Karen M. Oleary has created this amazing handcut map of Pittsburgh – available in the StudioKMO Esty shop for $500.

Photo Credit: StudioKMO Etsy Shop

While $500 is a little out of our price range, she also has a nice print of Pittsburgh here.

The blog A Little Etsy Love has a contest running right now – leave a comment with your favorite item from the StudioKMO Etsy shop and you can win a city print.  Check out the contest here (enter before Jan 12, 2012).

Who:
CreativeTime is a non profit organization based in NYC. The Bruce High Quality Foundation is an artist collective from Brooklyn, NY (which has an interesting history – check out the wikipedia entry on the Bruce High Quality Foundation.

What:
Together – these organizations are putting together the Teach 4 Amerika Tour – which is a 5 week tour across the US in a School Bus Limo to talk about arts education – they are using a little bit of theater and a little bit of silliness to create a conversation about art schools and the cost of an art education.

The project is supported by Carnegie Mellon and the Andy Warhol Museum and the tour stops in Pittsburgh on April 2 and 3, 2011.

• Saturday April 2, 4-6pm – Carnegie Mellon, Doherty Hall
• Sunday April 3 – the tour will stop at the Waffle Shop for an intimate conversation on arts education.

Read more about this project

• Art Collective Announces Cross-Country Road Trip to Inspire Art Students (artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com)
• The Bruce High Quality Foundation: Teach 4 Amerika (Artlog)

If you are out and about in Downtown or Oakland on Friday and Saturday around 5:30pm – look up in the sky.  The Sky is the Limit is a new project from Carnegie Mellon University Associate Professor of Art Kim Beck.  An airplane skywriter will write messages over Pittsburgh taken from billboard advertising.

The Sky Is The Limit
Friday, October 1 and Saturday, October 2 5:30pm
The plane will fly over downtown Pittsburgh, the North Side and Oakland. Each letter will be one mile high and will be visible throughout the area.

More info here and follow @idealcities on twitter

Some more blog posts about skywriting…

• Felix Vorreiter’s handheld skywriter (core77.com)
• Skywriting Marriage Proposal Over New York City (laughingsquid.com)
• Using Skywriting to Brand Your Business (lanechase.net)

A community of connected individuals, young professionals, investors, and concerned citizens who have the power to make things happen just by the click of a mouse is a revolution; and it’s happening in Pittsburgh.

Why not take it to the next level?

Google is searching for the best place in the nation to test their new ultra-high speed broadband network and Pittsburgh is “ready, willing & able.”

Google will create a one-gigabit per second Internet service network, which will be 100 times faster than what is currently offered by companies like Comcast and Verizon. What’s even more remarkable about this project is that Google promises to offer competitive rates so that up to 500,000 people in the chosen community would be able to afford and enjoy the service in their homes, offices, and public places.

Steve Klabnik, Chief Technical Officer of local startup CloudFab, is enthusiastic at the prospect of Google choosing Pittsburgh. “It’s like when the first cars couldn’t go very fast; only short trips were possible. Once engines got better, they enabled longer trips.” Steve is also interested in the prospect of Google becoming a competitor to Verizon and Comcast. “Right now, there isn’t much competition for Internet services around here. Google would make Verizon and Comcast improve their service and drop their prices, which is good for everyone.”

From now until March 26th, citizens and local officials can submit their suggestions to Google as to why their city or community should be chosen for the trial. It has also been noted that the Google Fiber trial will not cost the chosen community a penny- Google will take care of all of the expenses related to the testing.

The City of Pittsburgh firmly believes that Pittsburgh is the best choice for the Google Fiber experiment; they’ve set up a website with more information and a link to contact Google directly. The site also includes a comments section to share thoughts and questions along with representation from a slew of community supporters including the Pittsburgh Technology Council, UPMC and Carnegie Mellon University.

In speaking to KDKA this week, Mayor Luke Ravenstahl was quoted as saying: “Google has said it will pick a city that proves that citizens and businesses are excited as its government. We are excited, we are ready, we are able, but we need your support.”

Mike Woycheck, Technology Analyst at Innovation Works, believes that the Google Fiber initiative would have far-reaching benefits: “The Pittsburgh tech startup community across all sectors such as web/software, entertainment, medical applications, networking, and others would gain a significant competitive advantage by getting an early opportunity to understand where the world will be in a few years.”

Adam Jette, a computer programmer, put it bluntly: “More tech means more work, and more work means more competitive salaries.”

Regarding industry leadership and efficiency, Woycheck added, “Companies that are developing significant content offerings such as video, rich media, and gaming/entertainment could leverage gigabit speeds to position themselves as industry leaders in their respective field(s). More and more startups moving to cloud computing offerings such as Amazon’s Web Services and Google’s App Engine could deploy their web/internet based applications much more efficiently while maintaining flexibility to host whatever resources they need on-site cost effectively.”

Do you think Pittsburgh is a great location for the Google Fiber tests? If you’re interested in adding your voice to the cause, make sure to let Google know your thoughts by March 26th.

Photo credit: Brian Cohen

Related articles by Zemanta

• Pittsburgh, Seattle Announce Interest In Google’s Fiber Trial (tech.slashdot.org)

Ben has just set up a page for a film about Madagascar on this great site Kickstarter – I had hoped that someone would create a site like Kickstarter and I think it is agreat way to build community support for projects.  I did a search for Pittsburgh on Kickstarter and couldn’t find any projects yet – so please let me know if you add a Pittsburgh project to thier site.  I had fun browsing the site and found some interesting projects to support.  I think that Kickstarter works like the website ThePoint – if the project doesn’t meet the fundraising goal then the supporters cards aren’t charged for the donation.  It is a nice way to give money to projects that have a broad base of support.

Here are some other blog posts that talk about Kickstarter projects…

• Polyvinyl Holding Pledge Drive to Save 10,000 Records From Destruction (pastemagazine.com)
• Juliette Powell: Gen Art Facing Economic Crises – Your Help is Needed! (huffingtonpost.com)
• Finally, An 8-Bit Tribute to Miles Davis (pastemagazine.com)

This is the last weekend to see the Vader Project – collection of 100 Darth Vader helmets which decorated by artists (see our Vader Project post) which will be at the Warhol until May 3.

For anyone who is interested in Star Wars – the film Fanboys will be shown on Saturday and Sunday at 12:30.

A comedy about a group of friends who, eager for the premiere of Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace travel to Skywalker Ranch to steal an early copy of the script.

More info about Fanboys at the Warhol including a link to buy tickets is available here.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Some more blog posts about Fanboys…

• Fanboys (pastemagazine.com)
• The One About Finally Getting To See Fanboys. (A Follow Up Friday Special Report) (the-one-about.blogspot.com)
• Fanboys Gets a Date (Pun Intended) [Star Wars] (i.gizmodo.com)
• Live in Chicago? Want to see FANBOYS with a post-screening Q&A; with director Kyle Newman? Capone has the details!!! (aintitcool.com)
• Cagematch: Watchmen vs Fanboys (stoopidnoodle.wordpress.com)
• Review: Fanboys Might Have Been Funny ‘A Long Time Ago’ (wired.com)
• Catching Up With… Fanboys writer Ernie Cline (pastemagazine.com)

I really want to highlight this event for this weekend – I am going to try to stop by on Friday or Satruday evening.  I met the founder of the Unsmoke Artspace a few years ago and I have really enjoyed seeing his dedication to Braddock and the region.  Braddock Light is an exhibit that will include artists from the University of Wisconsin and other locations – all who work with light as an artistic medium.  I have attended a variety of events in Braddock over the past few years and each time has provided an opportunity to see interesting works of art, the architecture of Braddock and meet some interesting people.  Here is a picture from a light installation in Braddock in 2006.

Braddock Light

Who: over 35 light and video artists from the University of Wisconsin – Madison,
Pratt MWP and the Pittsburgh area.

When: dusk till midnight, Friday April 24 and Saturday April 25

Where: Unsmoke Systems Artspace, 1137 Braddock Ave, Braddock PA, 15104
Braddock, PA – Join us for the 2009 light art exhibition hosted by Unsmoke
Systems. The two day event is a unique and exciting art event that exhibits
works of art from artists around the region For the past 20 years, the University
of Wisconsin-Madison has been hosting national exhibits for artists who use
light as a medium. This year they have decided to take it on the road, to Braddock and
come and transform Unsmoke Systems. This event is presented by the University
of Wisconsin – Madison Art/Glass Dept. and Unsmoke Systems.

Some other blogs that have posted about Braddock Light: Oranje,  Pittsburgh Art and Gallery Info, Graduate Contextual Practice – (I am not sure exactly what this blog is about but I love the blog design and there are some great pictures posted here too) and the Pittsburgh discussion group on Flickr.

Some other blog coverage of Braddock:

• This American Dream looks at Braddock going Greeen
• Rust Wire has a nice summary of some recent press on Braddock – Rust Wire is doing a great job blogging about the Great Lakes “rust belt” cities – I had a change to catch up with these bloggers at the last month in Milwaukee – check out their blog for more great info.

Even more blog coverage of Braddock, Pa:

• Revitalizing A Rusty Old Town (cbsnews.com)
• Rebuilding America’s Ghost Towns (oxdown.firedoglake.com)
• Steel town trying to rebound from bottom (cnn.com)
• a view of a grim economic future: Braddock (bripblap.com)
• Braddock’s March on Fort Duquesne 1755 (colonial-america.suite101.com)
• Urban Revitalization Continues Amid Recession (streetsblog.org)

The Vader Project opens this weekend and The Warhol

100 works by contemporary international artists utilizing 1:1 scale authentic prop replicas of the Darth Vader helmet used in the Star Wars films.

From Vinyl Pulse (a blog about designer toys)

The exhibit officially opens this Saturday, February 28th (12-4) with a make-your-own-vader mask event. Come out dressed up as your favorite character.The Vader Project opens at the Warhol this weekend.

From I like the Warhol museum for alot of reasons – I am not really sure if Andy Warhol would like the Warhol museum but that is anothr conversation.  If it weren’t for the warhol museum this blog wouldn’t exist.  After a trip to the Warhol on a rainy sunday afternoon – I decided to teach myself to screen print.  The first t-shirt I printed was an IheartPGH t-shirt.  A few year later, I had forgotten about t-shirts and was working on campaigns when we started the IheartPGH blog and brought back the t-shirt idea.  The t-shirts and the blog have been a good thing.  It was an IheartPGH reader that left a comment about Spreadshirt and I was happy to find a great source for IheartPGH T-shirts and now I work for Spreadshirt and when I am not writing about Pittsburgh, I am writing about t-shirts here.  I had no idea when I dragged friend of IheartPGH to the Warhol musuem back in 2003 that it would be so influential.Even if you aren’t big on museums – see John Neil’s post on museums and the Warhol.  I mostly agree with this – I think the trick to museums visits is not trying to see everything.  One of the other great things about the Warhol museum is you can check out the whole place pretty quickly if you are an impatient sort of person.I think that The Vader Project is probably a good reason to revisit the Warhol.  If you have friends that aren’t so much museum people – maybe they are Star Wars people and this will get them to the museum where they will try screen printing and change their careers or just enjoy the afternoon and a sandwich – John reccomends the cuban sandwich.The Star Wars blog offers a tour of The Vader Project with tons of pictures. You can also check out The Vader Project on Myspace and Facebook.Here is a video of the exhibit and check out some of the related links below – darth vader in butter and an Andy Warhol interviews Spielberg. 

Click here to view the embedded video.

Related blog posts

• Fan Made: The Vader Project (cinematical.com)
• Darth Vader Gas Mask [Star Wars] (i.gizmodo.com)
• Darth Vader Tattoo Design T-Shirt: Love It or Leave It? (geeksugar.com)
• Giant Sculpture of Darth Vader and Yoda Carved out of Butter (neatorama.com)
• Star Wars by someone who hasn’t seen it. (benway.net)
• Warhol Interviews Spielberg With Bianca Jagger (VIDEO) (huffingtonpost.com)

Image via Wikipedia

Well thanks to Roin Hewlett & Benn Kingsley’s Street With a View project there is a lot more to see on the Google Street View of Sampsonia Way – earlier this year they staged a scene for the street view photos.

Now when you take a tour of Sampsonia Way on Google Street view you will see all sorts of things from a giant chicken, to a parade with the Langly high school marching band.

Click here to check out the map.

Here is a video about the project:

Click here to view the embedded video.