The life of clothing

Artist Zoe Leonard

Within the city a number of environmental, economical, cultural flows move in and out and around. From water to the water shed, to immigration and GDP. Artist/photographer Zoe Leonard documented the life chain of clothing. The simple item, created for the material culture of America...doesn't begin here or end here. Her work almost could act as a photographic mapping of clothing.

"The project then expanded in scope as Leonard concentrated on tracing the circulation of everyday commodities, particularly secondhand clothing, as they were sold and resold in far-flung destinations. The final compilation includes images captured in Mexico City, Mexico; Kampala, Uganda; and Warsaw, Poland."
Dia Art

"...While exploring the neighborhood, she became intrigued with clothing resellers who purchased garments from thrift stores, sorted them by type and quality, and then packed them in large bales for export to Asia and Africa. In 2004, she traveled to Uganda to see how these items were distributed to their end users. Leonard also visited markets in Poland and Cuba, constructing a meandering travelogue that links images of mom-and-pop shops in New York with shots of jackets, pants and Nike T-shirts in African market stalls. A visual diary illustrating the flows of international commerce, the images also explore how objects are reassessed and reused in different contexts, raising questions of relative worth and the affluence and poverty that influence it..."
Time Out New York

bigger citys, bigger forests

New Jungles Prompt a Debate on Rain Forests
New York Times Article by Elisabeth Rosenthal

With over half of the world's population now living in cities, will the jungles be saved?
This interesting article discusses the issue of how farmers are leaving their deforested agricultural plots and heading to the cities, allowing the jungles to return.

Rosenthal states: "By one estimate, for every acre of rain forest cut down each year, more than 50 acres of new forest are growing in the tropics on land that was once farmed, logged or ravaged by natural disaster."

Virtual Deputies

Virtual Deputies is a new private/public program through the The Texas Border Sheriff's Coalition and BlueServo. In the past several months a network of surveillance cameras have been set up along the Texas/Mexico border. Now in the comfort of your own home, people can log in to the site and partake in the act of spotting illegal aliens with real surveillance video. Operating 24/7, the greater public can now survey and report directly to the Coalition any suspecious activies.

Groups can also form to turn the cameras on their own communities with the local Virtual Neighborhood Watches...

The Frontiers of Mobility

How does nature move? What is the purpose of movement? What is the infrastructure of this capacity and how are the parts designed? What are the impacts and incentives? What are the feedback loops, schedules, participants, sizes, shapes, seasons?

Communication, Reproduction = Expansion.

What can be learned, understood by looking at human mobility through the lenses of pollen, seeds or migratory routes? Particle movement, electricity...air.




photo credits

Media and the automobile

Identity, expression, advertisement, protest, exclamation.
The auto has vehicle for thought.

How does the automobile allow for self expression and how much of it is determined upon the this ears model designer? What sort of information is placed upon the automobile for expression? What is being told, sold, expressed, questioned?

Bumper sticker, graffiti, advertisements, tribute, initials, love relationships, anger, humor, ownership, phone number, cleanliness, additions/alterations, color, lights, sound, tinted windows.

in memory of fresh breath

Why do people discard their gum near the front door?
While living in NYC it's hard not to notice the constellations of darken gum blots on sidewalks. By looking closely one can begin to understand that the concentration of gum patches occurs near the edges of buildings and the door entrances.

Do people find the edge of buildings more comfortable to throw their gum at? Or are the standing there and drop it? What about at the front doors, do bad breath weary folks discard old gum in coming or going? Is this a new age of urban gum trays since the demise of the ashtray?