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Food Tracability: Article

Posted on January 24, 2011 | by admin

By this Washington Post article, it appears food traceability is set to go main-stream.

The opportunities for communicating the social and environmental sustainability behind such foods are huge. It’s fascinating how it may be the food safety concerns that drive us toward opening to transparency. – Once those doors are open, so many additional communication possibilities exist.

These ideas for the food system are also good validation for the TraceProduct.Info project I initiated as part of an Art(ists) on the Verge fellowship. More info on the project here.

systems for food tracability — Graphic from the Washington Post

Measuring & Communicating Life Cycle course online

Posted on January 1, 2011 | by admin

Registration is open for Sustainability: Measuring and Communicating Life Cycle online course through MCAD’s Sustainability program – taught by Arlene Birt.

This course teaches methods of communicating sustainability to consumers in an engaging, visual way – in order to help people understand the sustainability (or lack thereof) of products, and establish a personal connection to products’ environmental impacts.

More information on Minneapolis College of Art and Design’s website.

See Behind the Scenes at Västra Hamnen

Posted on December 10, 2010 | by admin

Come visit the parascope to ‘see behind’ into the sustainability systems in the Västra Hamnen area of Malmö. The installation is accessible today through Monday Dec. 13 [map]. The project was done as part of a artist-residency at MEDEA Collaborative Research Initiative in Sweden. More information here.

The parascope itself was developed by a collaboration between Unsworn Industries and Malmö Stad.

View the sustainability systems behind-the-scenes of Vastra Hamnen, Malmo — PARASCOPE ON LOCATION IN VÄSTRA HAMNEN. MALMÖ

MEDEA Talk on ‘Visualizing Sustainability’

Posted on December 7, 2010 | by admin

Arlene Birt presenting at MEDEA in Malmö, Sweden on Dec.10 (15:00-17:00 Central European time).

Arlene will present two projects that she’s done as artist-in-residence at MEDEA and a behind-the-scenes view on her work on how to visualize ‘background stories’. One project is a visual mapping of the sustainability-oriented systems at work within the Västra Hamnen area of the city through a collaboration with Unsworn Industries to show this information using the parascope technology they’ve developed. Another project visually communicates the benefits of bicycling – in terms of CO2 saved, money saved and calories burned.

Details on the talk here. There will also be a live-stream of the talk.

Artist Residency to Visualize Impacts in Malmö, Sweden

Posted on October 11, 2010 | by admin

Arlene has begun an artist residency at interactive center for new media MEDEA, where she will develop work to visualize the impacts/benefits of bicycling for the Västra Hamnen area of Malmö in order to encourage and celebrate a culture of bicycling.

More on the progress of the project, which will run Oct-Dec 2010, is posted on the MEDEA site.

WORK-IN-PROGRESS

TraceProduct.Info exhibiting at the Spark Festival

Posted on September 29, 2010 | by admin

TraceProduct.info is a prototype for an in-store, retail-wide system for displaying information on grocery product backgrounds at point-of-sale.

Exhibiting Sept. 29-Oct.2 at the Spark Festival.

I, Pencil – A Sustainability Story From 1958

Posted on July 17, 2010 | by admin

I, Pencil by Leonard Read, is an essay on the life cycle of a pencil. Written in a way that references all the strings attached and people involved in the back-story of this simple, everyday object; this story is an excellent text to tie products to global social and environmental concerns. And it was written in 1958.

“Actually, millions of human beings have had a hand in my creation, no one of whom even knows more than a very few of the others.”

I, Pencil is referenced in this TED talk by Matt Ridley about the collective effort that leads to innovation,

Chipotle Veggs Out Locally

Posted on June 20, 2010 | by admin

Food retailer Chipotle has an online animated map showing the locality and seasonality of produce used in their menu items.

Though buried at the bottom of the page (click ‘integrity’, then scroll down), the graphic is a good educational tool: teaching about seasonality in produce.

From the perspective of informational design, it would be great to see it containing more specific data (rather than just being a visual description): I’d like to see what % of the onion used in Midwestern stores is local in the winter.

Regardless, it’s a good place to start communicating sustainability to consumers.

Seasonal Local Vegetables — SEASONAL LOCAL VEGETABLES ANIMATION

Straw Bale Installation at MN Landscape Arboretum

Posted on June 5, 2010 | by admin | 1 Comment

A straw-bale bench and accompanying info-graphic is on exhibit all summer at the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum. As part of the Powerhouse Plants exhibit showcasing the super-human powers of plants.

finished straw-bale bench — Straw Bale bench with information graphic

Entitled ‘Waves of [Multifunctional] Grain,’ this graphic installation shows the life-cycle of grain crops like wheat, barley and rye – and how the waste product from the production of these food-grains (the straw) can be used as a local and sustainable building material.
With the information graphic, we wanted to communicate the potential for a closed-loop system inherent within this plant’s life-cycle: We grow a crop, eat the grain, and can use the waste straw for building and insluation. A perfect cycle.

Information graphic design on the back of a straw bale bench — INFO-GRAPHIC SHOWS THE PROCESS AND BENEFITS

Grocery Project at Art-A-Whirl

Posted on May 13, 2010 | by admin

A work-in-progress of the Grocery project is showing at Art-A-Whirl May 14-16.

Artist on the Verge exhibit: works-in-progress at Art-A-Whirl — WORKS-IN-PROGRESS FLIER

The installation will display a prototype of a system to trace the origins of grocery purchases at the point-of-sale.

Preview:

New Media project in-progress at Art-A-Whirl — Grocery tracking project-in-progress installation

Close up of interface design for grocery project — Tracing a lunchtime grocery store purhase

In Development: And in-store tracking system that will map a customer’s produce, meat and dairy purchases. An accompanying online portal will allow deeper browsing into the background of the product’s origin.

Author: admin