Spotted by Marcela Benassi Fernandes, ESAMC Coolhunt ‘10, Brazil.
Although it shares its name with another interesting project surrounding decision making and computer Deep Green is a robotics project by the Robotics and Computer Vision lab in Queen University Canada. The project seems like something that would be found in a modern day John Tradescant the elder’s cabinet of rarities. Or it could be the first step towards the robotic version of a Vincent Lauria. This project is part of the Robotic Pool research field and has as its aim of producing a robot that can compete with and beat the best pool players in the world. Its name is derived from Deep Blue, the computer program that beat chess grand master Gary Kasparov in the late 1990s. The research field is focused on pool because as they say it’s a game of strategy, accuracy, the playing field is static and must come to rest before you can engage with it again and it’s a popular game. By visualizing how the computer lines up its shots its now taking the notion of Augmented Reality beyond just giving information on people and places and things. This is enabling decision making and action not unlike another project with the same name.

Yolande Dominguez is a Spanish artist who always expresses here art in a polemic and provocative way. One of her last artistic interference was a “post debate”. She stuck orange posters all over Madrid downtown, where people could read: “Young and good looking girl offers herself to”. Then comes a list of traditional “female obligations”, like getting pregnant, taking care of the child, being elegant and nice at social events or pretending not to see the husband infidelities. So this is the offer of the young and good looking girl. However, please, also have a look what she asks in return. That makes also a long list: a pair of Loewe purses every year, 3 pairs of Prada shoes, a Chanel dress, a Dior coat, a Cartier ring, a Mercedes SLK car etcetera.

Memoria Viva is a Sao Paulo schools project with children working as neighborhood historians. The children interview the oldest living persons in their ‘barrios’, rescuing neighborhood memories – and preserving them in books. Discovering the origins of the names of the people around you, of the streets you walk through. Asking parents and grandparents where they came from and how they arrived here. At first around 300 school children participated in this educational community sponsored by Bunge Foundation. Now the initiative is spreading across major parts of the South of Brazil.

Bankers are not thought of fondly these days and this will not change anytime soon. They have effectively undermined the collective platform of social trust on which all societies are built. This platform has been severely damaged and it will take some time to mend. More attention is also being paid to the ones who have fallen prey to this misuse of trust. Thereby making everybody more conscious and aware of each other. Consequently collective anger and distrust reigns, sometimes volcanic but often just below the surface. (Click on Read Why It’s Cool for more)

The world’s cruelties that are committed every day and the voices of the survivors are buried beneath numbers and statistics. The world is a dangerous place, but the stories of those who live in the most dangerous places of the world should not be forgotten or romanticized. Through various art projects we encountered we saw the urgency and the need for a transnational dialogue wherein people were no longer numbers and where their humanity was no longer obscured by statistics that could only tell part of the story. By now we have all seen Hans Rosling’s debunking of what the statistics on the developing world actually say. He opened up another avenue of conversing with what we in the former west see as the developing world. (Click on Read Why It’s Cool for more)

This is Andre Sousa, a young graduate in Design from Portugal, applying for an internship: “I am extremely communicative, brimming with initiative and self-motivation and more organised and far-seeing than the Secretary of State for Economic Planning… Also, I have a ‘guru-like’ command of all soft wares, including some that have not even been invented, plus a mastery of 17 languages, including 5 dead ones and 6 dialects of as yet undiscovered peoples”. The company did not react (yet), but several others appreciated the point Andre wants to make.

Due to the modification of the Turkish Constitution the use of the veil at school is no longer forbidden. As everyone knows this caused an intense turmoil, because the government is now showing to be more Islamic oriented. But a minority within the young generations of the Islamic community seems to have found a special balance: they wear the veil and dress with very modern and colourful clothes. They already have a nickname: Islamic rockers.

Having group parties with friends and friends of friends who already have the H1N1 flu. This is actually happening in the UK and USA already, but might go global – as long as the Mexican Flu does not become really pandemic and dangerous.

Reflect is a luminous board embedded in a table. It monitors conversations via microphones and shows a visualisation of the current state of the conversation using arrays of colour LEDs. Reflect registers conversation’s moods and turns. Its display is visible for all participants. It functions as a mirror of the conversation, without suggestion the next turn. Reflect also intends to act as a public shared memory that describes recent and past moves in the conversation.

By Maria Cristina Pavarini, Milan & Patricia Mereilles, Sao Paulo
In many parts of the world a modern father generation is on the rise: happy to go to the park with the kids, interested in school meetings, working parttime or working from home, to be in the best position to spend more time with their kids. Maria Cristina Pavarini observes that this trend is also on the rise in Japan, one of the most traditional masculine modern cultures. Have a look at www.fathering.jp where the Japanese cool dads meet. Patrica Meirelles ads to this observation, that these cool daddies need their cool gear, of course. KidKustoms (Pinstripe Prep) created a new design for baby toddlers, the Rodler, providing the possibility to include Bluetooth, ID caller, DVD player, iPod dock and baby bottle warmer. Cool for mum, of course. But also excellent toys for dad.