? Which rapper used the cleverest metaphors? Which city's rap songs use the most monosyllabic words? Does living in higher altitudes create a natural proclivity for gangster rap? Being tired of having the answers left up to conjecture or whoever had the loudest voice, I decided to build a tool that would help answer these questions and literally chart the cultural patterns observed in the wide canon of Hip-Hop music.

Ottawa – Transplant

2010-07-13T00:00:00Z

This summer, Emily Comeau (a fibre artist from Quebec) and Emily Cook (a book and paper artist from Ontario) will be collaborating to create an immense and interactive tunnel book made from local plant materials to install in a barren patch of city. The “book” will be 10 feet high and 12 feet long and contain 6 “pages” featuring a cut paper story of urbanism in archway shapes that people can walk through and interact with. The structure will be made of live willow branches and the paper pages made of flax paper infused with seeds. As the elements erode the paper, the sculpture will disintegrate and the seeded paper will sprout. This way the sculpture will have a changing life and meaning as the urban world we create with the cut paper will be eroded and changed by the living materials. Emily Comeau is a recent graduate of Concordia University, majoring in Fibre Arts and was awarded the Prix Diagonale for her artistic achievements. Her art practice is largely fibre based. She has participated in numerous exhibitions and events in Ontario and Quebec. More information about her and her art practice can be found at her website. Emily Cook holds a BFA in printmaking from Ontario College of Art and Design and an MFA from Louisiana State University. She is now practicing in Toronto . She makes paper based sculptures and books, and sometimes teaches at the Ontario College of Art and Design. She has won numerous awards and shown in both the US and Canada. You can see some of her work at her website.

San Francisco, CA – Robotic Desk Lamps

2010-06-22T00:00:00Z

(http://www.rotormind.com/blog/2011/Robotic-Desklamps-at-the-Maker-Faire/) I want to build robotic desk lamps. Remember Luxo Jr. from the Pixar short? Like that, but for real. All the components are off-the-shelf available: servos, microcontrollers, full-color high power LED lights, and remote control via RF so multiple lamps can move in choreographed synchrony. The whole thing would be a platform for more cool things, like web control, open choreography software, you name it. And naturally it would be open HW/open source, yadda yadda. I hope I'm not the only one that thinks that's awesome. About me: San Franciscans may know me as a co-organizer of Dorkbot-SF, an occasional hanger-out at Noisebridge hacker space, a co-founder and major designer of the SWARM spherical robots project,and instigator of other things like Chassis the Beer-Serving Robot. Though I try not to brag, I also have a Ph.D. in electrical engineering and 34 US patents. In short, I am bad-ass enough to actually do this (and a record of finishing things I start) but naturally it will take time and effort and parts. An Awesome Foundation grant would help give me a delightful excuse to get started and get cracking.

London (Inactive) – The Big Dipper project

2010-05-23T00:00:00Z

Through my projects, I try to raise debates, unanswered questions, on human behavior and its surroundings with a focus on illusions. Playing with psychological and/or visual perception is something I find very interesting and important. As you know, living in big cities such as London has many advantages, but it is unfortunately difficult to see a clear sky. The city lights, the British weather and the pollution hide the contemplation of this poetic open space. Laying down on the grass and observing the stars at night is one of these simple thing that makes you escape from the daily reality. Contemplating this natural wonder makes you feel very small and brings up many questions about the human kind and the universe. The idea is simple: I am trying to recreate the missing stars in the London sky. HOW? Using black helium balloons with bright white leds attached to them. Each individual balloon represents a star, they are all anchored to the ground by a 100 meters thread. The process is very simple, but doing it is challenging because of factors such as the wind, the rain, the place, the moon, etc. So far, I have been able to release 15 stars in the sky. My real objective is to be able to control each individual star. If I succeed, I shall be able to create constellations (the big dipper for example), but maybe shapes, words, etc. The satisfying bit in this project is to see the citizens stopping in the street and starring at the sky.

San Francisco, CA – A History of the Sky

2010-05-18T00:00:00Z

I'm in the midst of a project I call "A History of the Sky," which is a time-lapse visualization of the sky for an entire year. I've put together a time-lapse camera rig that's currently sitting on the roof of the Exploratorium (an extremely Awesome museum in San Francisco), taking a picture of the sky every 10 seconds, around the clock. In "A History of the Sky," an entire year of atmospheric phenomena can be observed in just a few minutes: the sky over San Francisco Bay is a very dynamic place, with rich textures of fog, rain, and clouds over the course of the year. Variations in day length will cause sunrises and sunsets to cascade gradually across the display. These are patterns that we're all aware of, but this will enable the viewer to experience them on a more immediate level, and appreciate rhythms of the natural world that normally occur to slowly to observe. I also intend this to be an active piece. If a suitable long-term venue can be found, the camera will continue to collect images and integrate them on a daily basis, so the visualization will vary from day to day, and will always display the most recent 365 days. The project has been undertaken with a DIY mindset. The camera is a re-purposed old compact digital camera, controlled entirely by open-source software, and few tools I've coded myself. As I said, this is a work in progress, and has benefited from the generosity of the Exploratorium in allowing me to use their space. But so far, it's all been funded out of my own pocket. I've striven to keep costs low, but some assistance would be very helpful in developing the display component of this piece. There's more info on my project site (www.murphlab.com/hsky), including some mock-ups and sample movies that will help convey what the final piece will look like.

Boston, MA (Inactive) – Serval Project - Remote/Disaster Comm System

2010-05-18T00:00:00Z

With the help from some friends, I are working on improving the VillageTelco.org "Mesh Potato" so that it supports mobile telephony for use in disasters, remote and developing areas. The mesh potato is this cool device that can take just about any power source, a regular land-line phone handset and wifi and make a stand-alone telephone network. It is completely P2P and decentralised, and <3watts of power, so is economical to run on solar or wind power. My mission is to make it work with mobile telephones so that mobile telecomms can be deployed rapidly, cheaply and robustly into disasters (think about Haiti where the local network was toast for about a week), developing and remote areas (did you know that some places in Africa the minimum daily wage will buy you less than 10 SMS messages?) and plain old remote places where the huge cost of mobile telephone towers makes it too expensive to provide coverage, condemning the people their to continuing poverty and isolation. One of the really funky bits is that we can make these P2P phone networks work with your regular old phone number, without requiring access to the internet (email me for the special sauce on this). This means that we can also deploy it in developed places to make really cheap mobile telephone networks with no infrastructure. It's easy to do. The biggest problem is the telcos who own all the mobile phone spectrum. By making a demonstration using a different frequency band, we plan on getting some attention to this problem, while at the same time making a system that will work with android handsets. So we can help the poor and vulnerable of the world, and get a really awesome technology that we can enjoy in the west, too. How awesome is that!?

Ottawa – Art Flash Mob

2010-05-11T00:00:00Z

Project Y is a group of young and passionate change-makers who aspire to make positive change and change the face of their community. There are all different types of individuals: students, social entrepreneurs, musicians, artists, scientists, and others. Many are Millennium Laureates, some are TD Scholars, and others are individuals with an unbelievable commitment and determination to make positive change. For our kick-off event, we are organizing an Art Flash Mob to show people the beauty that exists here in our city. The music, art, and culture in this city is astonishing – we want people to see it. For more details, see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p9RKU2aJkkE.

New York City, NY – The Iguana House at the Brooklyn Children's Museum

2010-04-07T00:00:00Z

The Brooklyn Children's Museum serves hundreds of thousands of visitors every single year, providing an opportunity for learning and play with a strong emphasis on the Natural Sciences, Culture, and Early Childhood experience. A goal for our Animal dept. this year is the construction of a new enclosure for our pair of Green iguanas (Iggy and Elizabeth), both of whom are used in exhibition programs. These animals are some of our public favorites, and in her 18 years, Elizabeth has put a smile on the faces of millions of visitors! (Awesome!). We've just come out of a large expansion, and greatly improved our Greenhouse experience - and what better place to construct an exhibit/ enclosure for these wonderful animals than there?! Our Live animal collection has been a core part of the museum experience for nearly years - giving inner-city children the chance to meet these critters up close, touch them, see them eat, learn about their diet and habitat, and open the mind to a general concept of conservation through this tactile process. Iguanas are depicted regularly on museum signage throughout the city, and it's high-time we put them on exhibit in an environment that will help them flourish - where they will continue to do the "hard work" that makes them incredible ambassadors for both their species, the animal kingdom at large, and of course, the Brooklyn Children's Museum! Both have been feature countless times in local news (both TV and print), and are utilized approx. 3-4 times per week in programming and exhibition. Truly AWESOME critters, doing AWESOME work!

Boston, MA (Inactive) – Grassroots Mapping

2010-04-07T00:00:00Z

Grassroots Mapping (grassrootsmapping.org) is a series of participatory mapping projects involving communities in cartographic dispute. This January, Jeffrey Warren of the Center for Future Civic Media worked with a series of organizations and communities to produce maps with children and adults from several communities in Lima, including the Cantagallo settlement of Shipibo on the bank of the Rimac and the Juan Pablo II community in Villa El Salvador. (Read more at http://grassrootsmapping.org/tag/lima) Seeking to invert the traditional power structure of cartography, we used helium balloons and kites to loft our own "community satellites" made with inexpensive digital cameras. The resulting images, which are owned by the residents, are georeferenced and stitched into maps which are 100x higher resolution that those offered by Google, at extremely low cost. In some cases these maps may be used to support residents' claims to land title. By creating open-source tools to include everyday people in exploring and defining their own geography, we hope to enable a diverse set of alternative agendas and practices, and to emphasize the fundamentally narrative and subjective aspects of mapping over its use as a medium of control. We're currently starting to collaborate with a group of environmental activists in West Virginia, who are protesting mountaintop mining operations. They need to be able to map the environmental damage and health hazards with aerial photographs, but can't afford planes or satellite imagery. We propose building a cheap UAV based on tools developed by the DIYDrones.com community (several of them have agreed to help us) and have recruited 2 MIT researchers with UAV control system experience. We will be using an ArduPilot Arudino-based autopilot and a $73 remote control airplane with a $50 canon digital camera. But we also need support to travel to West Virginia with the equipment and work with Jen Osha of AuroraLights.org and other local activists to perform the flights and make sure they know how to continue flying. Going even further, we're collaborating with Nadya Peek of the Center for Bits and Atoms to develop a simple plane design to be built by activists and hobbyists at even lower cost. Nadya has created simple techniques to use household materials like potato starch and vinegar, or protein shake powder and natural jute fiber to make non-toxic, biodegradable composites. The resulting fiberglass-like material is ideal for cheap and lightweight planes, and its ecological composition fits well with our agenda of high-tech but sustainable practices. This is an exciting opportunity to repurpose a military technology (UAVs) to support grassroots activism in a community in need, as well as a chance to get DIY electronics enthusiasts involved in environmental advocacy where traditional academics and researchers cannot or will not. We are already organizing workshops in different communities to teach folks how to make their own balloon-based 'satellites' and would love to be able to teach people to make DIY-UAVs as well. http://grassrootsmapping.org/ http://wiki.grassrootsmapping.org/show/GrassrootsMappingCoalRiver

New York City, NY – The Anywhere Organ

2010-03-09T00:00:00Z

Pipe organs are incredible, awesome instruments. One incredible aspect that contributes to their awesomeness is their ability to play a space. Each space an organ resides in reacts differently, creating different tones, and essentially allowing room for an infinite variety of instruments. Unfortunately nearly every pipe organ in existence is bolted irrevocably into a wall staring longingly at fornications all day. This is why I'm creating the Anywhere Organ. I've designed a system where each note, each pipe of a pipe organ is attached to a central air supply through a hose. The air to each organ pipe is controlled by a solenoid valve articulated through Arduino. I'm writing modules to take MIDI keyboard information and translate it to the valves. Each hose is independent making for an octopus like instrument where each separate pipe can be installed with care and consideration relative to the space. This means the instrument can be installed anywhere; a park, a fire escape, an abandoned warehouse, a secret underwater cave. The pipes can be distributed to take advantage each location's specific character and personality. It also means that anyone can participate in the project and take a turn. I'd like to get people playing with the Anywhere Organ so they can see the effect space has on music and sound, so they have a public venue to fool around with music, and to have an opportunity to collaborate with other musical artists to create new sounds with it. Churches are switching over to digital music. This means they're saving the expense of cleaning, tuning, and clearing dead pigeons out of organ pipes. It's sad to see such a cool instrument phased out for the sake of cost and convenience but it's inevitable. This also means that there are entire registers of pipes for sale on Ebay for a song. I'm slowly buying these up. I'm also reaching out to the awesome music and hacking scene in Brooklyn to begin finding collaborators who want to help create new music with the system and help me find amazing venues to install the project in. Here is a picture picture showing my conception of the system installed in a park: http://sinbox.org/whereverorgan.jpg Thank your for your time. I hope the idea of this project makes you as excited as it makes me. -M@

Boston, MA (Inactive) – DIY Bioengineered Inks

2010-03-01T00:00:00Z

I want to develop a set of bioengineered inks to be used with various pen types ranging from gel pens to fountain pens. As an intern at ginkgo bioworks and avid DIYbiologist, I have access to a number of bugs engineered with proteins that result in colour production. I want to make special cultures that can then be packaged as ink cartridges to be used with ordinary pens. This would allow artists and enthusiasts to draw with awesome engineered inks. The great thing about using bioengineering to produce the colour, is that you can engineer them in circuits so to create "conditional inks". For example, using a promoter activated by high temperature in front of the colour producing gene, we can create a colour that will only be expressed when the temperature reaches 35 degrees centigrade. Besides creating different conditional inks (temperature, presence of heavy metals, milk ...), I would like to use the money to make different viscosity inks. I want to make the ink using a mix of glycerol and culture media. This means that the ink itself is a food source for the engineered bacteria ensuring that they grow well on the paper. Because normal paper contains a certain amount of bleach, it could kill the bacteria when drawn on. Should that be the case, me and Mac have already used coffee filter paper and seen the success. The money would also be used to develop new types of paper, making sure that it stays cheap and DIYable. I really want to develop this project as a DIYbiologist to be accessible by everyone. I think that if funded this project is a great segue way to teach people about the fundamentals at task: we are growing cells that produce a colour and we need them to grow. To summarize I would like to use the grant money to create a library of inks of different colours and also some conditional(e.g: become visible in the presence of metal or milk etc.), develop different viscosity inks to suit different pen types (gel pen, fountain pen...) and finally use this project to teach people about DIY bioengineering and allow them to make their own pens.

New York City, NY – Laser Tweezers

2010-01-23T00:00:00Z

How many projects are part lightsaber and part Magic School Bus combined into an awesome science adventure? First, I will build a laser tractor beam on board my BioBus. Then, during normal BioBus school visits, students and teachers from underfunded schools in the Bronx and across the country will perform their own experiments by poking, prodding, and perturbing cells using the tractor beam. I will document and publish the construction process in an open-source science education journal, allowing schools and science nerds around the world to build tractor beams of their own. Every time someone uses the laser tractor beam to hold a bacterium still while they produce a movie of cell division, and then feeds those bacteria to a ravenous amoeba, they will have no other choice but to blurt out, "Awesome!" With extensive experience building laser tractor beams and as founder of the BioBus mobile science lab, I am the only person in the world prepared to do something this awesome. I started the Cell Motion BioBus two years ago after finishing my Ph.D. at Columbia University. While at Columbia, I built two different laser tractor beam systems (a.k.a. laser tweezers) for my research on cell move, one of which is currently used in the undergraduate physics lab. After graduating with honors and building the BioBus, over 10,000 students at 50 schools across NYC and the country have come aboard our hands-on, high-tech, microscope lab and computer classroom. I've been told the introductory video on the BioBus website, http://www.biobus.org, is pretty awesome, so you might be interested in checking that out. Do-it-yourself experiments like building an economical laser tractor beam is possible because of breakthroughs in inexpensive, powerful diode lasers (e.g. skylasers.com). Most optics can either be purchased used or donated by our collaborators at NYU and Columbia. I will publish my protocol for building a cheap laser tractor beam via the open-source PASTE project journal (http://www.wepaste.org/journal.html). Safety is a concern with lasers. To forgo any possibility of student exposure, we will completely enclose the laser beam, visualizing the laser tractor beam on flat screen monitors connected to digital cameras mounted on our microscopes. Thus, actual danger will be completely mitigated while preserving the guise of danger (think big yellow DANGER LASER RADIATION signs), adding to the 'awesomeness' surrounding the project. Budget for Laser Tractor Beam ($1000 total) 100mW red laser - $399 Laser mount & enclosure - $75 Telescoping lenses assembly - $100 Focusing lens assembly - $50 Adjusting mirrors - $175 Safety goggles - $100 Misc. hardware - $101 The BioBus has proven to be an innovative, effective, and attention getting vehicle for science education. I have been named "New Yorker of the Week" by New York One and have been recognized in regional, national, and international press for this innovative approach to bridging the "science achievement gap." A laser tractor beam will be an awe-inspiring addition to our repertoire of excitement generating yet sophisticated tools and experiments.

Boston, MA (Inactive) – Tools for Improved Social Interacting

2009-12-15T00:00:00Z

I am currently working on a series of "Tools for Improved Social Interacting", which consists of various wearable devices that use simple technologies to condition the behavior of the wearer to fit better with expected social behaviors. I will then wear the devices over an extended period of time, documenting my change in behavior over that period. One intent of this project is to explore the potential for feedback and technologies to shape how we think, feel, and act. Another is to question our social expectations, trying to better understand the function and worth of them. Are there alternatives ways of interacting that leave more space for individual expression, thought, and connection? I have finished one device, a hat that trains the wearer to smile more. ( http://www.lauren-mccarthy.com/happinesshat/) While the video on this page illustrates a more humorous take on this idea, my intent is to alter the algorithm to provide more of a periodic reminder to smile than to require constant grinning, and then wear it for a while, observing the effect it has on my daily behavior and emotional state. I have two other wearables I would like to make. The first is a shirt that requires the wearer to maintain frequent body contact with another person in order to hear the world around her. If the wearer stops touching someone for too long, all the surrounding sound fades to silence. The purpose of this device is to explore the effect touch has on conversation and interactions. Linking skin contact with sound forces the wearer to make an explicit choice between heightened isolation and heightened connection. The other device is an anti-daydreaming scarf. The scarf contains an IR proximity sensor that detects if the wearer is engaged in conversation with another person. If she is, periodic reminders to pay attention and stop daydreaming play quietly from the part of the scarf that wraps around the ears. This device investigates the use of technology to shape our thoughts. The wearer's daydreams are interrupted as her attention is returned to the conversation at hand. I am currently a grad student in the UCLA Design | Media Arts program. As a student, resources are always limited and all project expenses must come out of pocket. The Awesome Foundation grant would be used to help offset the cost of materials, production and testing these devices. Though I am not currently living in Boston, if awarded the grant, I would love to find a way to share the finished work with the Boston BetaHouse community (perhaps arranging some kind of mini-show or talk about it). This is a primarily an art project, but I think it will ask some important questions that technologists, scientists, students, and everyone should be considering as we design for the future. More information about me, including a portfolio, bio, and resume can be found at www.lauren-mccarthy.com. Thank you for taking the time to read this proposal.

Boston, MA (Inactive) – Eco-pod Armada

2009-11-15T00:00:00Z

A fleet of aquatic phytoremediation interactive mobile pods has just been launched onto the East river. Each pod was built of a remote-controlled speed boat, wooden rods, empty plastic bottles, a fishing net, hydroponic plants and some duct tape (ok, a glue gun was somewhat involved as well). The pods are intended to provide an example for a DIY water remediation device that can be easily assembled and released into the polluted waters that surround us. They employ Phytoremediation – a process that uses plants to clean up pollution in land and water. Plant roots absorb toxins and pollutants and metabolize them into nutrients. The pod operators will used remotes to navigate the pod along the water’s edge, as they travels south with the currents. The boat performed as the pod’s motor, carrying around the hydroponic plants supported by the wood-net-duct tape structure. The plants were specifically selected to perform phytoremediation in the river waters. Plants such as Arabidopsis halleri and Arabidopsis thaliana are naturally equipped with extreme metal tolerance. In fact, the feed on heavy metals found in the ground or water that they grow in. What they do is also called Rhizofiltration – when water is filtered through the root mass and the roots absorb the toxins from the water. Rhizofiltration is a long process, but the little fleet of pods can be launched repeatedly (preferably on the weekends) until it cleans the water, or better yet – gets the message across. Launching and operating the pods is a recreational public activity – anyone can build a DIY pod, and launch it in the nearest body of water.

Boston, MA (Inactive) – Cotton Candy Cannon

2009-10-15T00:00:00Z

I've been building cotton candy making devices since I was ten. After a number of failed attempts, I finally produced my first (standard-output) cotton candy machine in 2007. Since then I've been working on two new designs - the insane-output cotton candy machine and the cotton candy gun. This summer I've nearly perfected the cotton candy gun design, which extrudes a constant stream of several cotton candy fibers from everyday sugar and is hand-held. Right now it's still under development, but I've proven the concept of operation through several working prototypes. Regardless, I want to take this to the next level - I want to give my sweet-shooting blaster a higher output and a longer range. Say... the ability to coat a rotating human in a cotton candy cocoon in one-three minutes. I want to color the streams of cotton candy. Three buttons will dispense food coloring into the sugar just before it's extruded. Color mixing should be possible, giving the artist machine-gunner a full palate of tooth-decaying paint. I want to see canvases painted with an edible media, people dressed in cotton that's hard not to chew on, and smiles all around.

Boston, MA (Inactive) – The Big Hammock

2009-08-13T00:00:00Z

There is a rich cultural history of hammocks within the arts, as a woven net or fabric cloth, they are simple in gesture, form and execution. Situating a hammock within a public park can elevate the social implication of that object. The Big Hammock is intended to serve the community as a simple lounge space as well as a sculptural expression. The Big Hammock created new ways to interact with and admire the urban and historical setting, complimenting the greenway as space of public leisure. The 8’ x 33’ wide hammock was located at Parcel 19 in the Fort Point Channel Parks area, on a self supporting steel frame and hung 36” high from the ground. The new suspended common ground where the individual’s weight, size and position were in concert with other bodies on the hammock. It was a social ground. The Big Hammock was woven out of 100% recycled PET rope. The rope’s length is 2550 feet (warp) and 1728 feet (weft), with a total of 4278 feet–which makes it 5.5 times longer than the Boston Hancock Tower is tall.