Amy Franceschini and some colleagues started a site based on the belief that “art can be a catalyst for social awareness and positive change”. Hmmm. Or is social awareness and positive change a catalyst for art?

Chicken before egg.

Anyway, I like (some of) their commentary and found this post might be a sign (ha ha) of things to come:

The project intersects with recent public debate in Copenhagen about air pollution in the city. In collaboration with Senior Scientist Jørgen Brandt from The National Environmental Research Institute in Denmark a first prototype is developed for making an indicator that can be placed in the city and display local levels of pollution as well as pollution forecasts on individual streets. The project holds an open source script for displaying data from the Internet in a variety of forms.

I like the information awareness and creative use of technology for health/security, but there also seems to be a whine or similar noise that cuts into the effectiveness of the free-soil signal. I mean how ironic is it that so many of these “back to basics” advocates require you to use Macromedia Flash to get their message? Roll up your pants and stick your toes in the ASCII, as my mother used to say…

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