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THREE YEARS AGO, Pittsburgh-born artist Candy Chang was named a TED Senior Fellow for Urban Innovation, and since then she’s been caught up in the vortex of a whirlwind that has sent this architecture-graphic design-urban planning graduate of Columbia University and onetime New York Times graphic artist on a creative journey that has allowed her to leave a mark on communities in faraway places like Helsinki, Nairobi, New Orleans, Vancouver and Johannesburg. Chang’s now-global “Before I Die” project began when she she transformed an abandoned house in her neighborhood in New Orleans into a fill-in-the-blank chalkboard for people to reflect on their lives and share their personal aspirations in a public space. “Before I Die” proved so empowering and uplifting, it prompted The Atlantic to call it: “one of the most creative community projects ever.” And regular folk flocked to its magic ~ and it has expanded to communities in countries around the world, including Kazakhstan, South Africa, Portugal, and Argentina. Catch up with what this child of Taiwanese immigrants is thinking and doing today by reading Karen Eng’s interview-profile of Chang ~ “A Global Family for Life” ~ which was posted July 10 on the TED Fellows Posterous.
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(Copyright, Harry Fellows 2012) Louis Ozawa Changchien is a man of many faces so it’s a good thing he’s a damn good actor and not a thief. You may know him for having the most memorable scene in Predators (2010) in which his yakuza character Hanzo fights through a kendo match with a Falconer Predator. Changchien, who is of Taiwanese and Japanese descent, will be seen next in The Bourne Legacy (Aug. 10), although action movies aren’t his only forte. New Yorkers have an opportunity see him on stage in Kenneth Lin’s “Warrior Class,” playing Asian American Assemblyman Julius Lee making a run at Congress. “There is nothing more terrifying,” Changchien says of his role in the play, which opens today. By the way, his name “Louis” is pronounced the French way. Giant Robot: Please explain how you can have major roles in action-oriented films such as Predators and The Bourne Legacy and yet still play a lead in a staged political drama such as ‘Warrior Class.” What’s more dangerous: going one-on-one with a Falconer Predator or running for public office? Louis Ozawa Changchien: Running for public office for sure. At least I knew who my enemy was in Predators! I’ll take my chances with a sword over just using my mouth any day. It’s a rare opportunity for an Asian American actor to play a politician in a contemporary play. No special effects, no explosions, no guns to hide behind. Just three actors on a stage speaking the unspeakable to each other. There is nothing more terrifying. I’m hoping that the audience will enter Julius’ journey into the backroom battle that is politics. In Hollywood, I’m asked to look tough and shut my mouth. Don’t get me wrong, these action movies can be physically demanding: tumbling down volcanic rock that is razor sharp in nothing but flesh-colored Vibram Five Fingers and a cashmere silk three-piece suit in the middle of a sweltering hot rainforest is pretty intense. Or fighting the Falconer Predator in 30-degree weather shirtless while being sprayed down with water for 12 hours in the dead of winter in Austin was pretty demanding, too. And let’s not forget the stomach bug that hammered me while shooting Bourne in Manila. I’m not exaggerating when I tell you that I was throwing up every 15 minutes on one of my most intense days of stunts. I had a bucket next to me that I would hurl into right before the cameras would start rolling. GR: You’re a graduate of Stuy, an extremely difficult high school to test into. Did your parents hit the roof when you told them you wanted to act? What advice would you give to young people who need to break the news to their parents that they don’t want to be doctors? Changchien: Actually, I was lucky. My folks have always been very supportive of my artistic endeavors. But then again, I think they knew that there was no stopping me. For young folks, especially...
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What was once a normal Korean American girl named Jennifer Lee was transformed by a primordial soup of an upper-middle-class Torrance, Calif. upbringing, classical piano, R&B, hip-hop and Japanese anime into TokiMonsta, a wildly eclectic contemporary composer with a growing global following. Tapped by Ryuichi Sakamoto a couple of weeks ago to collaborate on his “Odakias” anti-nuclear project earlier this month along with Japanese avant-garde musician Otomo Yoshihide and rapper Shing02, Tokimonsta is blowin’ up! [youtube]zCnmmrYIXrw[/youtube] Yeah, “eclectic:” a truly overused term. But TokiMonsta owns it. Her sound has been described as “vast textural soundscapes by utilizing live instruments, percussion, digital manipulation, and dusty vinyl. ” Okay [youtube]-i5jP5DwrRw[/youtube] “I just like everything. I get bored easily, so having options, like, I can’t make this beat. You know what? On my Google Readers– on the bookmarks– I have pop culture blogs, I have fashion blogs, I have art blogs, I have advertising blogs because I think advertising is also really captivating– the mentality–’Wow! How did they think of that? That’s really clever.’” Get a taste of TokiMonsta’s Sa Mo Jung (2011) To this point in the arc of TokiMonsta, Christine Kakaire’s “monsta” 2,000-word essay-interview with Jennifer Lee is perhaps the mos in-depth verbiage on Tokimonsta evar inked. Or, maybe, the best inside look into Tokimonsta was the Dumbfounded-DJ Zo TokiMonsta podcast of September 2011 on knocksteady.com. Too bad: only a few telltale traces of it remain. [youtube]sn4kVtuEmMU[/youtube]
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Korean Air errs.. when it says their new destination of Kenya has inhabitants who are filled with “primitive energy”. Of course translations are to blame. (USA Today – Kenya)
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[Click to enlarge] SAN JUAN CAPISTRANO, Calif. ~ This week there’s been talk of restarting the Edison International-operated nuclear reactors at San Onofre. Located between Los Angeles and San Diego, the two operational pressurized water reactors there ~ units #2 and #3 ~ have been shut down since January 2012, when an inspection found that new pipes that carry steam to and from the reactor’s generators showed unexpected corrosion less than two years ago after they were retrofitted. Any other time in the atomic age, the public might have just shrugged and accepted all the assurances of the giant utility. “Not to worry, folks.” But it’s only been 15 months since the triple meltdowns at Fukushima Daiichi, and three of the Japanese reactors there are still leaking radioactive becquerels and bucky balls of toxic isotopes and a tsunami-shattered fourth reactor building houses some 1,500 spent fuel rods that some say could create another nuclear disaster that will dwarf the one that the beleaguered Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) and the Japanese government will be battling for the unforeseen future. The movement against the restarting of San Onofre #2 and #3 is growing. Warnings by the Southern California power companies that the absence of cheap and clean nuclear energy might cause rolling blackouts and limited time for junior on the Xbox don’t seem to carry the same fuzzy feelings as they did BF ~ Before Fukushima. One month after Japan’s triple 3-11 disasters, our friends over at Gizmodo published a timely story entitled “How a Fukushima-Level Disaster Would Affect You in New York, L.A. or Chicago.” The story featured some maps that were chilling then and that are even more compelling today factoring in what we didn’t know about the on-going nuclear mishaps in Japan. Gizmodo notes that while Japan opted for a 30-kilometer or 18.6-mile radius long-term evacuation zone, U.S. scientists tipped their hand last March when they advised any American citizen inside an 80-kilometer ( 49.7 mile) radius of Fukushima Daiichi to leave. If that same policy were applied in the case of meltdowns at reactors near the three top urban populations centers of the U.S. ~ New York City, Los Angeles and Chicago, this would be the scenario, according to Gizmodo: ♣In the worst case of an meltdown at Indian Point Nuclear Station in Buchanan, NY, more than 20 million people in the metro area would have to be evacuated, leaving the city deserted, from Long Island to the Bronx. ♣If a Fukushima-like accident were to hit San Onofre, Southern California, although the city of Los Angeles itself would fall outside the evacuation zone, some 15 million souls would be told to evacuate from most of Orange Counnty, Huntington Beach, Long Beach, Rancho Palos Verdes to the north; greater San Diego to the south; Fontana, Whittier and Pomona to the east; and Catalina Island and Pacific Ocean to the west. ♣A disaster at either Dresden Nuclear Power Station in Dresden, IL or Braidwood NPP, Braidwood, IL outside Chicago...
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