One of the cool cultural Olympiad things happening around here for the 2010 Winter Games is an interactive light exhibit which makes patterns in the sky with 20 spotlights along False Creek. We can see these from our house on Bowen Island. They are part of an interactive art installation called Vectoral Elevations. Very cool, and you can play too! Make your own pattern online and submit it. There’s a good chance we’ll see it as we have been completely entranced by these lights the last few nights.
Sunday afternoon a small group of my neighbours here on Bowen Island gathered to inaugurate an improv group. All I had was a bunch of exercises culled from the web, some eager players and a space. And that was all we needed. After a few warm ups, we got into some evxercises and then played a few scenes. At least half of the group of eight were experienced actors, several of whom were comfortable with the openness of the structure and others who struggled a little. It was cool to see us hit some real high points (especially during on …
The view from the Rockefeller Foundation meeting room, looking south towards the Empire State Building. Today I worked in this location with friends Willie Toliver and Kelly McGowan supporting the work of a group of executive leaders in the New York City municapl administration. I was struck by how, despite the responsibility and magnitude of influence these people have, that they are nonetheless human beings – vulnerable, falliable and authentic as the rest of us. Here is the poem that was created from the checkout. We are just poor weak human beings, Resisting the call Because we cease and desist …
Father Brian, Photo by Peggy Holman The Open Space community has lost one of it’s stalwart elders, Father Brian Bainbridge, a Catholic priest and corporate consultant from Melbourne, Australia. Brian was a dear friend and colleague and offered much to the shape and form of Open Space although his contributions were quiet and behind the scenes. He trained and taught many, many Australian Open Space facilitators, wrote an informally published ebook about his experiences creating and Open Space organization in his parish and was a stalwart for the integrity of the process, curious in the multiple ways self-organization and complex …
And then just like that, you hop a plane from Johannesburg, stop after 8 hours in Dakar for refuelling. Take another 9 hours to arrive in New York, take a cab into the city with a great driver who hails from Guinea and is going back there to work on the democratic elections this spring, and you get dropped in front of a small boutique hotel on Madison Avenue. The air is cold and crisp and the city seems to be in a good mood. The woman at the check in counter at The MAve Hotel directs me …