Posts tagged with "Work"

I wrote an article about how to organize a community swap/barter meet for Shareable

By Shira | Feb 4, 10 12:47 PM

Shareable, a website that "tells the story of sharing,” invited me to write a how-to article for their site and I seized the opportunity in the hopes of inspiring similar efforts in other communities.

Read the article: How to Throw a Community Swap Meet

New Ithaca Freeskool Mushroom Hunt Video

By Shira | Jan 12, 10 11:58 AM

Renowned local fungi expert Carl Whittaker led a Mushroom Hunt and Identification on August 30th, 2009 as part of the Ithaca Freeskool summer session, and I finally got around to editing the footage. Enjoy the beauties of the Danby State Forest while learning about many species of edible and inedible mushrooms.

Mushroom Hunt and Identification - Ithaca Freeskool Distance Learning from Shira Golding on Vimeo.

Our 2nd Annual Shirari Week

By Ari | Nov 30, 09 10:49 AM

We took last week off from most of our regular work so we could focus on big and/or neglected projects. Here's some new stuff to check out, if you want to see the fruits of our labor:

Made and launched a site for Frac Attack and arranged our world premiere (Dec. 10 at Cinemapolis in Ithaca)
Event outreach and site updates for Share Tompkins (next swap is Dec. 12th at Southside)
Posted and tagged photos of natural gas drilling for Shaleshock
A new look for Shirari.com!! (Not done yet, but don't worry, there will be bunnies.)

Basically, we still worked the hard the whole time, and barely left our computers. Whoo! It wasn't all work though - we also went to NYC to hang out with Meg and Kevin and see Devendra Banhart, and we hosted a Dacha-licious mostly-vegan Thanksgiving. Shira wrote and recorded a new song which is not up on her MySpace yet but here's the link anyway, and I wrote 32,876 words in November - not a novel yet but it's on its way. And now that we're done with our working break, it's back to work again. Happy Monday everybody.

Fresh off the Wordpress: Frac Attack

By Ari | Nov 28, 09 10:31 AM

$fracattackhome-launch.jpg$ I'm sure Shira will post something more detailed later, but I'm excited about a new Wordpress site we just set up yesterday, so I'll write about the tech for now!

Frac Attack: Dawn of the Watershed is up at fracattackthemovie.com. It's an evolving site (the About page hasn't been made yet, for example!), so keep checking it if you want to see it grow. We'll be adding production info, credits and thank-yous, press coverage, and, after our world premiere at Cinemapolis on Dec. 10, the film itself, so people can watch the whole thing online anytime. It is, after all, an advocacy video, and we believe in free culture. This whole project is about getting the word out about natural gas drilling so we can protect New York state!

We set the whole thing up yesterday. We've been doing more and more Wordpress sites for clients and I wanted to do one for us and see how long it would take to put up something attractive and functional. Here are the features of this little site, built in one day:

It makes use of a partnership with a local, related advocacy organization (Shaleshock; I update their website, among other things) to provide maintenance-free Take Action and background info links.
This site has AddThis social bookmarking and send-to-friend functionality, and is already collecting stats via Google Analytics. We're also using a Facebook fan page and event listings (which we link to liberally) to help people get the word out about the film on Facebook.
It's serving up a trailer hosted on social networking sites, saving us bandwidth and providing a range of online viewing options.
Graphics, and the template itself, have been designed to not need updating: The left sidebar auto-updates as authors blog and add links and pages. The right sidebar is designed to not need any updates while sending traffic exactly where it's needed, though its auto-updating Flickr badge showing photos from the production (and soon, our Premiere, and house screenings!), which keeps it feeling fresh.
Applying our ethics to our tech choices, we chose the free, open-source Wordpress, which I installed on our MayFirst hosting account. (MayFirst is an affordable membership-based tech organization that's a great hosting solution for progressive folks with a lot of websites.)
To save on labor time (and, if this were for a client, costs), we used a free Wordpress theme by Eric Crooks, slapped a header on it that echoes our poster design (thanks to Joe Fisher for the amazing photography!), changed up the colors and fonts a bit to work with the film's look and feel, and put most of our efforts into careful content creation, fleshing out the site with essential pages and carefully-chosen, useful sidebar links. A few hours later: Presto, a website. Hardly any coding to speak of. We ♥ Wordpress.

"A Recipe for Change: Documentaries on Food" - My Most Recent Article on MediaRights.org

By Shira | Sep 24, 09 04:15 PM

Check out my new article on food documentaries. It's kind of a survey/opinion piece and I'd love to know what you think!

Read the full article:
A Recipe for Change: Documentaries on Food

Here's an excerpt:

These days it seems like green is the new black. From designer grocery bags to eco-tourism, popular culture has finally embraced environmentalism and, for better or worse, begun coopting it with profit-driven campaigns. Regardless of how you feel about capitalism, the good news for mother earth is that changing your daily habits to lower your impact is no longer wholly dismissed as radical, hippy behavior, at least not by people in blue states. Core to this cultural paradigm shift is food. Americans are making the not-so-giant-leap in logic that what we eat affects our health and the health of our planet, and documentary films have played a significant role in getting us here.

In 1976 Americans were reeling from the Vietnam War and Watergate. The utopian visions of the sixties were fading memories and food was already firmly established in the collective psyche as a “product” – fast, cheap and out of control. It was in this context that filmmaker Frederick Wiseman released Meat, a cinema verité portrait of what was, at the time, one of the country’s largest slaughterhouses. Years before animal rights activists were capturing the disturbing conditions at factory farms with hidden camcorders, Wiseman invited Americans to meet their meat through his nuanced filmmaking. (Read more)

And, the article got a mention on Ithaca's Food Web, a new blog about local food - thanks Alison!

New Videos for freeDimensional

By Shira | Sep 24, 09 02:08 PM

More shorts from the freeDimensional Wasan retreat...

Providing for Artists in Residence Through Sharing and Bartering in the Community from freeDimensional on Vimeo.

Negotiating the Balance Between the Roles of Artists and Facilitators from freeDimensional on Vimeo.

Defining Community from freeDimensional on Vimeo.

Fundraising for the Arts from freeDimensional on Vimeo.

Connecting the Arts and Human Rights Worlds and the Role of Emerging Art Spaces from freeDimensional on Vimeo.

I just finished making this movie for the Ithaca Area Poets

By Shira | Sep 15, 09 09:39 PM

Our friends Josh and Jeci organize monthly open mics/slams for Ithaca Area Poets. They're applying for a local arts grant and thought having a video of one of their events might strengthen their submission. So they asked me to make a 5-minute piece and in exchange they hooked us up with many beautiful baskets of fruits and veggies. Yay for swapping! Here's the video - I hope they get the grant!

New sites, new photos, new art

By Ari | Aug 14, 09 01:51 PM

Some recent work and updates:

The Amazing Hope Machine - a site about our friend Max's theatre work, with art by Matthew Duncan

Vintage Lucy - my mom's new vintage clothing shop; she's moving on from eBay. It's all used clothes, so it's good for the environment, and it has a vegan section, too!

Fundamentally Wrong - just started this blog about people doing messed up things in the name of god and religion

Lots of new art and photography and videos on Flickr

I've been blogging for freeDimensional

I post a lot of links and timely stuff (Ithaca and NYC events etc.) on Facebook and Twitter

And Shira and I have been posting a lot of great links on Delicious

Peace!

Useful way of thinking about work

By Ari | Aug 11, 09 10:42 AM

This infographic doesn't factor in bartering and working for free but it's useful for thinking about ways to generate cash... via Urban Cartography

fD Outreach: Wasan Retreat 2009

By Ari | Aug 5, 09 04:15 PM

fD outreach: wasan retreat 2009
Originally uploaded by arimoore

Shira and I work for freeDimensional, an international network that fosters collaboration and resource-sharing between activists and art spaces. I recently became its Director of Communications. Fun! One of my first big projects has been helping to coordinate the follow-up documentation and outreach of our Wasan Retreat 2009.

We used Flickr and other social media including the Ning I set up for fD to record the happening, and to digest all we learned there so that it will be of use to a wider audience. Over time we'll be posting more and more videos and texts, but even now, you can see photos, videos, info on the amazing people who were there, and other coverage online. Check it out and join the Ning if you too care about free expression and the power of culture to change the world!

Hosting Activism in Art Spaces - A New Video for freeDimensional

By Shira | Aug 4, 09 09:39 AM

Working with footage from freeDimensional's 2009 Wasan retreat, I put together this 8-minute video, which has been submitted to the Commonwealth Foundation's Group on Culture and Development:

Hosting Activism in Art Spaces from freeDimensional on Vimeo.

Planning to Change the World 2009-2010 Planner

By Shira | Jul 30, 09 10:42 AM

I had the privilege of designing the cover for the new planner created by the New York Collective of Radical Educators (NYCoRE) and the Education for Liberation Network. Today is the last day to pre-order your copy for the discount price of $14.00.

Last year's planner was awesome and I think the new one will be even better!

Planning to Change the World is a plan book for educators who believe their students can and will change the world. It is designed to help teachers translate their vision of a just education into concrete classroom activities.

Planning to Change the World is an imaginative and innovative idea in the field of education. It is something that teachers all over the country who have social consciences will find useful because it will give them an opportunity and a framework for putting into practice what they believe. I hope it will be widely adopted.
–Howard Zinn, author of A People’s History of the United States

Recent design and illustration work

By Ari | Jul 26, 09 09:25 PM

I just posted a bunch of new stuff on Flickr, if you want to see some of my recent design and illustration work. Well, it's not all recent, it's just stuff I haven't posted online yet.

This is what is up

By Ari | Jul 21, 09 10:22 AM

Our garden is thriving, but slowly - all we've harvested so far is some little kale leaves. But there are little green tomatoes growing larger, and everything is huge and leafy and healthy, so I hope vegetables are on the way. In the meantime, we've been getting veggies from the coop, the farmer's market, the Share Tompkins swap meets, and friends. We hope to get more into foraging, too - we just got a big bag of chanterelle mushrooms from a walk in Treman State Park with Danila and Lea.

Housing-wise, I'm still obsessed with yurts. I made a spreadsheet outlining a three-stage budget that would allow us to buy a 20' yurt and hook it up with hot water and a woodstove and all that good stuff. I think it's doable, though it would take longer to make it livable than I'd like. But I'm impatient, and even this slow staging is faster than building a house out of wood.

Sometimes, I think: wouldn't it be easier to just get a mortgage? Yes, it would. We could do that. We could buy an old fixer-upper or a very small house, and move right in. But then we'd be selling our souls to a bank, and we're just not into that idea. We want self-sufficiency, independence, autonomy - and I don't think a 30-year commitment to a capitalist institution would help us accomplish that goal.

Anyway, we have to take it slowly, because we don't have land. We have two beautiful, wonderful, exciting possibilities on that front, and are slowly figuring out if either of them will work. And in the meantime, we're thinking about how to make our renting life cheaper - do we take in a housemate? Do we move into a group house? We're not sure, but it's nice to have less pressure as we figure it out - there are no real timing crunches here, just slow thinking and exploring.

Work is going well - we're busier than we've ever been, but on a limited number of very exciting projects. The folks we're working with are lovely and amazing, as always. And we're still managing to spend a lot of time working with our activist friends on volunteer projects. Really, a lot of time. I'm actually feeling a tiny bit burnt out (I blame it on my lyme disease...) and am having to scale back somewhat, take fewer things on. But I feel like we're reaching a sustainable level of activity.

Even so, I can not wait until we're rent-free! This is what the housing thing is all about. How do we avoid paying rent (or mortgage payments)? Imagine how much money that is in a year. Imagine you don't have to make that money, or that if you do make that money, you can put it toward whatever else you'd like. That's freedom. You shouldn't have to pay to live.

Before they settled on a name for it, our friends at the Dacha referred to their venture as their "freedom project." I think that is so apt - here we all are, figuring out ways to buy our freedom. It is hard work, but a beautiful journey.

Video Interviews from the 2009 Emerging Art Spaces Retreat on Wasan Island

By Shira | Jul 20, 09 03:54 PM

Meet Alma Khasawnih of the Makan Art Space in Jordan from freeDimensional on Vimeo.

Meet Pierre Mujomba of the Kamalenga House in the Democratic Republic of Congo from freeDimensional on Vimeo.

As I mentioned a few posts back, Ari and I recently helped facilitate and document a retreat for emerging art spaces which explored the intersections between the arts and human rights. As part of the video documentation I filmed interviews with all the participants, which are now online thanks to Vimeo. You can watch all the interviews on the freeDimensional Ning and check out pictures on Flickr.

Photos from freeDimensional's Emerging Art Spaces Retreat on Wasan Island

By Shira | Jul 11, 09 12:55 PM

Ari and I went to Wasan Island in the Muskoka Lake region of Canada to help facilitate and document a retreat for people working in emerging art spaces around the world. Organized by the nonprofit network freeDimensional and supported by Breuninger Stiftung Foundation, the week-long convergence provided an opportunity to connect, relax and delve into the interconnections between art, freedom of expression and human rights.

Despite my role as documenter - I was taking photos and shooting video for a large part of the time - I was still able to connect deeply with the group and with the island. It's a beautiful place that allows people from very different geographies to find common ground.

Check out the photos and stay tuned for video...

An island in Canada, a tick bite, a beach in Israel, a cup of coffee in our livingroom

By Ari | Jul 10, 09 07:59 AM

Shira and I just got back from a two week trip. First there was a week on Wasan Island with our friends from freeDimensional. fD was holding their annual retreat. Last year Shira and I went along as participants, and this year, we were involved as paid staff. We facilitated some sessions, offered one-on-one consultations, and are continuing to document the whole thing with photos, video, and Twitter and blogging. You can read my blog here, and my fD Tweets here. It was a beautiful experience, of course - I think being on Wasan is very, very special, and essential to fD's development. As we continue our follow-up coverage I'm sure the dreamy awesomeness will coalesce into something more coherent than I'm managing here, now.

After our week in Canada, we got on a plane to Tel Aviv - we were headed to Haifa, Israel, to attend Shira's grandmother's 80th birthday. On the plane, I felt so terrible I was worried there was something wrong with me. When we visited Albany a few weeks ago, I was bitten by a tick, but it wasn't until we were in Haifa that the symptoms of Lyme Disease showed themselves. I spent a couple of days with a fever over 100°F, (37.8°C) and then antibiotics saved me. Yay medical technology. And yay having doctors in the family! They don't even have Lyme Disease in Israel, so the hospital would have cost a lot for nothing. Instead, Shira's dad backed up my internet-aided diagnosis and helped me get medication. Did you know that many people who get Lyme Disease get a red target-shaped rash around the bite? It seriously looks like a target. It is very, very weird, but a very helpful signal, as if the tick is leaving you a note saying "this right here is why you feel like your whole body is broken." Thanks, tick.

So, I missed Margalit's birthday, but I hear it was awesome, involving a custom-designed and drawn Pictionary-style guessing game invented by our nephew Eli, and a tour of a botanical garden, and dancing. Shira's posting photos and videos on Flickr, so keep an eye on her photostream if you want to see the cuteness. The parts I was conscious for included a drive to Tel Aviv, where we had dinner at a restaurant on the beach, and then went to a modern dance performance that we all enjoyed. Shira and her brother Amit have been working on a film project with Margalit, and Shira took some footage of her one night, also on a beach.

Israel continues to mystify me. I see it usually as an outsider, and am aghast at the politics, the religious struggle, the violence. Going in and out of the country, the security checks frighten me, and when I'm there, the ever-present soldiers and machine guns scare me as well. But in Israel, there is a curious peace. Most of the time, it's just people living their lives. One can forget that the stakes are so high, that there are blind spots. Shira and I walked on a boardwalk and she climbed down some rocks to the beach, while I waited up top. I watched a woman walking her dog, not letting him stop to sniff and greet other dogs. A man rode by on his bike playing Arabic music on a boom box, and a group of kids shouted happily at him and danced as he passed. The lights of the city glittered along the shore. Peace, at that moment, in that place. We were all coexisting, enjoying the warm summer air and the sound of the sea.

Anyway, here we are back in Ithaca. I'm glad to be back. Sid and Zora and Snow got visits from Isaac, Marina, and Jeremy and Teresa while we were away, and when we came back we found them happy and chill, and our apartment clean and cozy. We're so blessed, with these friends, this community. Today we have another long day of catching up on client work and activist projects; I have a couple of phone meetings and some deadlines and am wondering how I'm going to get it all done. Right now, I'm enjoying a cup of coffee on the sofa with Snow. It's good to be back.

Fresh websites, hot off the Wordpress

By Ari | Jun 19, 09 10:04 AM

Recently I've made the switch to Wordpress, where I used to use Movable Type. I like that they've been committed to Open Source from day one, whereas Six Apart, the company that makes MT, has always seemed more profit-driven to me. I was shocked at how easy WP is to install, and at how deliciously comfortable it is to use. I'm able to search for, install, and configure plug-ins from within the WP admin area. Same with themes.

Many of the folks we work with are on a very tight budget, or have no funding at all, so being able to create an inexpensive or free site very quickly is something I've been wanting to learn to do for a long time. With WP, I can make a beautiful site that anyone can keep up-to-date in just a few hours. Finally.

What this has meant is that suddenly I'm able to do much more work for many more people, much more quickly. Here are a few recent sites I've made or worked on. These folks are really cool, visit their sites to find out more about them!

Service Women's Action Network - SWAN needed a new logo as well as a new site that they could update easily and use to reach out to potential funders. This site is the result - it features a Vertical Response mailing list, Google Analytics and AddThis sharing. Before it was even online they were talking to Congress with their new logo printed on new business cards. Go SWAN!
Using Their Words - This site is an activist effort by a woman we've worked with over at NYCORe. I initially helped her polish a Google Site and created this new illustrated header for her. Then we found out that her radical web host, MayFirst (to whom Shirari Industries is now migrating!) wouldn't even support her domain pointing to Google, since they're so commercial. So we moved the site onto their server and installed WP. I set up the front page to look less bloggy since the site's primary function is serving up radical curricula - and I used tags and categories to help visitors find the kind of lesson plans they're looking for.
AEI Convergence 2009 - This site was particularly fun because it was a barter! In exchange for making my friend Emily's logo and putting together this quick WP, I got my bike fixed and she and Shira and I had a lovely meal together that she cooked and brought over one day. I love the little site, too - it's simple but it does what she needs it to do, and she can keep it updated easily, herself. And what a cool convergence she's planning! I love the photos she's adding to the site.
Share Tompkins - This one was particularly fun because I wrote the resources page, too. Well, the first edition. Now others have been invited in and hopefully the page will grow and evolve. The site is made using the free, hosted version of WP, in keeping with the Share Tompkins ethos of making life more sustainable and affordable through sharing resources. Using the free version of WP gives us less control over the site's appearance and functionality, but the important thing is to get this content out and usable - not to have it be 100% beautiful and customized. That might come later - this is only the beginning for this fledgling mutual aid network. Our friends Jason and Joe are working on an even more useful sister site, where members of the network will be able to list haves and wants, to facilitate easier sharing and bartering. In the meantime, folks can check out the many trade networks listed on the resources page, or they can come to our community swap meets.
freeDimensional - This site is still evolving, and has made some real progress lately! It's the only one here that's not a WP site - I built the splash page with some simple HTML, and the rest of the site is a Ning. Shira and I are very organizationally involved with these folks - we're both on their steering committee and we may soon have staff titles. Not sure - it's a horizontal network, and we're still discussing as a group how to best handle roles and responsibilities. But what all of this involvement means is that Shira and I have been intimately involved not only in the visual design of the site, but in creating the content on it, and even in making the organizational decisions that go into how the network presents itself and how it functions. It's an exciting process, with all of us volunteers and freelancers and staff people figuring out how to share power and how to talk about it. Mad props to Tricia Wang for her feedback on the site - I think we're making more and more sense, and becoming more and more easily navigable and comprehensible, and useful to everyone in the network that depends on the site.

That's it for now! Many more sites are currently in the works, and I'll share them when they're complete. Also on the table is a massive overhaul of this site right here, Shirari Industries. We're experimenting with a very new, flexible, open-feeling site navigation that we hope will be easier for us to keep up to date, and which will give a much better idea of all of our current projects. If there's anything you want us to keep or change or add as we do our redesign, please leave a comment with your ideas! We'd love to hear from you.

Check Out My Article About Food, Inc. at Documentary.org

By Shira | Jun 11, 09 02:44 PM

I had a chance to see a preview copy of the new documentary Food, Inc. and interview the Director, Robert Kenner. This is my first article for the International Documentary Association's blog, and I'm psyched to get a chance to write about a topic so close to my heart:

Here's an excerpt and you can read the full article online:
Change: It's What's for Dinner: 'Food, Inc.' Takes on Agribusiness

In a world dominated by corporations, it is no surprise that the American food system has been hijacked by the relentless drive for profit. Under the pretexts of affordability and convenience, modern industrialized agriculture has consistently ignored the unintended consequences of their "efficient" practices on our health and livelihoods, the environment and other species.
Equally implicated is the United States government, which simultaneously subsidizes and fails to adequately regulate the agriculture industrial complex. This reality, explored by Frederick Wiseman in his 1976 cinema vérité documentary Meat and more recently by Nikolaus Geyrhalter in the unnarrated montage film Unser täglich Brot (Our Daily Bread; 2005), is more explicitly tackled in Robert Kenner's Food, Inc., which opens June 12 in New York City, Los Angeles and San Francisco, and nationwide on June 19.

The issue of food and the many ways in which it affects our lives is an enormous one, and the film is a broad undertaking, exploring everything from the health impacts of ever ubiquitous high-fructose corn syrup (one out of three Americans born today is expected to develop early-onset diabetes), to water and air pollution caused by intensive factory farming, to human rights violations perpetrated against undocumented workers by mega corporations like Smithfield Foods, the world's largest pork producer. Viewers are aided in processing all of this information by motion graphics created by Big Star NYC, which worked with Kenner to create an entertaining and helpful visual language for the film.

Ultimately, Food, Inc. is an examination of free market capitalism's disregard for anything other than the bottom line. "This is a film that's about more than food," says Kenner. "It's really about corporate consolidation and irresponsibility and about the relationship of these companies with government. It's not that different from what happened with the financial crisis. These companies have been totally irresponsible and at the end of the day, we're the ones who pay the price."

No bosses here: A book from the past to help us work more equitably today

By Ari | May 1, 09 09:17 AM

No bosses here: A manual on working collectively and cooperatively by Karen Brandow

My review

This book was published in 1981 but activists today would do well to read it. It touches on many aspects of working in collectives, cooperatives, and other non-hierarchical arrangements, from bookkeeping to running effective meetings, to dealing with feelings and working against power and privilege. It's a quick read, well-organized and full of useful examples from collectives around the US. I think it's appropriate I finished reading it on May Day!

View all my reviews.

Making stuff and doing things

By Ari | Apr 25, 09 09:49 AM

So much has been happening, and I don't think we've posted a general update in a really long time. So for those who are interested...

Shira and I went to Winter Camp in Amsterdam with our friends from freeDimensional back in March. The event was a convergence of networks held by an organization that studies network cultures. People from all over the world came together to work within their network (on whatever their network works on - tech manuals, volunteerism, women and technology, whatever) and the Institute of Network Cultures watched us work and engaged us in learning what networks really are, how they're different from other cultural institutions, and how networks can work together in metanetworks.

We learned a lot. I'm always so challenged and excited by meeting with activists from all over the world - it really shakes up my ideas and understanding and makes me open my mind to other ways of thinking and doing. The hackers and open source folks in particular really spoke to me. I love the idea of technology being free and for the people, and am realizing that I want to help make that happen.

Our freelance business has been booming, which is nice, because traveling costs money! We've been working on some amazing projects for some very cool clients. The people we work with are all non-profits, culture workers, activists, and other progressive folks, and sometimes when I'm doing layout I'm also reading the text I'm formatting and thinking, "holy shit this is awesome!" (I'm talking about you right now, Scenarios USA!) Our clients really are helping to change the world.

However, a lot of work also means tough scheduling - sometimes a project goes longer than planned or an event date changes and suddenly a production schedule that was manageable becomes insanely difficult to navigate. There are only so many hours in the day! Recently I had three long documents (a gala journal, a curriculum, and a tech manual) due on the same day, over and over again, the deadlines constantly shifting as the projects got drawn out with extra edits and last-minute content updates. That was rough. But as I said, our clients are awesome, and even late nights and early mornings and weekend emailing is cool when it's for such amazing projects. It's nice to not only get a check and some nice print samples at the end of a project, but to really feel like whatever you've contributed to is going to make life better for people.

Ahimsa, our vegan intentional living project, is going so well! It's a very exciting process, meeting with people to create sustainable and affordable housing alternatives - the coolest thing is that we have no idea what we'll end up with. This open-endedness is a hallmark of our project; everyone in the group has been so flexible about the final product, which is really freeing. It's life as a design problem: Here are our needs, here are our resources; now how can we meet those needs with those resources? Easy! You go step by step and you can't go wrong. Diana Leafe Christian's Creating a Life Together has been such a help to us. She's helped give us confidence that even if people drop in and out of the project, and even if the project changes and takes on new forms, or splits, that that is progress and that is forming community. (For instance, there seems to be a greater need in Ithaca for increased access to and understanding of mutual aid, so Shira held a meeting that built on other community efforts to help that to form. This is a totally separate project from Ahimsa but is in other ways very related and overlapping. It's cool to see the "multiple centers of initiative" that Diana says are an indicator of a healthy community, in action, right here in our town. This flexibility is more freeing and useful than thinking anyone can come up with a single, perfect solution that will meet all of everyone's needs.)

Where is the project at right now? We're in between meetings, which we've been having every 2-4 weeks in Ithaca. These are consensus process meetings where we've been crafting a shared vision statement and educating ourselves about our housing options. We're gearing up for a spring retreat, where we'll camp out, do some storytelling and make food and music together, and have a bunch of big dialogues that will further define what we're all creating. And we're looking at properties, in case we find something we could afford outright that will allow us to escape the rent race so we can all save some resources and work together more easily. We're thinking hard about whether we want to pay a premium to be downtown in closer physical proximity to the greater community, or get more for our money by living out in the sticks. I'm leaning towards living out in the woods somewhere, personally. I want to do some building! Also, I dig how cheap it is to do natural building and I would like to influence policy by making alternative structures and getting them approved by building inspectors. Every dent we can make in the industrial housing complex with livable, healthy, DIY alternatives, is a step toward equitable housing for us all.

Shira and I have both been very productive creatively lately. Shira played at a house show at Ghost Cat Collective, and we both had work in an Ithaca Underground art show at the Underground Pirate House. Thanks to Ithaca Freeskool, I led a two-session workshop on DIY web design, and Shira's been going to a great photography group. I've been so inspired lately by all of the self-publishing and activism and organizing I've seen around me. When I have ideas sometimes I just write them down and don't act on them - but lately, I've been trying to just act immediately. I made a little zine I've been meaning to make for years, and some Ithaca buttons, and have been passing them around, curious to hear what people think of them so I can make them better.

Finally, it's spring here in Ithaca! I'm taking great heart from the warm wet smells of earth and blossoming trees, and from the sight of green life coming up from the ground so effortlessly and abundantly. I love how the seasons change, and how each transformation impacts us. We've been able to go out in just t-shirts, no hoodies! We've planted seeds! The windows are open and the cats are joyously sunning themselves in windowsills!

This has been a long and rambling post and I've barely covered half of the things that have happened in the past few months, but maybe the above gives you an idea of how deliciously, marvelously, inspiringly jam-packed our iCal is. I feel so grateful every day that I live in such a vibrant (local and global!) community that's challenging me on so many levels to create a better society in the here and now.

Going Green, One Film at a Time

By Shira | Apr 15, 09 08:56 PM

My interview with Larry Engel, Co-Author of the recently released Code of Best Practices for Sustainable Filmmaking, was just published on MediaRights.org and featured in their newsletter to over 20,500 members:
Going Green, One Film at a Time

Here's a choice excerpt:

Shira Golding: Do you think documentary filmmakers have a particular responsibility to be sustainable?

Larry Engel: Yes. Those of us from Filmmakers for Conservation and the Center for Environmental Filmmaking, are very much in the forefront of contact with the most exotic and fragile environments. We’re in the face of animals who are threatened and near extinction, and we make stories about them. It’s important to do that so that the public sees how beautiful and precious our world is, and exactly how fragile it is. Yet, for many many years, it didn’t matter how many Land Rovers you had – it didn’t quite matter what imprint you made on the land or the animals. And that didn’t make any sense.

This came to me many many years ago when I was working with a dear friend of mine and Co-Producer, Tom Lucas, out in Yellowstone. We had done an hour-long film for the National Wildlife Federation and PBS called Wildfire. We were tracking the ‘88 Yellowstone fires, and in the winter we went back to see how the park was doing, and we witnessed many many elks starving.

One of the researchers with whom we were working said, “You know, we’ve been doing studies about the caloric impact of human contact on animals from the back-country, and we learned that one contact can burn up hundreds of calories. Even if the animal doesn’t run or leave or do anything, just the stress and awareness, the adrenaline, consumes calories. In a marginal year, human contact could make the difference in the life and death of individual animals.”

At that point Tom and I looked at each other and we said, “Well you know what? We don’t really want to film anymore of these animals.” And she said, “You can keep filming them, but back off. Let’s make sure to use blinds and work in the trees so we minimize contact, instead of clomping around among hares and elks and buffalo. Let’s change our behavior.” Tanya really emphasizes that we have to change the behavior and sensitivity of the whole filmmaking world, from distributors, to programmers, the filmmakers, the manufacturers, all through the line.

Because if we can’t come around to figuring out how to create a sustainable lifestyle as filmmakers, then we’re doing a disservice to our subjects and therefore also to the audience.

Take a read and let me know what you think!

Freelance America

By Ari | Feb 27, 09 09:22 AM

The economy has definitely hit a lot of people we know, but good freelance gigs still abound. Here are some headlines on these developments, from this month's Freelancers Union newsletter:
The New American Job: Are freelance and part-time gigs the future? (Newsweek)
More businesses using freelancers, experts say (CNN)

Shirari's Peace and Love Podcast #6: Economies

By shirari | Feb 4, 09 02:33 PM

Tune into the Wednesday, February 4th edition of our podcast to check out our snappy new format! We've broken the show into three segments to make it easier for folks to selectively listen to parts they're interested in:

Local Updates, in which we tell you about wonderful and exciting new developments in our local area, the Fingerlakes region of New York. You'll hear about permaculture organizing, the new Ithaca Freeskool calendar, and a new vegan group. (We can't wait to go to their pizza party on Friday!)
Be the Change, in which we give you two tips, both of which, now that we think about it, are pig-related. (And yet, somehow, relevant to a general audience. We think.)
Discussion: Economies, in which we look briefly at some issues with non-profit funding, venture capital, microlending, and global capitalism, as well as with socialism and other isms, before giving an overview of different interesting alternatives (featuring copyleft, coworking, freeganism, CSAs, relocalization, and other awesomeness).

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Links mentioned in the show:
Hook up with other Fingerlakes Permaculture folks at flxpermaculture.net
Ithaca Freeskool
Ithaca Zine
Ahimsa Ecovillage
Ithaca Vegans Yahoo Group
Vegan Chai is so over bacon!
Ari's Twitter
Find a local CSA at localharvest.org

If you listen to our podcast, tell us what you like about it, and what could be improved! And if you don't listen to our podcast, why not? Tell us what you might like to hear, so we can do a better job of it. Thanks and peace to all who tune into this edition!

Previously:
Previous show notes

"Sometimes It's Hard to Breathe" - I finally edited my footage from our trip to India in 2006

By Shira | Jan 18, 09 06:28 PM

Sometimes It's Hard to Breathe from Shira Golding on Vimeo.

Shot in India over three weeks in November 2006, Sometimes It's Hard to Breathe is an experimental, personal travelogue. For more context, check out our photos from the trip:

Shira's India Photos
Ari's India Photos

freeDimensional: Birthing a web 2.0 child

By Ari | Jan 12, 09 06:44 PM

I hope executive director Todd Lester of freeDimensional doesn't mind if I quote him with the title of my post here, but this is how he described the collaborative experience of launching fD's new site this weekend, and I think it's particularly apt: We all birthed a web 2.0 child. You can go meet it here: freeDimensional.org.

freeDimensional is an organically-growing, partnership-based organization that links activist culture workers (journalists, artists, writers, and the like) who are facing repression and censorship with support services, including safe haven placements in artist residency programs. The power of the organization is in its social networks around the globe. These programs, these services, these people, are all out there - the challenge is only to connect everyone so we can all engage more effectively in mutual aid.

I met Todd way back at the end of 2005, through Shira and their work around the Media That Matters Film Festival. He needed a site, and at the time, I remember seeing that they'd need something much more interactive in the future, but that for now, I could make a small, informational site to give them a web presence while they built their organization. For a long time I thought that in the future we'd hire some big web design firm to come in and create some perfect glittering website for them that would magically fulfill all of their many needs.

In the interim, I had a bit of an awakening about the internet, via my understanding of web 2.0 (collaborative, online) technologies. The internet can be an extension of our physical lives, a way for us to transcend space and time. Our blogs and Flickr photostreams and Tweets and Delicious links and Facebook updates are extensions of and aids to our imperfect human memories. Email and messaging and Skype and the like allow us to connect with each other across great distances, often instantly. We're all learning how to use the internet most effectively to meet these great needs, and in the process, I believe we're gradually realizing our commonality, and creating new solutions to age-old problems that formerly seemed unsolvable. (I have a theory about web 3.0. If anyone reads this and is interested, comment and I'll write about it!!)

So when fD finally outgrew their little site and was ready for something new and more useful, Shira and I were ready to craft a solution for them. It was time for them to clarify what they were all about, explain it well, and then provide an online platform for the incredible social networking that had been happening in the real world. fD was ready to go web 2.0.

Shira made a short video intro for them and helped them rework and refine their mission statement and other organizational copy. I helped them look at their many technology options and to select free services that will allow them to grow and extend their reach with minimal cash outlays. The site is built on the Ning custom social networking platform (the free version for now). We're transitioning the mailing list to Vertical Response and their lovely nearly-free non-profit program. Shira chose the beautifully high-res-capable video service Vimeo to host fD's intro video. We integrated Twitter, Flickr and YouTube feeds into the site. We'd settled on Network for Good to collect donations a while back. fD also has accounts on other social networking sites, which we've been using to meet and collaborate with even more people around the world.

These free and low-cost services have limitations - you're fitting your own complex self into a sometimes-imperfect template, and you don't have the same level of control over your content that you'd have if you were hosting the whole thing on your own server. However, they make an extraordinary array of sophisticated communications features accessible to organizations that don't have tens of thousands of dollars to drop on a new custom-crafted interactive site every few years. The internet is changing so fast that production cannot keep up with the technology if we follow old models of design and interaction. This solution can and will grow and evolve, flexibly adapting to and taking advantage of new technologies as they come.

This project would not have been possible if Shira and I, or fD, worked in a more mainstream and less openly collaborative way. Shira's and my cooperative approach to design problems and fD's trust and willingness to experiment made for a very organic design and production process that drew on the strengths and knowledge of everyone involved. This web 2.0 child we've birthed together reflects that process, and is stronger for it.
freeDimensional.org »

Shirari's Peace and Love Podcast #5: Top 8 Activist Strategies

By Shira | Dec 16, 08 05:51 PM

December 16, 2008 - 71 minutes - 95.5MB

After an update about Ithaca, Shaleshock and our vegan ecovillage project, we discuss our top eight best practices for changing the world and conclude the show with some ideas for a d.i.y. anticapitalist holiday season.

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Show links:

Some Places Worth Donating To (there are so many more, here are just a few):

Arts Engine supports, produces, and distributes independent media of consequence and promotes the use of independent media by advocates, educators and the general public. Donate
East New York Farms! is a collaborative project whose mission is to organize youth and adult residents to address food issues in their community by promoting local and regional sustainable agriculture and community-based economic development. Donate
freeDimensional is an international network that advances social justice by hosting activists in art spaces and using cultural resources to strengthen their work. Donate
The Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN) strives to assure that each member of every school community is valued and respected regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity/expression. Donate
Just Vision is a nonprofit organization that informs local and international audiences about under-documented Palestinian and Israeli joint civilian efforts to resolve the conflict nonviolently. Using media and educational tools, they raise awareness in order to encourage civic participation in grassroots peace building. Donate
Scenarios USA is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization that that uses writing and filmmaking to foster youth leadership, advocacy and self-expression in under-served teens. Scenarios USA asks teens to write about the issues that shape their lives for the annual "What's the REAL DEAL?" writing contest, and thousands have responded with their raw and revealing insights. Donate
Shaleshock Citizens Action Alliance is a grassroots group of Finger Lakes residents who are concerned with understanding and protecting our communities and environment from exploitation by the energy industry with regards to drilling for natural gas in the Marcellus Shale. Donate

Previously:

Radical solidarity - an artist's statement

By Ari | Dec 11, 08 01:05 PM

It looks like Socialist Party USA is going to publish some of my more activisty artwork in the upcoming International Women's Day edition of Socialist Women. I've done some custom illustration for them and even laid out the whole magazine several times, but this is the first time they'll be publishing the art I make for my own activist purposes. Since it's heavy on animal rights and sustainability and the issue (like most issues...) didn't have any content along those lines, the editorial collective asked me to write an artist's statement to go with the work. I sometimes have a hard time asserting myself as an earthy-crunchy animal-loving hippie in the socialist community, and people have a tendency to get pissed when one draws connections between the oppression of humans and animals, so writing this was a challenge! I really welcome comments from folks - let me know what you think.

In progressive activist circles we often talk of solidarity, and with good reason - unexamined privilege and blindness to the oppression of others makes social change difficult. If we come to activism with open minds and open hearts, we'll find allies everywhere, and our unity will advance the causes of peace and social justice. Fortunately, over time, the circle of compassion has widened further and further. People really seem to be learning to look beyond our differences and understand and identify with each other's struggles on an international level. And finally, activists working in all areas are realizing that this compassion needs to be extended not only to all humans but to the home we all share, our earth.

However, many people are still reluctant to open the circle of compassion to non-human animals. Even in the most radical queer or feminist or socialist spaces, mentions of animal rights are often met with ridicule or patronizing requests that we stick to "real issues" like human rights. Though animals feel pain and pleasure, are sentient enough to have families and desires and agendas of their own, and there are vegan alternatives aplenty to their exploitation, animal rights, we are told, will have to wait until after the revolution.
This pattern is an old one, repeated time after time throughout history. Sojourner Truth was told that black women's rights had to wait until after white women's suffrage had been secured. Bayard Rustin was denied credit for organizing the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom because he was queer. Every time we disregard one person's rights to advance someone else's rights, we may think we're being strategic, but we're also oppressing someone and holding back their struggle.

The means are the ends. We need to be the change we wish to see. It's time for a radical new solidarity that acknowledges all oppressions and all struggles as interconnected. Believe it or not, there are no limits to compassion. Perfection might not be attainable, but it is entirely possible for each of us to begin to abstain not only from the oppression of other humans, but from exploiting animals as well.

Animals may not be able to communicate in a language we can understand, but they have many allies in their struggle: vegans, finally coming to accept and move beyond our species privilege. We may be part of the "circle of life" but our species is capable of great things, including forging new paths that don't include the strong preying on the weak.

I'm an activist / artist living in a progressive town where my partner and I are organizing a back-to-the-land vegan housing collective. I work with local groups and folks online to do community organizing and create art and outreach materials around issues of sustainability, radical solidarity, nonviolence, and economic justice. You can see my work, find out about my current projects, and check out our blog and podcast at shirari.com.

Shale Shocked

By Shira | Dec 6, 08 03:05 AM

There are many factors that contribute to the fertility and productivity of land that are beyond a landowners' direct control. One of the major issues we need to consider in New York State is natural gas drilling. Ever since the development of more commercially-viable drilling techniques around 2000, major oil companies have been going to town on the Marcellus Shale. One of the main ways they get access to the land is by leasing land and drilling rights from local landowners. While this can be a good source of income for struggling farmers, there are numerous environmental impacts including the distribution of toxic chemicals into the soil and water table.

We've been getting involved with Shaleshock, a local resistance group, and we recently designed their logo and a new website. Check out the site to get up to speed on the issues and take action. One thing you can do now is comment on the DEC's draft scope...

The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation has released a draft scope document that outlines how they will regulate natural gas drilling of the Marcellus Shale. In addition to commenting at public hearings around the state, you can submit your comments via letter or email by December 15th.

Submit comments to:
Attn: Scope Comments
Bureau of Oil & Gas Regulation, NYSDEC Division of Mineral Resources
625 Broadway, Third Floor
Albany, NY 12233-6500

Or email to dmnog@gw.dec.state.ny.us with "Scope Comments" as the Subject

Download the pdf of the scope

Art for feminist, socialist healthcare

By Ari | Nov 11, 08 04:07 PM

Thanks to Liz Henry of Composite: Poetics and Tech for using an illustration I did for her excellent post, Argentinian feminists in the early 1900s.

You can also see and comment on the art here: "socialist heath care" on Flickr. This art was originally an illustration for an article in Socialist Women, about a woman's struggle in the U.S. healthcare system. If anyone out there is still afraid of socialists, read about Socialist Party USA's wonderful healthcare campaign.

"The role of trust in high tech work- The case of Freelance Web-Designers in NYC"

By Ari | Nov 10, 08 03:36 PM

A while back I participated in a study by a Columbia sociology student named Matthias Thiemann, who has written a 120 page thesis in German based on his research. He's translated a four-page section of it which may be published as a chapter in an upcoming book, which I really got a kick out of and wanted to share here: The role of trust in high tech work- The case of Freelance Web-Designers in NYC (PDF)

Some highlights that I really identify with (and I guess I should, since I was part of the sample):

In sending away clients to cheaper, better suited competitors or building little devices free of charge, freelancers establish a reputation of putting the clients’ welfare first, generating trust. Such acts of gift-giving then can lead to overcome the volatility of market-demand by generating referral networks for the freelancer and binding the gift-recipients for the long term.

I totally do this! I learned this from Tekserve, where I first worked when we moved to NYC - and it's not something I do to get something out of people, with the expectation of returns. I do it because, like Tekserve, I care about the people I'm working with, and about their projects, and if I can do something that's perhaps small and easy for me, but of great value to my clients, I'll do it in a heartbeat. This is also why Shira and I sometimes refer clients to other designers - if we know someone who can do a given job better or more economically for some reason, we pass it on, because it's in our client's interest. And rather than losing us clients, often those same clients come back because they know we did them a good turn.

In the sample, the more successful freelancers deserve special attention to the communication process, attempting to include the wishes of the customers and providing them with the feeling that they are in command. This strategy does not only bind their clients to them and leads to several referrals due to the pleasant process of cooperation, it is also a lucrative strategy in itself. The increased trust into the interaction partner seems to arouse the desire to actively engage in the process of production. This not only increases the satisfaction with the final product, it also increases the amount of work time spent on a project which adds to the income of the designer.

Here too, we don't use this strategy so we'll spend more time and make more money, though of course those are nice side effects which do happen on some projects. Shira and I treat every design job not as merely a service for pay, but as a cooperative partnership - we specialize in helping to give form and reach to our clients' ideas. The result is that the client is usually very, very happy with the product, and the product is very, very useful to them. We do give advice and make calls as designers, because we often have a deeper understanding of communications strategy and visual design principles than do our clients (which is, after all, why they hire us), but we don't steamroll our clients into accepting things they don't dig. We like to work with people to make things they love, and which will last. It's good for the client, and Matthias's study is helping me see how good it is for us, too.

Click here to read the paper, and let me know if you too are a web designer who'd like to talk to Matthias. His research goes on...

Uncle Samantha for Dr. Sketchy's Edinburgh

By Ari | Oct 28, 08 04:19 PM

Dr. Sketchy's Edinburgh is using Uncle Samantha to promote their November cabaret life drawing session and I'm just tickled pink. This drag queen is going a lot farther than I ever thought she would. Thanks, Dr. Sketchy's!

Cabaret life drawing sounds pretty awesome - and Dr. Sketchy's isn't just in Scotland, but around the world. Check out a session if you can.

Previously: Yet more Uncle Samantha sightings...

Do Not Leave Unattended!: New design launched

By Ari | Oct 23, 08 04:52 PM

The site I designed for Jude of Randomly Run4istRun, for her new collaborative writing/art project, Do Not Leave Unattended!, has launched. Visit the site to see current contributions and to sign up if you'd like to participate. I'm particularly happy with this design, which put my handwriting and illustration style to good use. Thanks to Jude for the support! It's nice to work on projects that allow so much creative freedom. Thanks also to Krissy for the logo collaboration, and to Barbara for the excellent WordPress coding skillz.

A fun fact: the notebooks that appear in the layout (in the navigation and the background) are photographs I took of actual notebooks and handbound books I've made and filled. Which is cool, because this is the first time they've appeared publicly outside of my "i made this" photoset on Flickr.
Do Not Leave Unattended »

Previously: Do Not Leave Unattended: Dispatches from Ithaca

It's Ally Week

By Ari | Oct 15, 08 12:50 PM

It's Ally Week this week, a nationwide chance for straight allies to speak up for their queer friends and family at school and in their communities. I know that as a queer person, having straight allies has always been a very warm and fuzzy feeling. Thank you for all that you do, straight but not narrow folks!

I helped design GLSEN's Student Organizing site as well as MySpace and other materials for Ally Week. The Ally Week materials themselves were designed by someone else - not sure who but they look great!
Ally Week Website
Sign up to participate - GLSEN Student Organizing site

Do Not Leave Unattended: Dispatches from Ithaca

By Ari | Oct 3, 08 05:06 PM

Recently I've been doing some work for a fellow blogger, at Randomly Run4istRun (that illustration at the top is based on a photograph by Dorothy O’Connor). She's just launched a new collaborative notebook project called Do Not Leave Unattended, and I'm working on that site too. She sends out notebooks and the recipients get two weeks to fill the next page (or pages), before passing them on. The results so far display a delightful hodge-podge of writing and art. I got one, and passed it on to Shira, and I'm very happy to report that our friend Angela is taking it next. Who knows where it'll go after that?

Yay internets! This is the first time I've done one of these mail-based collaborative projects and it was a lot of fun. I see photos on Flickr all the time of people sending out color-coded packages full of candy and collectibles and art, and other interesting projects, and I always wondered what it would be like to have something like that arrive in my in-box. The answer? It's pretty awesome. I feel like I'm in good company, and I can't wait to see what the finished books look like. Kudos to Jude for creating such a cool project.

Click here to see all of the submissions as they come in... and stay tuned, a new design is coming soon!

A new vegan cat community

By Ari | Oct 1, 08 10:31 PM

I've been frustrated for sooo long by my inability to hook up with other folks who have vegan cats. I mean, I've met a few people online, but it's hard to really share information in any kind of organized way. Where can I ask people for advice on how to talk to our vet without getting instant judgement? Where can I share tips on how to best prepare Vegecat homemade vegan cat food?

Well, I finally decided (as if I don't have enough to do), that I should just go ahead and start a community and see what happens. Maybe I'm the only one out there looking for this kind of thing, I don't know. But it's worth a try!

You can visit the community here: vegancats.ning.com

Please feel free to fire questions at me if this is the first time you've heard of vegan cats! And be sure to check out the always adorable Sid, Zora and Snow, our own dear vegan cat housemates.

This is my first time setting up a Ning from scratch, rather than just customizing an existing one, and I've got to say, it's awesome. Very easy to set up and integrate with third-party services. This one is a bit of a practice run for me because I may be setting one up for our friends at freeDimensional in the near future. Go Ning.

Bird Peace illustrations

By Ari | Sep 8, 08 08:24 AM

So, I did some drawings the week before we moved to Ithaca, in the mornings. Each morning I did one and posted it on Flickr. I got a surprising amount of positive feedback - yay Flickr! I cannot recommend Flickr highly enough for any budding artists / visual experimenters / photographers out there. If positive reinforcement is something that drives you, Flickr's community has got it in spades. Thank you, Flickr friends.

Anyway, here are the four pieces. Each one is about peace, and each one is kinda birdsploitation. I really dig birds. There's an immediate association with peace, because of our friend the Peace Dove. But birds are good inspiration in other ways. They, like us, sing songs and decorate nests. They, like us, seek heights but come back down to the creature comforts of food and sleep and family. I think we have a lot to learn from them.

Teach Peace. The tiniest bird can teach us peace. She lives in her ecological niche, in sustainable equilibrium with the other species around her. She never takes more than she needs to survive, allowing her neighbors to thrive and support her in turn. In turn, we can learn to act with such peace that no animal needs to fear us any longer. We need to improve how we fit into our own ecological niche, to begin to help our neighbors to thrive.

The means are the ends. This one is taken from a quote by Gandhi, who said, "the means are the ends in progress." Basically, no, violence is never justified, because if you want peace, you need to use peaceful means to get it. That's where peace comes from. That's what peace is.

Might does not make right: This one is just a reminder from one of our small, sweet cousins. Did you know chickens score higher on cognitive tests than do dogs or cats? Or if you prefer scripture over science, doesn't god hear every sparrow fall? The tiniest, downiest chick deserves nothing less than compassion, and the right to be let alone with his loving family. (Sadly, commercial egg production involves unspeakable horrors done to chicks. Please read about it if you aren't yet informed - and go vegan!)

Everything will be OK (no really). This one is another reminder. If we look at the long arc of history we can see how much better things have become over time. I believe another world is not only possible, but is being built right now. Join in! Read Nowtopia or The Great Turning if you need evidence or more encouragement than these birds can give you. Everything will be OK!

For more of my work on Flickr, please check out my i made this photoset. Comments (here and on Flickr, negative and positive) are always welcome.

"Shira Golding - Sex Icon"

By Shira | Aug 14, 08 07:09 PM

Well...not exactly, but that's what the email read when I got the assignment to create the graphic for The Macktivist, the new sex advice column in The Indypendent. The first installment by R. Alvarez is a pretty awesome read.

Announcing Lionessthefilm.com

By Ari | Aug 1, 08 02:36 PM

Just launched today, Lionessthefilm.com. We worked with filmmakers Daria Sommers and Meg McLagan, along with consultation from Working Films and Matt Syrett, to craft a comprehensive online outreach tool for this exciting new documentary. The site was built on Movable Type 4 (open source, baby!), uses Google Analytics to track traffic, and dovetails with accounts on YouTube, Facebook, MySpace, Flickr, and Google Calendar, to provide soldiers, veterans, and those providing support services with ways to engage with the film and with each other - and to help get their stories heard. We also designed the film's branding, as well as posters, postcards, email graphics, and other outreach essentials.

Through beautiful footage shot by our friend Kirsten Johnson (Farenheit 9/11, Deadline), Lioness tells the story of the first women in American history to be sent into direct ground combat. The interviews with the Lionesses are gripping; as anti-war activists we found watching the film to be an invaluable learning experience that really helped us identify with soldiers who are putting their lives on the line in armed combat. It movingly shows both the combat experience and the impact of it on people's lives, after they've come home.

Visit the site at Lionessthefilm.com to view the trailer, find screenings, get involved, and sign up for updates.

Yet more Uncle Samantha sightings...

By Ari | Aug 1, 08 01:37 PM

Thanks to F.O.R.C.E. - Feminist Organization Reclaiming Consciousness and Equality for using Uncle Samantha to get out the vote! F.O.R.C.E., a student-run organization at California State University, Long Beach, writes:

Our purpose is to bring dialogue to stimulate an understanding of feminisms by raising consciousness of women's issues, which include but are not limited to personal experience, agency, and the understanding of women's differences and similarities. In order to reach these goals we plan to educate and inform the campus community through activities and workshops. Lastly, F.O.R.C.E. will support the WRC, other campus organizations, and various departments that believe in the enrichment of women's lives.

Right on. They've got an awesome web presence, too:

Uncle Samantha appears on both the MySpace page and the blog. Don't forget to register to vote!

Previously:

Radical Change Design for Green Earth Design Competition

By Shira | Jul 23, 08 04:03 PM

I just submitted this design to the green earth
international graphic design competition.

Here's my little artists statement. I'm not used to doing these!

Being "green" means living sustainably with the earth and all of its inhabitants. To do this, we must reconnect with nature on a deep level. As we become one with the earth, radical change will happen.

rad·i·cal 1. of or going to the root or origin; fundamental: a radical difference. 2. forming a basis or foundation. 3. existing inherently in a thing or person. 4. Botany. of or arising from the root or the base of the stem.

Resistance is Fertile: It's Time to Start Guerrilla Gardening

By Shira | Jul 15, 08 05:38 PM

My latest article is up on MediaRights.org. Here's a taste:

In more recent years, guerrilla gardening has exploded in cities like Chicago and New York where waves of development have too often ignored the need for green space. In neighborhoods on the cusp of gentrification, like where I live in Bushwick, Brooklyn, it is very common to walk down a block and see three or four empty, fenced-in lots that have been bought by developers, but which are just sitting there, collecting trash. For this scenario, guerrilla gardeners have come up with the perfect weapon - the seed bomb.

And a great video on the topic...

More on Click!

By Shira | Jul 15, 08 01:14 PM

My name on the wall of the Brooklyn Museum!
Originally uploaded by Shira Golding

Ari and I went to check out the Click! show at the Brooklyn Museum. Seeing my name and photo on the gallery wall was a little anti-climactic, but thrilling nonetheless. While the methodology behind the project is very interesting, the gallery execution felt a little flat. It would have been awesome, for example, to see the results animated on flat-screen TVs, alongside snippets about crowd-sourcing, curation and the nature of photography.

The show is getting some press coverage...

From Proles vs. Pros: An Experiment In Curating by Robin Givhan:

This exhibit may have been particularly suited to crowd-based curating because photography is a medium that people experience every day, whether it is a particularly artful photo in the newspaper or an artsy black-and-white snapshot of their newborn they're e-mailing to relatives. There's a sense of ownership and accessibility with photography that doesn't exist with sculpture or painting. That connection is one of its pleasures; it doesn't seem so precious or elitist.

And 3,344 People May Not Know Art but Know What They Like By Ken Johnson:

How people arrive at consensus in the art world is worth studying. So is the tension between experts and nonexperts, which can extend to the highest reaches of the culture industry. So it is possible that Mr. Surowiecki’s ideas might yet prove fruitful for the business of art. But it will take a lot more persuasive reasoning to convince anyone with a serious interest in artistic quality that “crowd-curating” is a good idea. The best you can say for “Click!” is that it’s a good conversation starter.

Here's a podcastof the panel at Governor's Island. I ask a question at about 44min. 30 sec.:

And there's a book of the show available through Blurb:
Buy the book!
$3 off discount code

Uncle Samantha at Capitol Pride 2008

By Ari | Jul 14, 08 03:47 PM

Jonathan & Laurel with Uncle Samantha
Originally uploaded by bcvflickr

Burgundy Crescent folks using a character I drew, Uncle Samantha, to reel in volunteers at Pride in Washington DC. Apparently she's good at her job - they got a lot of volunteers!

Previously: Uncle Samantha

Shirari's Peace and Love Podcast #3: Travel

By shirari | Jun 30, 08 06:26 PM

Get ready for an hour and twelve minutes of non-stop queer vegan rambling! Wait, that didn't sound particularly attractive. Rest assured it'll be worth a listen - in this third installment of Shirari's Peace and Love Podcast we talk about our recent trip to Israel, Amsterdam, and Iceland, and how we attempted to take best advantage of the fuel used to have a experience that was as low-impact and culture-rich as possible. You'll hear about a kibbutz that turns soda cans and other trash into eco-friendly buildings, bikes by the boatload, naked showers with Europeans, friendly ducks interrupting breakfast in a tent, a town where street art is loved and not hated, and delicious, delicious falafel.

Shira's voice is kinda quiet in this one, sorry about that! We're still working out the technical kinks here. If you're actually downloading and listening to these, please comment and tell us what you think! Thanks to those of you who've written to us or commented already, we're so happy folks are giving these a listen.

Shirari's Peace and Love Podcast #3: Travel »
June 30, 2008 - 72 minutes - 32.9MB

Show links:

Previously:

Watch Election Day on P.O.V. tomorrow night!

By Shira | Jun 30, 08 01:15 AM

From the folks at Arts Engine:

Our broadcast premiere is almost upon us! Election Day will air just in time for Independence Day on Tuesday, July 1, 2008 at 10 p.m. on PBS, during the 21st season of P.O.V. (Check local listings.) American television's longest-running independent documentary series, P.O.V. is public television's premier showcase for point-of-view, nonfiction films, and is a 2007 recipient of a Special News & Documentary Emmy Award for Excellence in Television Documentary Filmmaking.

And for those of you who may miss the broadcast and can't TiVo it, never fear. We are offering an early release of the Election Day DVD to alleviate just this kind of problem! Starting on July 1st, Election Day will be available for purchase at the Arts Engine store.

I had the pleasure of editing the trailer and designing the outreach materials and DVD for this awesome film. It's a great documentary and is just the kind of programming that needs to be seen as we approach the next presidential election. Watch it!

Columbia study on independent new media workers

By Ari | Jun 30, 08 01:10 AM

Any freelance web designers out there who want to help sociologists understand what's going on with our field? I spoke with Matthias at Columbia last week and had a great conversation about networking, relationships with other freelancers, quoting/estimating and fees, unionization questions, and other interesting facets of the freelance life. Here's info on the study if you'd like to participate:

You have been chosen as a participant for a study on employment conditions in contingent labor markets. This research is directed to gain a better understanding of this expanding form of labor markets and the exigencies it imposes upon workers in them.

Recent changes in organizational structure and employment relationships in the American work place have created an increasing amount of workers that work as singular self-employed. This study will scrutinize the actual demands that are exerted upon workers in this situation when the acquisition of future work becomes of major concern. For this purpose freelancers in the new media industry are a fitting target group, as their industry is characterized by a high percentage of freelancers, temp agents and independent contractors.

The study looks at how individuals adapt to the direct exposure to the labor market in terms of work load, skill development and life work arrangements and if and in which ways they use peers to delimit work load and secure continuous employment by leading guided interviews and collecting network as well as socioeconomic information. Of course all information gathered will be used confidentially and names will be anonymised.
Your cooperation might allow us to understand better the specifics of the new media labor market and to formulate policy recommendations to improve the situation for workers. Therefore, your participation would be highly appreciated.

If you agree to being interviewed, please email mt2430 -at- columbia -dot- edu or call the following number (646 552 2803) and we will set up an appointment according to your wishes

With our Best Wishes
Prof. Seymour Spilerman
(Principal Investigator Columbia University, Julian Clarence Levi Professor in the Social Sciences)
Matthias Thiemann
Co-Investigator
(PhD-student Columbia\ Sociology Department)

Victor Papanek's Design for the Real World

By Ari | Jun 6, 08 01:12 PM

We've mentioned Victor Papanek's Design for the Real World a bunch of times but never blogged it properly, so here goes. Read it! It's amazing. It was written in 1970 but is still all-too-relevant today. The cover of our awesome 1973 Bantam edition (pictured here), reads, "Why the Things You Buy Are Expensive, Unsafe, and Usually Don't Work! With some startling practical alternatives -- like a radio that costs 9¢, a $6 refrigerator, a television set for $8, and much, much more! Design For The Real World by Victor Papanek: Human Ecology and Social Change With an Introduction by R. Buckminster Fuller; Completely Illustrated". Papanek adorably refers to his friend and introduction-writer as Bucky throughout the book, and relates stories of visionary design teams doing what the two men refer to as Anticipatory Comprehensive Design.

Basically that means looking at real-world problems and trying to solve them in an ecologically-sound and efficient, forward-thinking way, with the help of the stakeholders, the people who are actually affected by the design problem and its potential solutions. This is opposed to the more common practice of profit-driven design, which uses planned obsolescence and the vagaries of "fashion" to sell the same old crap year after year, dressed up in fancy new skins or even just different marketing. For every cool new low-cost, low-impact tool that's accessible and useful to folks who really need it, there are a million new expensive, ugly and possibly dangerous items put on the market simply to make a profit, Papanek says, and his message holds true today. The design world, for all of its improvements, does continue to churn out useless junk and endless repetitions of bad ideas.

Here's part of the flow-chart illustration with which Papanek ended the book - you'll have to read the book to see the rest of it, including his suggestions for how to get around the problems outlined here. But he doesn't give us all the answers - the flow-chart only goes so far as suggesting possible solutions to the world's problems; he puts it on us to fill in the rest of the chart as we move onto creating those solutions.

Since Shira and I are all about creating sustainable solutions in every area of life including the design work we do for clients, we found the book's message right up our alley, and the suggestions for improvement just as relevant today as they were when they were written nearly 40 years ago. It's encouraging to see that when Victor wrote this book he and Bucky were really trailblazing a new approach, which today has many adherents, with dozens of books and websites now dedicated to designing for the great majority of people instead of the privileged few who pay big bucks for pretty new designer chairs and the like. But we've still got work to do. So, read this book, and act on it!

Design, if it is to be ecologically responsible and socially responsive, must be revolutionary and radical (going back to the roots) in the truest sense. It must dedicate itself to nature's "principle of least effort," in other words, minimum inventory for maximum diversity... or, doing the most with the least. That means consuming less, using things longer, recycling materials, and probably not wasting paper printing books such as this.

Fortunately, Design for the Real World has been in print for many years, and is available used from many freecycling / swapping networks as well as libraries and used bookshops, so no new materials need be used today in learning from this beautiful and clever and useful book.

Day of Silence

By Ari | May 7, 08 02:23 PM

Check out GLSEN's new Day of Silence Blog, designed by Shirari Industries. This year's DOS fell on April 25th and drew record numbers of participants. Hundreds of thousands of students from more than 7,500 middle and high schools took a pledge of silence to bring attention to the bullying, name-calling, harassment and other violence that silences queer folks every day.

This year's DOS was held in remembrance of Lawrence King, a 15-year old California student who was shot and killed because of his sexuality and gender expression. We had the honor of designing a quick skin for Lawrence's MySpace page, another GLSEN project.

Save the date - the next DOS is on Friday, April 17, 2009. In the meantime, anyone can take action year-round to create safer schools and communities for queer youth. Visit GLSEN for information and ideas.

My Feminist Review: Transgender Voices: Beyond Women and Men

By Ari | Apr 12, 08 01:13 PM

My review of Lori B. Girshick's Transgender Voices: Beyond Women and Men is up at Feminist Review. This was a really good one! I'm genderqueer and have read quite a bit on this subject, but I learned a lot. I loved reading the words of the people Lori interviewed for the book, and seeing their photos - I found it really made me care for all of them, identify with them, want to be in unity with them, to change things so we all have a safer, happier world to live in. Any book that can do that is a good book, I think.

The Shirari Update: Recent Work

By Ari | Apr 11, 08 08:00 AM

So we're gearing up for this trip, and churning out a LOT of work before we go. In the past couple of months we've done quite a bit, much of which we've already written about. But here are some projects we haven't blogged about yet:

I worked with GLSEN to design a new look for StudentOrganizing.org and put fresh skins on their Day of Silence and Remembering Lawrence King MySpace sites.
We co-created a brand and launched a placeholder page for the new documentary Lioness, currently making the rounds at festivals. Posters and a full site are on the way... follow this film, it's a good one.
I made posters and other collateral for the freeDimensional / Casa Frela production OFF THE WALL.
Shira designed the DVD for the doc Innocent Until Proven Guilty, soon to be available for purchase at Arts Engine.
I handled the International Women's Day and May Day issues of The Socialist, the magazine of the Socialist Party USA. The May Day issue inaugurated our brand spankin' new redesign.
We designed a new film distribution brochure for Scenarios USA and rebranded (and re-designed and re-authored) their DVD collection. We also handled the collateral for their 2008 REAL DEAL Awards and Gala. (I made their site, too - though that was a few years back!)
I did a launch postcard for The Plant Republic's new site.
Shira's been a pre-screener and has been coordinating the jury process for Pangea Day, a project of TED Conferences.
I designed a guide to US citizenship and naturalization for South Asian Americans Leading Together (SAALT) and a fresh cover for the National Council of Asian Pacific Americans (NCAPA), through the Japanese American Citizens League (JACL).
I made invitations, posters, programs, and a million other things for the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Community Center's Broadway Backwards 3 and Center Dinner 25th Anniversary Celebration.

I'm sure I'm missing a million things, so if we worked on your project and haven't mentioned it, apologies! We really love all of our work, though it can be hard (I got up at 7am and am currently running on empty...), and we've been very lucky in that we can choose to work only on projects we really want to stand behind politically and ethically. It's a good life, this. Thanks to all of our clients and friends who continue to bring these amazing projects to us.

Uncle Samantha

By Ari | Apr 10, 08 03:25 PM

I've been working for New York's Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Community Center for a while now, and a little job I did for them has recently gotten some new life, being put into use by Burgundy Crescent Volunteers in the DC area. Here she is! Uncle Samantha (or Aunt Sam) was meant to be a drag queen but is frequently mis-identified as a hot lesbian. Either way, she seems to be a crowd-pleaser. I originally drew her for the Gay Center's Volunteer Program and she appeared on the cover of the Center's newsletter, Center Happenings. Now the folks at Burgundy Crescent are using her to recruit new volunteers for DC Pride events. You can even get her on a shirt or mug!

Anyway, had to post this - I'm so happy to see Sam getting out there and hopefully bringing in some new recruits for the Gay Agenda. If you're queer and looking for something fun to do, I highly recommend volunteering with a local organization like the Center or BCV. They can always use people with skillz and are, I've found, generally full of really awesome people doing great work for people who really need it.

My Feminist Review: Bipedal, By Pedal!

By Ari | Apr 5, 08 11:47 AM

My review of the great critical mass zine "Bipedal, By Pedal!" is up at Feminist Review. Anyone out there done a critical mass bike ride? I'm embarrassed to say I haven't yet gone on one - I'm afraid of cars when on a bike. But this zine made me want to join up...

Shirari Industries Bought by News Corp for 2.5 Million

By Shira | Apr 1, 08 12:22 PM

We were as surprised as I'm sure you are right now when Rupert Murdoch himself called us this morning to "make a deal." We know that News Corporation is on a mission to take over the world, one media entity at a time, but we're still not quite sure why he wants our little queer, vegan operation. He must be getting pretty close to owning the entire "long tail" and Shirari Industries is just another notch on the empire's belt.

Stay tuned for a dramatically redesigned site, starting with our tagline, which is now "let's be mean!" - it has a certain ring to it, don't you think?

...April Fools!!!

I Never Thought I Would But Yes, I've Launched a MySpace Music Page

By Shira | Mar 30, 08 02:28 PM

shira playing
Originally uploaded by arimoore

There are many reasons that I dislike MySpace -- bad design, obnoxious advertising, the fact that it belongs to Rupert Murdoch -- but, the word on the street is that it's a good way to promote your music, so I've bitten the bullet and put up a page at myspace.com/shiragoldingmusic.

You can only put up six songs, so I tried to choose ones that represent the spectrum of music I like to make. Have a listen and let me know what you think. All of this is part of a plan to release an album, so I'd love feedback and any encouragement.

OFF THE WALL - Opening tonight in NYC

By Ari | Mar 21, 08 02:13 PM

I've had the privilege to work with freeDimensional on an event called OFF THE WALL: Celebrating Arts and Human Rights, opening tonight at Casa Frela Gallery in Harlem. Click here for more info and be sure to check out freeDimensional. They're a growing non-profit that's doing some very important work for artists in need of asylum, all over the world.

Drawing Truth

By Shira | Mar 21, 08 01:18 PM

My article about animation in documentaries is up on MediaRights.org. I got to interview filmmakers Brett Morgan, Judith Helfand, Dan Gold, Emily Hubley and Jeremiah Dickey for the piece - it was a lot of fun.

I really want to get more into animation myself. I've done a few simple pieces in Flash, but After Effects is calling my name...

Vegan Treasures from My Mom

By Ari | Mar 17, 08 06:05 PM

My mom runs an online business selling vintage women's clothing: Vintage Lucy. I wanted to help her make the leap from eBay to her own shop, and I thought I could make her a PayPal shop using Movable Type - but I don't usually do jobs that involve animal exploitation, and Mom's amazing collection happens to contain some wool, leather, and feathers. I did end up making the site, and am now helping her do some outreach.

I have to admit that I'm really glad that I compromised my ideals to work with her on this site! 100% vegan though it may not be, it can help my mom make a living. And it so happens that Mom has become increasingly open to animal rights ideas over the years. She dabbles in vegetarianism and veganism and is constantly educating herself and changing; she cares for and loves many animals, and recently has done a little animal rights activism. She added a new category of items to her site called Vegan Treasures - as she points out, "wearing vintage & pre-worn is recycling, saving precious animals & the Earth." Check it out - there's some very beautiful stuff in there (all of the photos above are from this category): Vintage Lucy Vegan Treasures (No animal products used in these beauties.) Who knows, maybe this is only the tip of the vegan iceberg for my mom...

Fight Military Recruitment in Schools

By Shira | Mar 1, 08 07:21 PM

The New York Coalition of Radical Educators (NYCoRE) have recently released a curriculum that helps teachers educate their students about military recruiting tactics. The goal is to empower students with concrete information and to make sure they know about alternative ways to access education and career-building tools after high-school.

Ari and I had the pleasure of designing the cover for Camouflaged: Investigating How the U.S. Military Affects You and Your Community, which you can preview and buy online through Lulu.com.

If you're a teacher who want to get involved, you should come to the meeting this week...

NYCoRE's Counter Recruitment Project Meeting
Thursday, March 6, 5:30-7:30
CUNY Graduate Center 34th St. & 5th Ave., Room 5489
Please bring ID

Topics of discussion include:

Bringing teachers together to develop a workshop for other teachers around unpacking military recruitment in New York City Schools and across the country
Outreach to bring teachers and administrators from Upper Manhattan neighborhoods to the workshop
Strategizing ways to share the ideas developed by New York City teachers in NYCoRE's recently released curricular guide Camouflaged
Developing ways to be a voice in the events acknowledging the anniversary of the war in Iraq

If you are interested in attending or getting involved, email Edwin at NYCoRE.

And here are some great videos about recruiting and the impact of war on veterans from Media That Matters: No Child, All That I Can Be and Night Visions

The Oscars Have Come and Gone and What Have We Learned?

By Shira | Mar 1, 08 02:02 PM

Unfortunately, this was one of the whitest, most male-dominated awards ceremonies in recent history, which makes me feel less sad that I missed it this year.

I recently illustrated Judith Mahoney Pasternak's great article about racism and sexism in the Oscars for The Indypendent. Check it out: The Oscar’s Minority Report

Arts Engine Meets VH1's Pop-Up Video

By Shira | Mar 1, 08 01:25 PM

A couple weeks ago I had the pleasure of putting together a video for Arts Engine's big 10 year anniversary party at Southpaw. Having recently left the staff after almost six years to join forces with Ari, it was a pretty nostalgic experience. I'm not sure this will be in any way entertaining for folks not intimately familiar with the ins and outs of Arts Engine/Big Mouth Films, but feel free to take a look.

The Indypendent Printed My Illustration for "Revolutions: Read All About ’Em"

By Shira | Feb 3, 08 06:22 PM

I had fun working on this piece to accompany Chris Anderson's review of the new "Revolutions" series from Verso Books.

I'm really looking forward to checking out the series. I'm especially excited about Slavoj Žižek's intro to Mao's "On Practice and Contradiction."

Hotelling, coworking, and other evolutions of work

By Ari | Jan 23, 08 10:57 AM

zora's tummy
Originally uploaded by arimoore

I just read Treehugger's post on "Hotelling". Apparently this is an old practice that's come back in vogue, whereby businesses keep a lot of their workforce mobile, rather than providing office space and expecting people to stay there all the time. Honestly, I don't see how it's very different from telecommuting. Except that the name is cuter. Anyway, this earth-friendly practice (as Treehugger points out, it results in "few people commuting, [and] less space being built, heated and cooled") got me thinking about connections between work, play, and learning.

I'm a fan of unschooling (self-education without the institution, or even the structure). The educators who advocate for unschooling point out that kids learn naturally while playing, all the time. And studies have shown that if you let kids learn on their own, they'll learn the material better than if you force it on them.

Work seems to be similar: People actually like working. Nothing like the satisfaction of a job well done, right? (Read Kurt Vonnegut's Player Piano if you don't agree.) But if you make people work, and force them to do it under circumstances over which they have no control, it becomes less attractive. Take away the desk, let people roam (or better yet, make the business a worker-owened cooperative), and you've got a recipe for increased happiness, and efficiency.

This isn't a too-good-to-be-true pipe dream, either: Hotelling, telecommuting, freelancing, coworking and other alternative forms of fitting work into one's life are all in active use all over the world.

For an application of similar ideas to a conference/ meeting/ retreat setting, see Opening Space for Communication and Collaboration with Open Space Technology. (Link via Josh A.)

Feminist Review: Horizontalism: Voices of Popular Power in Argentina

By Ari | Jan 21, 08 11:12 AM

My review of Horizontalism: Voices of Popular Power in Argentina is up at Feminist Review:

Horizontalism: Voices of Popular Power in Argentina is not an oral history, but a small part of a story that is still being told. Something incredible happened in Argentina on December 19th and 20th, 2001. The government had frozen the people’s bank accounts so they could use the money to pay off an IMF loan in order to get yet another one, dragging the country’s economy even further than it had already sunk. Business owners had fled, leaving thousands jobless, struggling to feed their families while their workplaces stood empty... (read more)

I can't recommend this book highly enough for progressive activists and others interested in social change. The folks in this book are doing some really incredible things we can all learn from. Published by AK Press.

Nestbuilding

By Ari | Jan 10, 08 06:47 PM

This image is a screenshot taken during the development of this site - it's sort of embarrassing to look at, so hey, we thought we'd share it. I think it shows how much better we've both become as designers, quite frankly. It also shows how far we can push something when we give it time. This site was about two years in the making, I reckon. This weirdly busy wood look we had going in this earlier version was cool at first, before we coded it prematurely and then struggled to improve what was already tragically flawed, our efforts just making it worse. We didn't figure this out until we'd spent countless hours poking at the thing.

It's kind of shocking how much time we wasted. Don't they say "designers are their own worst clients"? It's true, anyway.

The finished site breaks a lot of rules I usually hold sacred. The home page is a mostly cute splash page devoid of content, a big no-no. The navigation is erratic, jumping around and reordering itself and changing location and size. The sidebar elements vary from page to page, as do the things you find in footers. I'm afraid the Google Blogrolls on the links page don't work for Internet Explorer users (and perhaps others... thanks, Google, sorry visitors). I haven't yet worked out the kinks in the blog's comments and tags, the way they display. And so on.

Every time we broke a convention or integrated content from seemingly disparate parts of our lives into a new weird whole, while making this site, I found myself wondering if we'd end up with something incomprehensible. But it's true to our sensibilities - we aren't just designers, after all. I think (and hope) that it paints us for who we are, and explains in some way the various things we do to occupy and entertain and support ourselves. I also hope the blog will be entertaining. Aaaand I'll stop posting such meta content soon, which I'm sure will help.

Boohoo/Woohoo

By Shira | Jan 8, 08 01:04 PM

I don't think I have fully processed that today is my last day at Arts Engine. I've been having a blast working here for five and a half years, and in the words of Boys II Men, "It's so hard to say goodbye to yesterday." On the other hand, I couldn't be leaving my desk on 14th Street for a better reason. I have always dreamed about self-employment, and now it's here. I'm really looking forward to working with Ari on new projects and I'm particularly excited about working on personal projects -- an album of original music is in the works, and I'm editing an experimental documentary with video I shot in India last year.

I was up until 4am last night working on the site and it's 70 degrees outside (yes, it's January in New York), so I woke up feeling like it's the last day of school or the last day of camp - you know that feeling when you've just worked really hard, and you're really tired and some big change is happening? That's how I feel. Woohoo!

Hello and welcome to our brand new blog.

By Ari | Jan 8, 08 11:19 AM

Well here we are. Finally! This website has been a long time in the making. The design couldn't keep up with how fast our work has been growing and changing, and had to be totally redone several times as we reconceptualized what on earth it is we're doing here. Shira will write about her end of things, so I'll just cover my own path to this new website.

I've been blogging in some form or other since 1998 or so; my most recent blog, several years in the running, was called pinkrabbitsays. Meanwhile, I was showing my work at arimoore.com - and was increasingly realizing that my politics, activism and blogging were overlapping more and more with my graphic design and illustration work, as well as with my self-education, art and writing. I've been thinking a lot about connections lately, and seeing the value in looking at things holistically. So I think this new site comes out of that - all of our work and play under one roof.

In college folks constantly mixed up our names. Our friend Diane jokingly called us "Shirari", at one point actually sending us a package addressed to "Shirari Molding-Gore" (our last names are Golding and Moore). So here we are starting a new site and a new business together. We're calling it Shirari Industries, because we're Shira and Ari, and we're industrious. I hope you dig it. Thanks for visiting.

P.S. Please contact us if you run into anything that's not working yet - this site is fresh out of the oven!

Shirari Industries

Posts tagged with "Work"

I wrote an article about how to organize a community swap/barter meet for Shareable

New Ithaca Freeskool Mushroom Hunt Video

Our 2nd Annual Shirari Week

Fresh off the Wordpress: Frac Attack

"A Recipe for Change: Documentaries on Food" - My Most Recent Article on MediaRights.org

New Videos for freeDimensional

I just finished making this movie for the Ithaca Area Poets

New sites, new photos, new art

Useful way of thinking about work

fD Outreach: Wasan Retreat 2009

Hosting Activism in Art Spaces - A New Video for freeDimensional

Planning to Change the World 2009-2010 Planner

Recent design and illustration work

This is what is up

Video Interviews from the 2009 Emerging Art Spaces Retreat on Wasan Island

Photos from freeDimensional's Emerging Art Spaces Retreat on Wasan Island

An island in Canada, a tick bite, a beach in Israel, a cup of coffee in our livingroom

Fresh websites, hot off the Wordpress

Check Out My Article About Food, Inc. at Documentary.org

No bosses here: A book from the past to help us work more equitably today

My review

Making stuff and doing things

Going Green, One Film at a Time

Freelance America

Shirari's Peace and Love Podcast #6: Economies

"Sometimes It's Hard to Breathe" - I finally edited my footage from our trip to India in 2006

freeDimensional: Birthing a web 2.0 child

Shirari's Peace and Love Podcast #5: Top 8 Activist Strategies

Radical solidarity - an artist's statement

Shale Shocked

Art for feminist, socialist healthcare

"The role of trust in high tech work- The case of Freelance Web-Designers in NYC"

Uncle Samantha for Dr. Sketchy's Edinburgh

Do Not Leave Unattended!: New design launched

It's Ally Week

Do Not Leave Unattended: Dispatches from Ithaca

A new vegan cat community

Bird Peace illustrations

"Shira Golding - Sex Icon"

Announcing Lionessthefilm.com

Yet more Uncle Samantha sightings...

Radical Change Design for Green Earth Design Competition

Resistance is Fertile: It's Time to Start Guerrilla Gardening

More on Click!

Uncle Samantha at Capitol Pride 2008

Shirari's Peace and Love Podcast #3: Travel

Watch Election Day on P.O.V. tomorrow night!

Columbia study on independent new media workers

Victor Papanek's Design for the Real World

Day of Silence

My Feminist Review: Transgender Voices: Beyond Women and Men

The Shirari Update: Recent Work

Uncle Samantha

My Feminist Review: Bipedal, By Pedal!

Shirari Industries Bought by News Corp for 2.5 Million

I Never Thought I Would But Yes, I've Launched a MySpace Music Page

OFF THE WALL - Opening tonight in NYC

Drawing Truth

Vegan Treasures from My Mom

Fight Military Recruitment in Schools

The Oscars Have Come and Gone and What Have We Learned?

Arts Engine Meets VH1's Pop-Up Video

The Indypendent Printed My Illustration for "Revolutions: Read All About ’Em"

Hotelling, coworking, and other evolutions of work

Feminist Review: Horizontalism: Voices of Popular Power in Argentina

Nestbuilding

Boohoo/Woohoo

Hello and welcome to our brand new blog.

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Shirari Industries