Nathalie Miebach: Art made of storms
A unique artist who makes silent weather patterns tangible in her work, and even turns the results into musical scores.
Artist Nathalie Miebach presets her Art made of Storms
Every artist has something unique to offer, but some art forms exceed the norms in an exceptional way. The work of Nathalie Miebach is anything but typical.
This instructor and maker of art holds two master’s degrees and has participated in dozens of solo and group exhibitions. Being a lover of art, science and music, Miebach found a way to take her vigorous passion and combine all three. In her latest series: “Sculptural Musical Scores” the result is baskets made of reed wood turned weather models with a musical twist.
Weather to be an Artist
Miebach makes use of a basket’s horizontal and vertical elements and carefully constructs 3-dimensional grids of weather data based on real-life weather patterns. Miebach has a long-time fascination with weather, and in her work the natural phenomenon we call storms are transformed into sculptures and musical compositions.
Miebach’s process always starts simple, with data collection using the Internet and supplies she accumulates at the hardware store. The result, however, is a mathematically complex mix of beads and colored bands. Although the tangled sculptures are complicated and sophisticated, every single detail represents something.
The Music of Nature
Components that may be indicated in Miebach’s sculptures include moon phases, air and water temperature, temperature ranges and tide levels. Each color, bead and band symbolizes a weather element that can also be read as a musical note. Using the weather data she collects, Miebach weaves together one of her intricate sculptures and then composes them into real musical scores.
“These pieces are not only devices that map meteorological conditions of a specific time and place, but are also functional musical scores to be played by musicians,” Miebach explains on her website.
“My work focuses on the intersection of art and science and the visual articulation of scientific observations. Using the methodologies and processes of both disciplines, I translate scientific data related to astronomy, ecology and meteorology woven sculptures. My method of translation is principally that of weaving – in particular basket weaving – as it provides me with a simple yet highly effective grid through which to interpret data in three-dimensional space.
By staying true to the numbers, these woven pieces tread an uneasy divide between functioning both as sculptures in space as well as instruments that could be used in the actual environment from which the data originates.”
Weaving Numbers into Sculptures
“My method of translation is principally that of weaving – in particular basket weaving – as it provides me with a simple yet highly effective grid through which to interpret data in three-dimensional space. By staying true to the numbers, these woven pieces tread an uneasy divide between functioning both as sculptures in space as well as instruments that could be used in the actual environment from which the data originates.
Central to this work is my desire to explore the role visual aesthetics play in the translation and understanding of science information. By utilizing artistic processes and everyday materials, I am questioning and expanding boundaries through which science data has been traditionally visually translated (ex: graphs, diagrams), while at the same time provoking expectations of what kind of visual vocabulary is considered to be in the domain of ‘science’ or ‘art’.”
The video is from the TEDtalksDirector YouTube channel, posted on the 21 Oct 2011.
For more information about this artist and to view samples of her work, visit nathaliemiebach.com.
Read MoreCreativity versus climate change
What if creativity and smart marketing could be combined to help inspire people to lead a greener life? James Alexander shows how it could be done.
“I’m a naive Sagittarian optimist and I see a world of people helping one another to achieve their potential in a beautiful environment.
Others see a world to market to. And they are good at selling to it.
Take cars. They sell the seductive promise of a lifestyle. They sell on speed. They sell through oozing sexy sounds. They sell freedom. In short, they sell desire, and we cannot resist.
But in a resource constrained world, they are contributing to a problem of alarming magnitude.
Today, right now we are presiding over the first mass extinction of ants on this planet for 65 million years. And yet whilst almost all of us understand this, the truth is that in the developed world, very few of us have materially changed the way that we live.
And why might this be? In communcations terms, activists lobby, but their message does not appeal to many. Scientists, well they know the data, but their analysis and the prognosis tend to scare and paralyse rather than mobilise.
Politicians, business leaders and even celebrities often preach, and none of us like being told what to do. And as for us, we are all just too busy leading very complicated, complex lives and just juggling often competing priorities.
But perhaps great creativity can help us find a path through. Great creativity is astonishingly, absurdly, rationally, irrationally powerful.
Great creativity can spread tolerance, spread freedom, can shine a spotlight on social deprivation. Great creativity is the men maker that puts slogans on our t-shirts and phrases on our lips.
What if great creativity could be used to help inspire people to lead a more sustainable life? To turn it from a chore to a pleasure. To move it from being something we feel we ought to do to something that we want to do.
To make leading a greener life a little more cool, a little more desireable.
One such initiative that’s doing its bit to help on this is Green Thing, a community, a not-for profit created by Tedster Andy Hobsbawm and Pentagram partner Naresh Ramchandani Two wonderful people and creative marketeers that I’m lucky enough to work with.
Green thing aims to use creativity to inspire people to lead a greener life.
Remember the car? Here’s a little scrap of Creative Antidote: (shows video – “The Day Gusty Decided to Walk”)
Green Thing provides an Inspiration Feed: Stories, music, film, poetry and things both created and also curated, to help make people smile, think, want, act to make a difference.
Like these gloves I’m wearing. Lost single gloves, found around the world, sent in to Green Thing, lovingly mended and restored, and then marketed as something altogether more wonderful (glove love)
Or this t-shirt, found in the back of a cupboard, saved, and given a new lease of life.
Or this rather delicious light switch that we spied in Japan.
The science is done, the moral imperative is obvious. Creativity can play its part to make a difference. So this is a call, a plea to the wonderfully talented Ted Community – let’s get creative, and let’s do it soon.”
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Comment on this on the forums
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Presented to TEDtalks on 29 Oct 2011
Read MoreSomething for Halloween?
Once you’ve finished carving your Pumkin, get some more ideas for Halloween
with this Skull makeup art tutorial by Florida-based makeup artist eRaness,
including a rather novel idea for your cell phone.
eRaness is based in Miami Beach and works for Special Fx Makeup.
Have your say on this topic on the Forums…here
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Learning from a Barefoot Movement
An extraordinary college that re-evaluates wisdom with extraordinary results
In Rajasthan, India, an extraordinary school teaches rural women and men — many of them illiterate — to become solar engineers, artisans, dentists and doctors in their own villages.
Called the Barefoot College, it’s a true story that demonstrates how creative community can be. Its founder, Bunker Roy, explains how it works.
“Don’t listen to the World Bank… listen to the people on the ground, they have all the solutions in the world. I’ll end with a quotation from Mahatma Ghandi: “First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you… and then you win.”
Have your say on this topic on the Forums…here
Read MoreOK Go: This Too Shall Pass
This Too Shall Pass: Rube Goldberg Machine
“This Too Shall Pass: Rube Goldberg Machine” was the second video done for OK Go’s album “Of the Blue Colour of the Sky”. The single was released in January 2010 and the band made the unusual decision to create two official videos for the album, both of which premiered on YouTube.
The first video records a live performance of the song in collaboration with the University of Notre Dame Marching Band. For the second the band wanted “a giant machine that we dance with”.
It features a four-minute sequence of a song being played in time to the movements of a giant Rube Goldberg machine built over two storeys of a warehouse.
Rube Goldberg and Heath Robinson Dance in their Graves
Rube Goldberg is the American equivalent of Britain’s Heath Robinson. American inventor and cartoonist Rube Goldberg (1883-1970) was famous for his cartoons of intricately complicated over-engineered machines that manage to perform very simple tasks in hundreds of unnecessary mechanically inspired movements.
The sequence is carefully orchestrated but appears to be a single shot, following the convoluted route of objects along the machine. The contraption consists of more than 700 household objects which create a route estimated to be over half a mile long.
Parts of the machine are synchronised in time with the music, with members of the band singing alongside the machine and being shot at by paint guns in the grand finale.
This Too Shall Pass on YouTube
The video “This Too Shall Pass: Rube Goldberg Machine” appeared on YouTube on 2nd March 2010 and was viewed over 900,000 times on its first day, and reached 6 million views in six days…it has now been viewed over 30,876,540
times.
It was named both “Video of the Year” and “Best Rock Video” at the 3rd annual UK Music Video Awards
The Band: OK GO
The lead singer of the band Damien Kulashwas was attending the Interlichen Arts Camp to study graphic design and while there met, met the bassist Tim Nordwind who was there to study music. The name “OK GO” was inspired by their art teacher saying: “OK…Go! while they were drawing.
Kulash and Nordwindmet the band’s former guitarist and keyboardist Any Duncan in high school, and their drummer and percussionist Dan Konopka in college, and launched the band in 1998.
In 2005 Andy Ross – guitar, keyboards and vocals, joined them and replaced Andy Duncan.
Directed by James Frost, OK Go and Syyn Labs. Produced by Shirley Moyers. The official video for the recorded version of “This Too Shall Pass” off of the album “Of the Blue Colour of the Sky”. The video was filmed in a two-story warehouse, in the Echo Park neighborhood of Los Angeles, CA. The “machine” was designed and built by the band, along with members of Syyn Labs ( http://syynlabs.com/ ) over the course of several months.
You can share your views on this video or the band OK Go on our music forums:
To find out more about the making of the video, the an in-depth behind-the-scenes setup of the warehouse can be seen at:
http://www.okgo.net/this-too-shall-pass-rube-goldberg-machine/
OK Go on Tour http://www.okgo.net/shows/
Read MoreWangari Maathai – the Tree Lady of Africa leaves a legacy that will benefit millions.
Wangari Muta Maathai (1 April 1940 – 25 September 2011)
The Tree Lady of Africa
Wangari Maathai the Tree Lady of Africa, founder of the Green Belt Movement
Kenya has declared two days of mourning in honour of Wangari Maathai, Africa’s first woman Nobel peace laureate, who died on Sunday of cancer. President Mwai Kibaki also announced that Maathai will be accorded a state funeral.
Messages of condolence have been pouring in from across the world in honour of this dynamic woman who inspired so many and was to become known as “the Tree Lady of Africa”.
Maathai was the driving force behind the pioneering Green Belt Movement that organised rural women in Kenya to plant trees, teaching them that not only would this combat deforestation and soil erosion but it would also help generate local income, education and resources.
Since 1977 more than 40 million trees have been planted.
Environmental and Political Activist
Environmental and political activist Wangari Maathai was born in Ihithe, a village in the Central Highlands of Kenya in 1940, where she began her education. She later studied as a boarder at the Mathari Catholic Mission in Nyeri, becoming fluent in English. Completing her education there with the highest grades in her class, she was granted admission to the only Catholic high school for girls in Kenya, Loreto Girls’ High School in Limuru.
Airlift Africa
She was one of about three hundred Kenyans chosen to study at American Universities, in September 1960 under a program funded by the then United States Senator, John F. Kennedy through the Joseph P. Kennedy Jr. Foundation. This initiative was to become known as the Kennedy Airlift or Airlift Africa.
She studied in the United States at Mount St. Scholastica and the University of Pittsburgh, where she first experienced environmental restoration as environmentalists in the city were pushing to end the city’s air pollution.
Having completed her studies in America, she returned to Kenya to a job as research assistant to a professor of zoology at University College of Nairobi.
She arrived to find her post had been given to somebody else, something she believes was because of gender and tribal bias.
After a job search of two months, Professor Reinhold Hofmann, from the University of Giessen in Germany, offered her a job as a research assistant in the micro anatomy section at University College of Nairobi.
In 1967, Hofmann encouraged her to study further in Germany, in pursuit of her doctorate. She studied both at the University of Giessen and the University of Munich
First East African Woman to Receive PH. D.
In 1971 when she was granted a Doctorate of Anatomy at the University College of Nairobe, she became the first East African woman to receive a Ph.D.
During the 70s she became involved in various civic organizations including the Kenya Red Cross Society, the Kenya Association of University Women, the Environment Liaison Centre and the National Council of Women of Kenya.
Through her experience with these various voluntary organizations she realized that the root of most of Kenya’s problems was environmental degradation.
The Green Belt Movement is Born
On June 5, Maathai led a procession of the National Council of Women in Kenya (NCWK) from Kenyatta International Conference Center in downtown Nairobe to Kamukunji Park on the outskirts of the city where they planted seven trees in honour of community leaders. This was the first “Green Belt” of what was to become the “Green Belt Movement”, an environmental non-governmental organization focused on the planting of trees, environmental conservation, and women’s rights.
2004: First Environmentalist to Win the Nobel Peace Prize
In 2004 she became the first African woman and the first environmentalist to win the to receive the Nobel Peace Prize for: “her contribution to sustainable development, democracy and peace.”
The Norwegian Nobel Committee announced:
“Maathai stood up courageously against the former oppressive regime in Kenya. Her unique forms of action have contributed to drawing attention to political oppression – nationally and internationally. She has served as inspiration for many in the fight for democratic rights and has especially encouraged women to better their situation.”
Marco Tempest: The magic of truth and lies (and iPods)
Marco Tempest - the magic of the future today
Marco Tempest began performing at a very young age and by the age of 22 had captured the prestigious New York World Cup of Magic. This launched him into the international spotlight.
He now has a full diary and a nomadic itinerary that sees him appearing throughout the year at shows and major events right across the world (including a TV series in China).
He calls himself a virtual magician and refers to his work as “Magic for both sides of your brain” and sees the magician as being “the one who makes dreams real first, before technology can get there…”
Marco embraces the latest technology recognising its potential in the creation of this magic. He uses his skill as a communicator and performer to combine high-tech computer-generated imagery, video, music and stagecraft to create his own memorable unique and magical moments for his audience.
Watch and enjoy.
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