BROOKLYN, NY and MANCHESTER, UK May. 12 - The Futuresonic Festival and Conference in Manchester, England delivers Brooklyn based found material artists Megan MacMurray and Angela Pablo to showcase their Garden Electric exhibit from May 13th to May 23rd, 2009. We use electricity all the time, but it's a hidden process contained in plugs and kept behind walls. The garden visualizes electricity usage through the life and death of its plants. These devices indicate electricity usage in real time, to make energy consumption visible and palpable.

The Garden’s flowers, constructed from recycled plastic bags, are connected to a lamp through a current sensor which reads the amount of power being consumed. This value triggers fans which inflate and deflate the garden as a whole. When the lamp is turned off and energy is conserved, the garden thrives and stays inflated; when the lamp is on, the garden is placed in a dying state. The Garden Electric invites visitors to interact with it by turning appliances on and off, allowing electricity to take on a tactile form.


Designers by day, found material artists by night, Megan MacMurray and Angela Pablo have worked together since their schooling at the prestigious Interative Telecommunications Program (ITP) at New York University. The Garden Electric was the first collaborative project and they have been working on video, animation and physical projects together ever since.

We're the next evolution of a boutique interactive marketing firm. We are one of the few very high end development shops that has a clear mission of focusing on the triple bottom line: people, planet and profit. Clients come to us because they know that we get invested in their projects, their company, and their people, because we care about what we're doing... we not out to make a quick buck. In fact, our overall mission is to help foster the emerging green economy. Our way of doing that is by using graphic design, computer science and marketing strategy to help our clients be more "sustainable". And for us sustainability has a dual meaning: it means being responsible for our environment, but it also means making sure the business is sustainable. In other words, we help our clients thrive, not just survive.

If a client comes to you saying that they want to market themselves as a green company, what kinds of advice would you give them in terms of identity and design?

Most of the companies we talk to are already walking the walk, and are actually hesitant to talk the talk. There's a green backlash that has happened in the last two years that our clients are conscious of. Many clients are doing incredibly interesting things internally and externally, but want to play down the green message because the general feeling is that it's counter productive. My advice to clients is to make sustainability a core attribute of doing business, not something that is a PR stunt. By focusing on sustainability, companies benefit in very real and tangible ways: they're respecting the health of their customers and employees, they are being good stewards of the planet, and they are reducing costs due to increased efficiency and less waste. The added benefit to all this fundamental retooling, is that they have a real value proposition to offer their clients. We help them craft that message so that it is honest and resonates with their demographic.

What would you advise against?

We advise against talking green without actually making fundamental changes. If it ever comes to light (and it will), that a company is being disingenuous about their efforts, the backlash against them is much worse than if they just kept green marketing off their agenda.

To clients that listen I always recommend reading Cradle to Cradle (by William McDonough and Michael Braungart) and the Ecology of Commerce (by Paul Hawkins). Both books point out how modern industry is headed down a dead end road, and offer suggestions on how to craft businesses with ecology in mind. Basically, we're at an inflection point where the economy, government and customers are putting increased pressure on business to make smarter, more intelligent, and long term strategic choices.

What cool trends in terms of interactive green strategy and design are you seeing now?

I listened to a keynote address by Saul Griffith (from Wattzon.com) where he mentioned that we're entering the "age of consequence", where we can start to see cause and effect relationships for the choices we make.

When and why did your firm become interested in environmentally friendly graphic design? I started the company in March of 2007 with a specific emphasis on doing interactive marketing for eco projects. After watching An Inconvenient Truth and reading Cradle to Cradle, it dawned on me that it's not wrong to build a business around green thinking… "green" doesn't have to be limited to a non-profit, or grassroots organization. In fact, I think companies can have a bigger impact on the discussion, because a company can harness more resources than other types of organizations. For example, as a company we have a formal process, a team of highly-talented and specialized people, accounting, and all the other frameworks in place for producing projects.

Are the thrust of your efforts internal — i.e., changing your own office practices and policies — or external — i.e., developing 'green' design solutions for client projects? We try to follow the philosophy of the "Triple Bottom Line", which says that success should be measured by people, planet and profit. Having a fundamental philosophy helps guide our internal and external efforts.

Internally, we constantly look for ways to be more green. Most of us ride our bikes, walk or take public transportation to work. We keep our computers turned off when we don't use them. For the servers that need to run 24 hours a day, we've specially built them to use low-powered processors and high-efficiency power supplies. We even did extensive research about which kind of garbage bag to buy for the office… do we go for the bio-degradable ones that use additives, or the corn starch-based plastic? (We ended up going with BioBags, which are starch based.) When we find stuff online, or get excited by some research, we post our thoughts to our blog: Greensear.ch

Can you tell us in a little more detail about the internal or external changes? In particular, can you give us an example of a 'green' project you have done for a client? We have a very strong relationship with 1% For the Planet, which was started by Patagonia's founder Yvonne Chouinard. 1% For the Planet is a non-profit that facilitates over $30 million per year in environmental corporate philanthropy. We are helping them get their message out farther, and make their internal processes simpler and more efficient. We recently rebuilt their site to have a more positive, hopeful theme to it. Partnering with the ad agency Groundswell, we re-crafted the tone of the copy and made heavy use of dramatic photos that were donated by member photographers. Behind the scenes we created a content management tool that drives their website but has also become the nexus of their business processes, reporting and accounting. It's a great example of using technology to benefit the environment.

"We're seeing examples of agencies co-opting, fostering and engaging in some of the technology being developed at ITP and other tech/art programs (like MIT's Media Lab)," Szopinski says. "One thing that struck me is that these students don't know what's not possible, so they invent what they want. It's a really cool environment where they have in-depth technical resources and unrestricted leeway to create anything with it." Szopinski was impressed by projects like Che-Wei Wang's "Soft Pneumatic Exoskeleton" (seen above), a lightweight (6.5 pounds) system that wraps around a user's legs and takes power from a scuba tank to assist in lifting and walking. "Another girl built accelerometers, and temperature gauges into a harness she wore," Szopinski says of Amy Rose Khoshbin and Michael Craig Clemow's "Perceptual Expansion Space/Suit." "She's a VJ on the side, so she uses this suit to remix video content, synchronizing the video with her dancing and body temperature."

What prompted you to start your own company after being a partner at a successful studio like Domani?

Being a part of building Domani Studios was an incredible experience, no doubt. When we started out, it was just three guys in an office trying to do good work. Along the way we made a lot of sacrifices to ensure that each project became the stepping stone to tackle the next bigger, higher-profile project. Helping to set the standards and build the environment that encourages great work is a very fun yet challenging process.

Eventually we got to a point where we were on the radar of Fortune 500 companies and their ad agencies. We built up a portfolio of some cool clients: Budweiser, VW, Mini Cooper, Virgin Atlantic, Whitney Museum, Estee Lauder, etc. However, I started to feel a sense of responsibility for the products I was helping to sell.

I think that seeing An Inconvenient Truth struck a chord for me. I had been keeping my enviro beliefs to myself, but that movie and the resulting chatter in the news made me think about what my priorities were. Then when the Intergovenmental Panel on Climate Change released their report that stated unequivocally that climate change was real and that humans are a major contributor, I decided that I should use what I know about web design, viral marketing, and building online systems to help the situation rather than contribute to the problem.

Brands like Budweiser and Old Spice were great fun to work on, but at the end of the day, I really don't want to contribute to these mainstream companies producing more junk… more packaging, more shipping of their products, more energy used to manufacture and market their products, etc. Instead, I want to focus my attention on companies that are working to reduce their footprint, and build their business around new environmental constraints.

I was watching Charlie Rose one night, and John Doerr from the venture capital firm Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield and Byers (famous for being an early investor in Amazon and Google), said that the economic benefit of the forthcoming ‘green' economy would be an order of magnitude larger than the internet. That statement got me thinking that nearly everything in our society can be rethought and optimized to be more green.

For example, companies that are focused on finding efficiencies in their operations are saving money, and saving resources. GE, Yahoo, Google, and even Walmart are focusing their attention on reducing their energy consumption, offsetting their carbon, and in Walmart's case, encouraging their vendors to rethink their products. Companies that are voluntarily focusing on environmental issues now will emerge as the leaders in the future. One way or the other, companies will be forced to change the way they do business: either their customers will demand it or the government will.

For me, starting a business that has a clear mission to use interactive marketing to help environmentally responsible clients isn't so much a moral decision, as it is a smart business decision. It's sort of a win/win… I get to work with cool people that give a damn, and I get to feel good about what I'm producing.

Do you only take on clients that are environmentally-responsible? What factors help you determine if a client is suitable for Core Industries?

When I first got started, I naively thought I could work on just enviro clients. But I quickly learned that I need to take a more balanced approach to taking on projects. The end goal is to be able to sustain a thriving company on 100% enviro clients, but that's not a simple goal. The best analogy is like sailing a boat into the wind; you have to tack back and forth to move forward. In our case, we have to alternate between corporate work and more environmentally-focused work.

But this going back and forth has some advantages to it. On the one hand, the corporate work pays much better, which allows us to pay our employees fairly. But it also gives us the opportunity to stay sharp and improve our skills in the more competitive corporate arena. Plus, the work gives us the opportunity to open up the discussion with the larger companies about the benefits of thinking green. Since online projects bring together the marketing, IT, and management teams, we have access to plant those seeds high up the decision ladder.

At the most basic level, I will refuse to work with companies that are blatant abusers of the environment or are being disingenuous about their motives. However, it's not always a black and white issue. One danger in green marketing is the concept of ‘green washing' where companies are using the environment to score PR points, but aren't really taking meaningful action. It's important to ask some tough questions when clients are taking an environmental angle. In some ways we can help be a first line of defense to make sure the messages are true. This helps the consumer, but it also helps our clients. If they try to take a green angle, and it comes to light that it was just a marketing ploy, that can do more damage to their brand than if they just stayed away from green.

I actually think that anyone involved in the marketing industry has the opportunity bring up these issues with their clients, and become an advocate for doing the right thing. Our industry has an incredible amount of persuasive power. Just look at the world-wide recognition of brands like Nike or Coke… they are juggernauts because of their savvy use marketing and brand management. We have a great opportunity to use design and concepts to influence a new generation of conscientious consumer.

What's your take on running a project successfully – do you believe in managers, how do you keep the scope in check and hit the deadline in a 'healthy manner'?

We're sort of in the process of fumbling through this issue now actually. I'm taking what I've learned from previous studios and trying to refine it into a process that's lightweight and easy to explain to new people when they join.

When we scope out a project, we estimate how many hours each discipline will take: design, copywriting, IA, HTML, Flash, PHP etc. Those numbers then get put directly into Harvest as an estimate for each of the people on the project. Since the desktop widget is so easy to use, everyone keeps their hours up to date through the project.

Then, our project managers can check online to see how many hours have been burned and compare that to the point we need to be in the project to hit our deadline. If one component of the project is falling behind, we can put more effort on that to make sure everything lines up for our deadline.