Hasta La Ideas

From STEM to STEAM to…Psy? Worlds will collide on April 26, when NYU’s Stern School of Business plays host to a ceremony and luncheon for the Tribeca Disruptive Innovation Awards. Presented annually by the Tribeca Film Festival in association with the Disruptor Foundation and Mr. Disruptive Innovation himself, Clay Christensen, the awards showcase applications of and advancements in disruptive innovation theory–how simpler, cheaper technologies, products, and services can decimate industry leaders–that have spread beyond the original technological and industrial sweetspots.

Joining past honorees such as Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, the Guggenheim’s YouTube Play, and Kickstarter are 2013 disrupters including RISD President John Maeda‘s STEM to STEAM initiative, which adds art and design into the Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) quartet; fashion designer and wellness advocate Norma Kamali; K-Pop sensation Psy; and Twyla Tharp, who will receive the lifetime achievement award. Here’s hoping that those four hit and off and get to work on an even more disruptive collaborative project. The full list of honorees is below. Each will take home Disruptor Award statuettes known as “Maslow’s Silver Hammer,” in honor of psychologist Abe “Hierarchy of Needs” Maslow, who once said, “When your only tool is a hammer, every problem starts looking like a nail.”
continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Tired of ugly lightbulbs and unsightly lightswitches? Dream of dimming lamps with the swipe of your iPhone? Check out RoboSmart, a new wireless LED lighting system that that can be controlled with a smartphone, tablet, or computer over Bluetooth Smart wireless. With an eye to simplifying the typical wireless lighting setup, Ian Crayford and his team at “Automation for the Masses” startup Smart Home Labs have developed an energy-efficient, Bluetooth-enabled LED lightbulb–designed to be a direct replacement for a standard 120V screw-in bulb–and apps (iOS and Android) for controlling it.

“We didn’t just want to take an existing LED lighting design and simply bolt on a circuit board with wireless,” says Clayton. “Our hardware team set out to develop a design that would be easy to put together and cost-effective, to make this technology accessible to the masses.” In addition to on/off and dimmer switch functions, the “Smart Lights” apps allow users to put lights on timers, keep track of power usage, and set proximity lighting, which can turn on and off one or more RoboSmart bulb as the user moves within range. Want to give it go? Silicon Valley-based Smart Home Labs is launching the product with a campaign on crowdfunding site IndieGoGo: the bulbs, priced at $49 each, will ship in February.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Amidst the fruitless efforts of a nine-member entity known only as “R. Deer LLC” to swap out Santa‘s rickety old sleigh with a Tesla Model S, engineers at GE have taken it upon themselves to reimagine the jolly old elf’s ride. The souped-up sleigh draws upon a range of technologies to offer a greener, faster, and more efficient Christmas Eve journey. Among the new features are a thin cooling solution that can improve jet engine aerodynamics, air traffic management technology to help Santa and the reindeer steer clear of planes, 3-D-printed sleigh blades for greater lift and maneuverability, and a rugged new battery that can function under extreme conditions.

The sleigh frame, sprayed with water- and ice-repellant coatings, has been upgraded with GE’s high-temperature ceramic composites–enabling flight into outer space and back. Santa is on board with the extraterrestrial upgrade. “I am looking forward to flying into outer space,” he said in a statement issued by GE. “This will really save time by helping me get to destinations in different parts of the world much faster.” And the reindeer couldn’t be more pleased with the redesign, which features an electric traction motor that can take over when Dasher, Dancer, and the gang need a breather. Noted Rudolph, “Covering the entire globe can be pretty exhausting, and having the opportunity to rest along the way will help us remain in peak condition.”
continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Earlier this year, AIGA put out the call for “stories that reveal the value design creates for clients, the public and, most especially, customers” for Justified, a new kind of competition. Hundreds of entries poured in—from design firms, in-house design departments, design entrepreneurs, and freelance designers—and a jury of top designers chaired by Terry Irwin, head of Carnegie Mellon University’s School of Design, has selected 18 exemplary case studies that serve as an effective tool to explain design’s value to clients, students, peers, and the general public. Five entries made the shortlists of all of the jurors: the Feed the Future Website, Make Congress Work!, Earth Lab: Degrees of Change, HTML & CSS: Design and Build Websites, and CODA Experience Center. “In a challenging economic climate, articulating what we do has become more important than ever,” said juror Petrula Vrontikis, creative director of Vrontikis Design Office, in a statement issued by AIGA. “It is possibly the most useful skill we can master, allowing us to keep good clients and make purposeful (and beautiful) work.”

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Still from Christian Marclay’s “The Clock” (2010). Photo: Todd-White Art Photography. (Courtesy White Cube, Paula Cooper Gallery, and Museum of Fine Arts, Boston)

“I’m fairly sure, unless there are scores of movies in which the time is seen to be 11:48 at a given moment, that Marclay was limited by his source material. He also had to resort to a lot of ticking-clock action-picture scenarios, from the high-toned High Noon on down. Heist movies, time-bomb thrillers, hostage melodramas—the number of them is predictably disproportionate. Marclay returns to the more obvious ones over and over, like the Jason Statham picture Bank Job.

True, there are interstitial bits that bind some of the shots, and moments in which a character looking up at a clock are followed by similar vantages from another movie. Those are witty and brilliantly orchestrated. But it’s all fooling around with found footage, slotting it into place. Little of it is transformed the way it is in, say, the works of Guy Maddin and Terence Davies. From minute to minute (literally), there are delightfully seamless segues, surprising echoes, and excerpts in which I saw the films in question with new eyes. I just can’t conceive of watching it for longer than I did [two hours]…”

-Film critic David Edelstein, sparring with art critic Jerry Saltz on the merits of Christian Marclay’s 2010 video installation “The Clock” in a post on New York‘s Vulture blog. The Museum of Modern Art, which acquired the work last year, has just announced that it will show the work from December 21, 2012, to January 21, 2013, with a special 24-hour viewing on New Year’s Eve.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.