Rust Belt / Bayou by Julia Christensen [Needs Flash Player and Speakers] - Rust Belt / Bayou is an aural exploration of two cities: Cleveland, Ohio, and New Orleans, Louisiana. For the past several years, Christensen’s artistic practice has been based in extensive travel throughout the United States, surveying the ways in which communities are changing in the shadow of corporate real estate development.

During these travels, she has often been struck by the similarities between Cleveland, a city of the Rust Belt, and New Orleans, a city of the bayou. Both cities dwell on the shores of bodies of water with global reach: Cleveland on Lake Erie, New Orleans on the Mississippi River. Continue reading

[From a photo by Robert Scoble who also took the tour] Erica Naone visited Microsoft’s anechoic chamber while touring their new research building in Redmond, WA. The chamber “a room… built to suppress echoes” is used in microphone and loudspeaker research. She writes about her visit in Technology Review.

From Naone’s article: “This is a room that simulates the absence of a room,’ said Ivan Tashev, a software architect in the speech technology group at Microsoft Research. I walked in through two sets of doors, walking precariously in heels over a mesh suspended above the floor, which is covered by the same alabaster-colored triangular cushions that fill the wall and ceiling. Tashev’s voice seemed to come from far away as he went on explaining that the triangular shapes trap and dampen echoes before they can reflect from one of the surfaces in the room.” Continue reading