Awesome Foundation for Arts and Sciences and dorkbot-boston Present: Lauren McCarthy: Tools for Improved Social Interacting DATE: Fri, Jan 15, 7-9PM (Free and Open to the Public) VENUES: The talk will be at sprout’s offices (339R Summer Street, Somerville, MA – just outside of Davis Square T). It’s set back from the street, down the driveway to the right of 339 Summer Street (the “R” stands for “Rear”). Reception to follow at The Spirit Bar (2046 Mass Ave, Cambridge, MA – near Porter Square T) on Mass Ave and Creighton across the street from the Hess station. TOPIC: Lauren McCarthy will present her latest work of wearable devices. Funded in part by The Awesome Foundation, her Tools for Improved Social Interacting are items of clothing that use sensors and electronics to train the wearer to better adapt to expected social behaviors. The Tools for Improved Social Interacting are a “Series of wearable devices that use sensors to condition the behavior of the wearer to better adapt to expected social behaviors.” Guests are encouraged to bring their own projects to participate in OpenDork after her talk, a show-and-tell of people doing strange things with electricity. Art and technology projects at all stages… read more →

Are you based in Boston and want to be involved the Awesome Foundation? Want to participate as a micro-trustee to the Awesome Foundation but don’t have the money? Want to serve the interest of promoting and protecting Awesomeness in the universe? Well, now you can! I’m glad to announce today that the Boston Awesome Foundation is seeking a Dean of Awesome to team up with our existing Boston board of 10 micro-trustees. The Dean will participate with the rest of the trustees in reading/voting/choosing a winner each month (and will undertake the same Oath of Service), but will be completely freed from the usual obligations of being a micro-trustee in contributing $100 a month to our monthly fellowship award. Instead, the Dean will take on the responsibility of managing and creatively expanding our monthly award event logistics, the chapter’s online presence (blog/twitter/etc), community building with our past fellows, and other scheduling for Awesome Foundation Boston. If you’re interested in participating as the Dean, please drop a message describing your interest and what awesome things you’re involved in to tim@awesomefoundation.org by January 8th. We’ll be doing interviews then. Let us know if you have any questions!

I’m happy to announce that Awesome Foundation Boston has chosen its December Fellow! This month’s grant goes to Lauren McCarthy, who specializes in the development of Tools for Improved Social Interacting. What does that imply? Lauren writes, she’s working on a series of “various wearable devices that use simple technologies to condition the behavior of the wearer to fit better with expected social behaviors” These include: A Happiness Hat (built) – which drives a metal spike into the head at a pressure inversely proportional to how much you’re smiling (seeing it in action is out of control – check out the video) An Anti-Daydreaming Device (to be built) – a scarf that contains a heat radiation sensor that detects if the wearer is engaged in conversation with another person. While the wearer is engaged in conversation, the scarf will vibrate periodically to remind the wearer to pay attention and stop daydreaming. And A Body Contact Training Suit (to be built) – a suit that requires the wearer to maintain frequent body contact with another person in order to hear the world around her. If the wearer stops touching someone for too long, all the surrounding sound will fade to static. We’re glad to announce that… read more →

Happy Thanksgiving! Excited (and thankful for the emerging awesomeness): The Boston Awesome Foundation has just got word from Lee Altman, our November Fellow, that she’s made an initial experimental pilot launch of the pollution-cleaning phytoremediation pod in Brooklyn Bridge Park. As with most experiments, still some details to be worked out, but things are coming along. The tentative date (they’re still waiting on approval from the city parks dept) for the next prototype launch, if you’re interested in attending and meeting Lee, will be on Sunday, December 6th. For updates and details on this Sunday, Lee’s set up a Facebook invite so you can keep posted on what’s going on. If you’re in town, definitely drop by! You can follow the continuing updates on the Eco-Pod Armada project (and check out more images as the project comes together) on the handy dandy website that Lee has set up here.

Sorry for the delay, this month’s granting process ended up taking slightly longer than originally expected, but, for reasons that will become obvious in a few weeks, we’ve been swamped, cooking up some upcoming things that will hopefully do well by forwarding the interest of Awesome in the universe. It’s gonna be great. Stay tuned. Today, Awesome Foundation Boston is tremendously excited today to announce that they are awarding their November Awesome Fellowship to Lee Altman, an architect and urban designer working out of New York City. With a team of scientists, Lee has plans to assemble a complete armada of remote-controlled pods, and set them loose with a series of pilots into the notoriously polluted East River of New York City. The pods will carry a net of plants to trail behind them in the water, specially selected to perform phytoremediation — naturally filtering water through the root mass and the absorbing the toxins from the water. Her hope is to build these launches into a regular community event with plans available online that will allow anyone to build one themselves (the designs are great and lightweight: initial calculation suggests that each ship can be made for $110) Our funding will go… read more →