The Cryosphere Today is a website by University of Illinois devoted to the current state of our cryosphere. It gathers and re-represent the snow and ice data from the National Center for Environmental Prediction/NOAA. One can download the Sea Ice Animations from 1978-2006 and a custom apps for iPhone.

From Wikipedia:

“The cryosphere, derived from the Greek word kryo for “cold” or “too cold”, is the term which collectively describes the portions of the Earth’s surface where water is in solid form, including sea ice, lake ice, river ice, snow cover, glaciers, ice caps and ice sheets, and frozen ground (which includes permafrost). The cryosphere is an integral part of the global climate system with important linkages and feedbacks generated through its influence on surface energy and moisture fluxes, clouds, precipitation, hydrology, and atmospheric and oceanic circulation. Through these feedback processes, the cryosphere plays a significant role in global climate and in climate model response to global change.”

Eco-Creatures: Save the Forest is a real-time strategy game in which players use the Touch Screen to control units of woodland creatures—named Ecolis, Ecoby and Ecomon—to protect the naturally beautiful Mana Woods and recover the polluted land. All creature types have unique skills that must be strategically managed. With proper nurturing, they can evolve to learn new abilities that help complete the game’s more than 40 environmental missions. As players grow their woodland army, they must plant new trees to revitalize the woodlands and prevent deforestation.

Technology Review has a great 3-part article about the economy downturn and science of the biofuels in U.S.A.

“Now ethanol producers are struggling, and many are losing money. The price of a bushel of corn rose to record highs during the year, exceeding $4.00 last winter before falling back to around $3.50 in the summer, then rebounding this fall to near $4.00 again. At the same time, ethanol prices plummeted as the market for the alternative fuel, which is still used mainly as an additive to gasoline, became saturated. In the face of these two trends, profit margins vanished.”

Ok, this is the story. My friend Gemma advises me to make a video to create the game characters of Gas Zappers so I did it. Originally, right after I finish I want to release it here to let you guys see it but Sundance contacted me and say it got in the Short Films program, along with my other video “Because Washington Is Hollywood For Ugly People”. Here I would like to give my million Thanks and Kisses to Noah Vawter, Gemma Shusterman, John Blue, MC Paul Barman and Noah Reinhertz for all the support and hardwork.

This is crazy, I got two short films in the 2008 Sundance! This year the Festival Short Film Program comprises 83 short films representing 17 countries from 5,107 submissions, from U.S. and international filmmakers. Submissions grew by more than 15% over last year. We will be there from Jan 17 to 23, 2008, so if any of you wanna hang please email me! Also my friend Eddo Stern will be showing his works in the New Frontier On Main program too. Here are more info on my two shorts:

“Gas Zappers”
2007
directed by Kenneth Tin-Kin Hung
music by Noah Vawter

Synopsis:
Gas Zappers is a short animation about climate change. The main character, the ironically overappropriated and fuzzy polar bear, abruptly finds itself in a position to save its home living environment through dextrous maneuvers in an Al-e Gore-ical world. The idiom of the video game is exploited to challenge and illuminate the simplistic notion of quick fixes to environmental issues. Aesthetically, graphical and musical styles from the glory days of video games conjure the triumph and delight of virtual success. As the bear progresses with celebrity companions through different climate change scenarios such as Venice underwater, confrontations with bulldozers, and anthropomorphized killer oil derricks, it narrowly succeeds each time thanks to its renewable energy defenses. A narrative unfolds that, like the artists’ previous works, waggishly interrogates the spectacular mode of ecological policy.

“Because Washington Is Hollywood For Ugly People”
2007
directed by Kenneth Tin-Kin Hung
narration written and performed by MC Paul Barman
music by John Blue

Synopsis:
“Because Washington Is Hollywood For Ugly People” is a video/ animation that employs images from popular culture, political figures and imagery found in the internet. The piece adopts the form of viral advertising in a reduction of contemporary events to a cartoon like mythology while touching on issues such as identity politics, U.S. foreign policy, sexuality and power.

Both films will be playing in the Frontier Shorts Program. The confirmed schedule is:

Gas Zappers (New Frontier Short Program):
Fri. Jan 18, 1:00pm, Holiday IV
Fri. Jan 18, 11:30pm, Prospector
Sat. Jan 19, 6:00pm, Tower
Tue. Jan 22, 3:15pm, Holiday III
Sat. Jan 26, 8:30pm, Holiday II

Because Washington is Hollywood for Ugly People (New Frontier Short Program):
Fri. Jan 18, 1:00pm, Holiday IV
Fri. Jan 18, 11:30pm, Prospector
Sat. Jan 19, 6:00pm, Tower
Tue. Jan 22, 3:15pm, Holiday III
Sat. Jan 26, 8:30pm, Holiday II

For the complete film guide you can download it here

EDDO STERN is one of my favorite artisist. He specifically deals with gaming culture. Don’t miss this new show he has at the Postmasters, reception Sept 8, 2007 from 6-8pm.

Postmasters is pleased to announce the exhibition of new works by EDDO STERN opening on September 8. This is the artist’s third solo show with the gallery. It will be on view until October 13 with the reception scheduled for Saturday, September 8, between 6 and 8 pm.

Los Angeles based Stern has been involved in video gaming culture as a practitioner and theorist for many years. He is presently on the faculty at California Institute of the Arts. The works in the show are a result of the artist’s obsessive participation in online fantasy games, most recently a yearlong immersion (2000 hours played) in World of Warcraft, the most popular MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Games) with more than 10 million players worldwide.

His new works - kinetic shadow sculptures and 3D computer animation videos - use a mash-up of documentary material from online forums, clip art, YouTube videos, midi music, electronics, and hand made puppets. They mine the online gaming world at its paradoxical extremes: on one hand, an untenable perversity of life spent slaying an endless stream of virtual monsters, on the other, an ultimate mirroring of the most familiar social dynamics. The struggles with masculinity, honor, aggression, faith, love and self worth are embroiled with the gameworld’s vernacular aesthetics.

In “Man, Woman, Dragon” (kinetic sculpture), World of Warcraft is reduced to its core elements: the cult of Chuck Norris, female elves, and a slain dragon.

“Best Flame War Ever (King of Bards vs. Squire Rex, June 2004)” is a two channel 3D computer animation diptych recreating an online flame war about degrees of expertise around the computer fantasy game Everquest, as followed by the artist in June 2004. The specific points of contention may appear recondite at first glance, but gradually the unfolding narrative acquires an unexpected pathos and reveals a glimpse into the shifting codes of masculinity.

In “Level sounds like Devil (BabyInChrist vs. His Father, May 2006)” (computer animation), a teenager living with an adoptive Christian family posts the question to the online Christian forums: “Is World of Warcraft Evil ?” The Community helps him reckon with the moral and spiritual dilemmas of reconciling his life in World of Warcraft, with the strict edits of his father and the challenges of following his new faith. As a new synthetic fantasy world encroaches on the territory of an established religion, the inner workings of faith, truth and the boundaries of reality begin to unravel.

In Postmasters’ second gallery a monumental portal structure is erected. It houses a central projection sequence: found 3D animations of tunnels, wormholes, voids, and flythroughs - the iconic abstractions of computer gaming’s spatial aesthetics, a clichéd metaphor for timeless and endless transcendence.

Designer Tom Ballhatchet create this brilliant TV packaging.

via  Giz Modo

“Blackle saves energy because the screen is predominantly black. “Image displayed is primarily a function of the user’s color settings and desktop graphics, as well as the color and size of open application windows; a given monitor requires more power to display a white (or light) screen than a black (or dark) screen.” Roberson et al, 2002

In January 2007 a blog post titled Black Google Would Save 750 Megawatt-hours a Year proposed the theory that a black version of the Google search engine would save a fair bit of energy due to the popularity of the search engine. Since then there has been skepticism about the significance of the energy savings that can be achieved and the cost in terms of readability of black web pages.”

Solar One presents Citysol 2007, a clean-energy-powered festival that aims to inspire interest and support for local sustainability intiatives through, music, interactive art installations, games and workshops, and numerous other elements meant to both entertain and educate.

The music you hear at Citysol is 100% powered by Solar One’s 3.5 kW rooftop photovoltaic array and a 13 kW generator fueled with biodiesel provided by NYC’s own Tristate Biodiesel. Artists were also encouraged to pursue independent power methods for their installations and projects. Native Energy Carbon offsets are being purchased to account for extra energy expenditures.

Among the performers, a must see is the DJ Mistakes’ bicycle-powered turntablism.

Thigh Master is a servo-controlled ring of thorns worn around the thigh which pierces the user when she consumes too much electricity! I would love to see Suzanne Somers wearing it! Watch the video here.

From the official site:

While technologists scramble to develop technologies for the production and storage of environmentally friendly electricity, it is also important to address our personal role in conserving energy.

Indeed, thermodynamics shows that we can’t get energy without spending it, and while great efficiencies may be found in energy generation, it is clear that the most substantial way to solve the energy crisis is by reducing demand.

While reformulating lifestyle and habits is usually thought to be the job of media, public relations, and activism, there is no reason that technology should not be central to how we understand, consider, and change our own energy usage.

Project Thighmaster is a system that alleviates this condition by assuring that reminders to save electricity will not go unnoticed, increasing its owner’s peace of mind by setting a penalty for environmental waste.

The system consists of a personal techno-garter — inspired by the Opus Dei cilice popularized in Dan Brown’s Davinci Code — worn on the thigh, communicating wirelessly to a set of low-power sensors measuring the wearer’s personal energy consumption. If the wearer’s electricity use exceeds a certain limit, the device plunges stainless-steel thorns into the wearer’s thigh, a reminder of their complicity in the planet’s demise, and perhaps their own mortality.

Thighmaster aims to balance comfort and discomfort in a meaningful way in order to achieve sustainable change. Packaged in the form of yet another personal electronic device, the system helps people to break out of inefficient consumption patterns. But in addition to decreasing a user’s energy use, Thigh Master can also provide relief for the less easily measured — but no less real — feeling of individual powerlessness in the face of accelerated climate change.

John Doerr, one of the most influential venture capitalist of his generation who made upwards of $1 billion picking dot-com stars like Amazon, Google, Compaq and Netscapes, returns and warn us the carbon-dioxide-sputtering, gas-powered capitalism will destroy us all, and that going green may be the “biggest economic opportunity of the 21st century.”

“I don’t think we’re going to make it,” John Doerr proclaims, in an emotional talk about climate change and investment. Spurred on by his daughter, who demanded he fix the mess the world is heading for, he and his partners at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers embarked on a greentech world tour — surveying the state of the art, from the ethanol revolution in Brazil to Wal-mart’s (!) eco-concept store in Bentonville, Arkansas. KPCB is investing $200 million in green technologies to save the planet and make a profit to boot. But, Doerr fears, it may not be enough.

Watch the original video from TED.

With 3.8 billion years of research and development on its side, nature has already solved problems that human designers and engineers still struggle with. In this inspiring talk, Janine Benyus provides fascinating examples of biomimicry — the way humans mimic nature in the products we build and the systems we implement. And because the champion adapters in the natural world are, by definition, those that can survive without destroying the environment that sustains them, biomimicry can contribute to the long-term health of our planet.

MOUNT ARARAT, Turkey, May 23 (Reuters) - Noah’s Ark, built to save humanity and the animal kingdom in the face of a great flood, is being reconstructed in model form on Mount Ararat as a warning to mankind to act now to prevent global warming.

Environmental activists are behind the initiative in the lush green foothills of the snow-capped mountain in eastern Turkey, where the Bible says the vessel came to rest after a flood had wiped out corrupt humanity.

Volunteers are racing to complete the wooden vessel under bright sunshine by end-May, to coincide with a summit of leading countries next month in Germany where climate change will be high on the agenda.

Original Article via Reuters

Wow! This will absolutely change how we are gonna play games and communicate with the computer in the future. Imagine you can control your avatar to kick or jump with your mind, without even touching the joystick or any controller devices. Two Silicone Valley startups, Emotiv Systems and NeuroSky both have develop headsets that “tunes into electric signals naturally produced by the brain to detect player thoughts, feelings and expression. It connects wirelessly with all game platforms from consoles to PCs. And makes it possible for games to be controlled and influenced by a player’s mind.” It is just like the ultimate fight as described in the Chinese Wu Xia world:

HOW would you like to rearrange the famous sarsens of Stonehenge just by thinking about it? Or improve your virtual golf by focusing your attention on the ball for a few moments before taking your next putt on the green-on-the-screen? Those are the promises of, respectively, Emotiv Systems and NeuroSky, two young companies based in California, that plan to transport the measurement of brain waves from the medical sphere into the realm of computer games. If all goes well, their first products should be on the market next year. People will then be able to tell a computer what they want it to do just by thinking about it. Tedious fiddling about with mice and joysticks will become irritants of the past.

Controlling things by mere thought is a staple of science fiction. That fiction, though, is often based on a real technique known as electroencephalography (EEG). This works by deploying an array of electrodes over a person’s scalp and recording surface manifestations of the electrical activity going on under his skull.

At the moment, EEG’s uses are mostly medical. Though the output of the electrodes is a set of crude brain waves, enough is now known about the healthy patterns of these waves for changes in them to be used to diagnose unhealthy abnormalities. Yet, because parts of a person’s grey matter exhibit increased electric activity when they respond to stimuli or prepare for movements, there has always been the lingering hope that EEG might also manifest someone’s thoughts in a machine-readable form that could be used for everyday purposes.

To realise that hope means solving two problems–one of hardware and one of software. The hardware problem is that existing EEG requires a helmet with as many as 120 electrodes in it, and that these electrodes have to be affixed to the scalp with a gel. The software problem is that many different types of brain waves have to be interpreted simultaneously and instantly. That is no mean computing task.

Original Article via Economist, Msnbc also has an article about Neurosky.

Here’s a video from Emotiv:

How can Phytoplankton, the microscopic plants that live in the ocean which perform two-thirds of all the Earth’s photosynthesis and directly affects the concentrations of CO2 in the ocean, be left out in the climate simulation model for the whole time?

Global climate models are missing a good chunk of plant information that could significantly alter long-term climate change predictions. A new technique for modeling phytoplankton — microscopic plants in the upper layers of the Earth’s waters — could reveal a much more accurate picture.

“(Other) modelers have populated their oceans with three or four kinds of plants, said Mick Follows, a researcher in MIT’s Program in Atmospheres, Oceans and Climate. “We’ve represented a much more diverse community, and allowed it to have interactions that regulate it more naturally.”

Phytoplankton populations are constantly changing, which makes them difficult to predict. So the MIT researchers developed an algorithm using evolutionary principles to more accurately represent the microscopic plants. A more precise count is important because phytoplankton process carbon dioxide — a significant contributor to global warming.

Original Article via WIRED

What the hell is Photo Bio Reactor? It is an “artificial environment for photosynthetic organisms” that basically eats the CO2 from the air. And now you can build your own for $200:

I have wanted to do this a project for a long time and with earth day this year it kinda just fit timing wise. Its really a simple and quick build, yet getting the level up in bio-friendly-geek makes this all the more fun. Now I admit that I have a lacking of unquenchable aspirations to being a hugger of trees or a crusader of tofu and hemp. But I do believe in making changes so that the poor saps that come along after me might have the world a little less badly off for them. Let’s face it, we kind of effed up the whole earth thing… But in all seriousness, once we get a good strong colony established we will be doing some testing of the amount of carbon these can remove from our environment with a C02 PPM meter.

Here’s a video showing when the gadget is working:

What if we make a gadget that not only absorb CO2 but also produce energy? Technology Review has an article about supplying the world’s energy need with light and water.