Previously . . .

Previously on mi-xology.com...

• Street Art : Art In Odd Places
• Sweet Treat
• 8 Legs left
• Linguistic nostalgia : Italo Calvino
• Elevator Moods
• mi-xology mixology : Mai Tai
• Street Art : Corporate
• How to fold a shirt.
• Never too late for number Ten
• Zoom!
• What Does That Mean?
• La Mode
• mi-xology mixology : Broadway Shake
• Linguistic nostalgia : Brander Matthews
• Street Art : REVS

More previously . . .

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mi-xology mixology : Banana Smoothie

• 3 parts milk or 1 part yogurt
• 1 part orange juice
• sugar or honey
• bananas

Blend 1 banana per 1 cup of liquid.
Sweeten to taste.
Serve in stemed glasses and garnish with banana or whip cream.

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Smart Fun

In January of this year, a group of students at MIT constructed an LED disco floor that can be programmed with different light designs. The dorm responsible for the construction has posted information, including a video clip showing some of the lighting designs (and pictures of people dancing on it!), at the following site:
http://web.mit.edu/storborg/ddf/
Future plans for the disco floor include adding a pressure sensitive feature and many happy parties to come.

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BioArt

Warning: could make some stomachs turn.

Life evokes emotion.
Many artist use the "materials" part of their work descriptions to make their points. Oil and canvas is no longer sufficent. Protein and urine is edgier.

But some Artists go further, as Randy Kennedy reports for the New York Times.

AUDIO SLIDE SHOW
When Pigs Fly: Randy Kennedy on Bioart
Mutant bacteria, genetically altered mice, cactuses with curly hair: step this way to enter the danger zone of bioart.

Some more examples found on the net.
www.patriciapiccinini.net (Biosphere)
www.idiots.nl (Contemporary Fairytales)
www.vivolabs.org (Designer Hymen Project)
www.ntticc.or.jp (Your Kidney Supermarket)
www.tca.uwa.edu.au (Tissue Culture)
artorienteobjet.free.fr (Manipulated Tattoos)
www.hhrc.rca.ac.uk (Oh! the insemination vibrator)
http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/s1094043.htm (Skin Gun)

Also see Becoming Animal.


related : REVS | Corporate | Art in Odd Places | Julian Beever

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Name the Panda

Baby pandas are spawning everywhere! The National Zoo in Washington DC had a boy on July 9th, and San Diego has just confirmed that "It's a girl".

A lot of fuss is made about these more-related-to-raccoons-than-bears types, including artifical insemination and sex education. The National Zoo's naming contest for baby cheetahs earlier this year had 13000 votes. The naming contest for the baby panda has has 14500 in one day! The panda cam has so many hits that you probably will not be able to connect. Animal Planet, however, has a mirror. There's a panda blog, mom and cub FAQs, preservation science, cub development, panda etymology, and major merchandising. These guys are so popular that the Nation Zoo is going all out. There are panda screensavers and wallpaper, a panda hotel package, and a new Asia Trails wing just for them!

But the baby panda in DC is growing up and really needs a name. [CNN][Yahoo!]

Choose from:

• Hua Sheng (hwah-SHUNG), means China Washington, magnificent
• Sheng Hua (SHUNG-hwah), means Washington China, magnificent
• Tai Shan (tie-SHON), means peaceful mountain
• Long Shan (lohng-SHON), means dragon mountain
• Qiang Qiang (chee-ONG chee-ONG), means strong, powerful

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m.i. favorites: Petrified Forest

Sometimes, we get so involved in our day to day lives that we think that we and the lives we live are the only thing that exists. And sometimes we see magnificent creations of nature and remember that we are just tiny creatures in a vast universe. The Petrified Forest National Park in Arizona is just one such magnificent creation.

Located on Interstate 40 between Gallup and Holbrook, this unpretentious park holds beautiful scenes of the Painted Desert and the Petrified Forest. While the drive through would take 45 minutes, plan on half a day for the trip. When you take the time to stop, you will be rewarded with amazing striped hills, the result of millions of years of geological history, in black, red, pink, and even purples and blues. On m.i.'s recent trip, the Blue Mesa trail, a 3/5 mile walk (some parts very steep), was an instant favorite- very much an "Alice in Wonderland" experience.

In addition to the stunning landscape, the park is also the site of an enormous natural collection of petrified wood. The present day park was the location of a lush forest during the Late Triassic Period. The trees from this forest were washed into the floodplain and entombed in silt. The ground water, rich in silica, seeped into the wood and replaced the cellulose and combining with other minerals, resulting in petrified wood. Unfortunately, tons of the Petrified Forest have been taken, either for commercial gain or by unscrupulous tourists, though there is still an impressive collection in the Park. If you visit, please take only pictures for memories. Not only is it illegal to collect or remove any petrified wood from the park, but it will ensure that this national treasure is preserved for future generations.


photographs courtesy of Beoleong Lim
images may not be reproduced in any form without permission from the artist
copyright 2005

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Vanishing Point

Ever wonder why one celebrity's nose job is more "important" than a town's education systems? Well if the celebrity is from Hollywood, USA and the town is Buxoro, Uzbekistan then it's the media's fault. In fact, this example's Buxoro has over 30% more residents than Hollywood, yet nearly no media coverage.

Vanishing Point is a projects that tries to capture this discrepancy, live! It counts the number of daily news articles applicable to each country published by the most widely-read newspapers from the G7 countries. The high publicity nations are dark, while those like Uzbekistan "vanish".

From the website:

Objective

The goal of this project is to decipher the world that news media reconfigures and to observe if media coverage, or lack thereof, is creating a new cartography.

The project is something to enjoy visually and also something to ponder about, especially if you think the Murdoch empire is nothing to worry about.

related : Zoom! | Commanding Heights | Italo Calvino | Global Connections

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Street Art : Art In Odd Places

From August 21^st to 28^th, 28 artists will place 50 pieces of public art in unexpected place around the Lower East Side.

Art In Odd Places 2005

Twenty-eight local artists examine the role of public art in 50 unexpected locations in the east village ranging from a laundromat and gumball machine to a dumpling shop and local public gardens.

New Yorkers are invited to participate by using a map to locate each of fifty different sites. Artists work in a wide variety of media including: painting, sound, video, conceptual, performance, and landscape, and will explore the meaning of public.

Various locations, Manhattan
Maps are available 24 hours daily at:
Spin City, 180 Avenue B, Manhattan

This event is in collaboration with the highly-publicized and pretty-wild HOWL! Festival this week.
The promoters are calling the HOWL! Festival of East Village Arts (FEVA) "8 days of Countercultural Euphoria" and "Direct Democracy".
Check out their event schedule and plan your attendance.



related : Corporate | Zoom! | REVS
| Illusion of Separateness

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Sweet Treat : Red Bean Mochi

So it's too hot to turn on the oven, but that doesn't mean that you can't make dessert. Here is a quick and easy way to make "mochi," a sweet, sticky rice ball with red bean paste.

Mix in a microwaveable bowl:

1 cup coconut milk
2 cups warm water
2 cups sugar
1 16 oz. bag of sweet glutinous rice flour

make sure the mixture is smooth. you might need to put it through a strainer to break up the lumps.

microwave the mixture for 2-3 minutes. take it out and stir.

repeat the microwave and stirring until the rice flour is cooked (looks kind of clear, not milky and white like the starting liquid). because microwaves vary, this might take a couple times. just be smart about it. if it is almost done, don't try microwaving it for an additional 3 minutes!
you should have a springy dough at the end of this.

drop spoonfuls of dough into a shallow pan or bowl of cornstarch to coat.

wrap the coated balls around a small spoonful of red bean paste (available in cans in Asian food markets).

make sure the balls are lightly coated in cornstarch so they don't stick to the serving plate or to each other.

and that's it!

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8 Legs left

It's a wonder that the host of "Deep Fried Live!", an accident prone Tako the Octopus, still has all 8 legs. This fun series is similar to the entertaining yet educational cooking formula that has made Alton Brown so popular. In fact, one of its creators was AB's writer for several shows. The production is call 8 Legged Entertainment. And according to the site, Tako (tako = octopus in Japanese) is not "just an ingredient", but a "fresh new multilimbed cooking talent."

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Linguistic nostalgia : Italo Calvino

Traveling, you realize that differences are lost: each city takes to resembling all cities, places exchange their form, order, distances, a shapeless dust cloud invades the continents.

--Italo Calvino

Here is an outline of Invisible Cities from an architecture class.
Also related is m.i.'s Wanderlust collection @ shop.

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Elevator Moods

Curious?

Hit the button.

Drama, suspense. What are you waiting for, the elevator?

Urbanites spend much time in the vertical transit everyday. What happens when you don't think other people are looking? And what happens in this small confined environment between strangers? Turn your speakers on, and check out elevatormoods.com.

related : NINEAEM | Zoom!

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mi-xology mixology : Mai Tai

This is a traditional Hawaiian recipe.

• 1 oz light rum
• 1 oz dark rum
• 1 oz triple sec
• dash of orgeat syrup
• dash of sugar syrup
• juice of half a lime
• 1/4 oz lemon juice
• orange juice

Shake with ice and pour over fresh ice in highball. Fill remainer of glass with orange juice. Garnish with tropical fruits and mint.

Think white sands, tropical sun, and island breeze.

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Street Art : Corporate

Street Art has been going commercial for a while.
Various artists are getting paid for the attention that they are receiving from the community. The likes of REVS and Julian Beever have been writing books and doing bill-board equivalents, legally and profitably for some time.

But perhaps corporations should do some extra market research before trying to be represented by counterculture.


View examples a la Hummer, a la Time Magazine, and a la AXE.
Altima ads were graffiti'ed over by Nissan themselves.



In fact, some artists are giving tours and selling posters.
Makes m.i. wonder about the balance between corporate dominance and the anti-corporation activism.

Entertaining viewpoints include: The Corporation, Bullsh*t! - The First Season, and Commanding Heights all available on DVD.

related : REVS | Julian Beever | Commanding Heights

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How to fold a shirt.

We all know how, but how to do it in two seconds?

I prefer my own method, which is tidier and takes less than two seconds (shoulders back, then in half), but this gimmick has a really neato video too!

Check out fold-your-shirt.com

related : How to fold a fitted sheet. | Helpful Features

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