Unitypanda Project, what’s happened since I last called the Pandaline..

Unitypandas Exhibition, Ultrecht

I was just sat in my house the other day, not doing much in particular, when I suddenly thought of the Unitypanda project.

I started to wonder how it was going and how many pandas have now been made. So I decided to call Jonnet Midleton (creator of the project) to find out exactly what has been happening in the world of knitted pandas. This is what she said…..

The pandas went on the first leg of their tour to Ultrecht, Holland to a gallery called Setup. Setup is seen as a sort of ‘new media lab’, which is situated roughly half an hour away from Amsterdam.

It was here that the Unitypanda Project was voted to become the first art exhibition that has been held there. Jonnet said, “Although Unitypanda isn’t actually really using new media to a great extent, they saw it as an example of an artist using Web 2.0

methodology.” Jonnet has focussed on getting people involved in the project and the social interaction, rather than the final outcome as the main aim of the project. This is much like online sources do such as Wikipedia and Twitter.

Whilst in Ultrecht 26 finished pandas were displayed and there was a screening of the Unitypanda film. On the Saturday the project took base in the town square where knitters of all ages were encouraged to join in and help make a panda. Because the wool they used in Ultrecht was a lot thicker, it caused the pandas which were made there to be, well, fat pandas. I like the idea of fat pandas, skinny pandas just doesn’t seem right.

The Sunday was very similar to the Saturday, the local community sat around in the sun kitting panda parts. Jonnet said, “Nobody wanted to stop knitting at 4 O’clock when we were supposed to stop, so we carried on until about 10

Unitypanda knitters in Ultrecht

O’clock”.

The project had a bit of good luck whilst in Ultrecht, a passerby saw all the knitters making pandas and said his uncle used to be an ambassador in Beijing. This is a great link and contact for the project which should make it slightly easier when trying to offer the pandas back to China at the very end of the project.

After this little holiday away the pandas returned to Coventry where there are now 46 finished pandas, with roughly 25 other pandas waiting for their panda parts to be sewn together. Bringing the total to about 70 pandas.

Unitypandas posing for the camera

Jonnet is still pushing for there to be 100 complete pandas by the end of July which is why she is hosting The Legless Panda. The Legless Panda is the name of the night given to the pop up panda club which will be happening on the evening of the last panda shop day on the 10th July. The event will have a club atmosphere, wit

h DJs, drinks and general merriment. The pandashop will be opening from 10-4pm.

To spread the word of

the project further and to get more people involved, Jonnet is going to the Ferrers Specialist Arts College in Northampton next Tuesday. Here she will talk about the project and help the students with knitting the panda parts, all helping to bring communities together.

After all the pandas are in they will be making their way down to Plymouth where they will start their tour properly. Alongside this Jonnet will be giving a talk at Plymouth University about the project on the 16th October.

Jonnet has also had the idea of getting the pandas made into a sort of animation. She will be approaching animators shortly to discuss ideas and plans.

Small versions of my the Wordles I have created

I put a selection of URLs and text into Wordle to see what words I use the most and what the common themes are. You can change the colour scheme, font, layout and design of the Wordle images created.

Birmingham Recycled Part Two

My Delicious account Entire URL of blog

David Gregory blog post

Iphone case made from Bamboo

I stumbled across the idea of using an iphone case made from bamboo to protect your phone, instead of using plastic. It’s supposed to be the environmentally friendly alternative as bamboo is a sustainable plant. The company making the product is The Grove Bamboo.

I really don’t like this though as Pandas need the bamboo to survive. Pandas are one of the most endangered species on the planet and using bamboo to make a cover for a stupid phone isn’t going to help them in any way. It is also ridiculously expensive- $89 for one plain cover!

I would much prefer it if everyone bought the cardboard cover instead by Case-Mate’s Recession Case. It only costs 99 cents and is made from a recyclable material that doesn’t affect pandas in any way.

The origional article is on Good Clean Tech

http://www.goodcleantech.com/2010/05/green_iphone_cases_groves_bamb.php

Kenrick Library Open 24 Hours Video

After learning about using a flip camera, Jade Rance, Victoria Elmore and myself went out and recorded a short non-rehearsed video on the library being open 24hours.

Not the most interesting of subjects I’ll admit but we had ten minutes to come up with an idea and seen as we were sat outside the library, we just decided to cover the ‘open 24hour’ story.

So here it is…

Skeptics in the Pub- David Gregory Talk on Science/ Environment Journalism

Last night I ventured down to the Victoria Pub in Birmingham city centre (behind new street station) to listen to a talk by David Gregory as part of the SitP (Skeptics in the Pub) .

David is the BBC’s Midlands science and environment correspondent.

After having a few issues with finding the pub, we made our way upstairs to find a room full of people waiting for the talk to start. I didn’t expect there to be so many people there really, although it was mainly full of men.

David spoke about his experiences as a journalist, specifically trying to get the coverage right on scientific stories and what it’s like to work as an environmental correspondent generally. There was a question and answers section afterwards for all those skeptics in the audience to ask questions and have heated debates.

I don’t know anything about science and to be quite honest it doesn’t practically interest me, but I was pleasantly surprised about how interesting I found the talk. I didn’t understand all of the science jokes but I was glad that David was a bit of joker as it somehow seemed to break up the talk.

Some of the points he made about science/ the environment fitting into the world of television and journalism were very thought provoking. I’ve never thought about it that much before but what he said made sense. Trying to put a 10,000 word piece of research/ report into a 2 minute news piece isn’t easy, especially when it needs to be in simple terms for the everyday non-science buff like me to understand it.

Here is a link to the audio on SoundCloud http://soundcloud.com/you/tracks