ColumnA retrospective: 2011 in heART.

The fusion of conscious art and sustainability into what we now call heARTbeat was first published this year in May. Seven months and dozens of heARTbeats later, we bring you the top five stories that made you take pause.

#5:  heARTbeat: #walkingtoworktoday Project by Michael Surtees

After this was published in July, Michael wrote to me:

I just wanted to mention how much I appreciate you taking the time to write a post about #walkingtoworktoday. You’ve given it a huge boost. It has been an interesting experiment watching how photo sharing has evolved and fragmented over the years. When I first started it, email and uploading images to Flickr from a mobile phone was slightly unusual. Now with apps like instagram it has become second nature.

#4: heARTbeat: Qi Wei’s Exploded Flowers Portend the End of a Season

Photography is a crowd pleaser with our readers, and Qi Wei’s Exploded Flowers struck a chord with a fresh take on perennial flora favorites.

#3: heARTbeat: Tomaas’ Photographs Consider Plastic as “The New Black”

Tomaas has a clean, advertising quality to his work that works beautifully for editorial. No wonder we all loved it. He’s selling reuse of the most ubiquitous and toxic throwaways in existence: plastic.

#2: heARTbeat: Ran Hwang’s Art Transcends The Idea of a Woman’s Work

Ran Hwang’s installations dazzle us with her scale and ambition. At the same time, the art of her labor forces us to stop and consider the time consuming results of these gorgeous odes to repetitive manual work.

#1: heARTbeat: Smoking Kids Photography by Frieke Janssens

Ultimately photography compelled our readers most in 2011. Frieke Janssen stunned us with a world that fortunately doesn’t exist, seducing nonetheless. Movie star looks and lighting give way to vignettes of children smoking. Janssen reminds us that anything in just the right light makes even addictive behavior that much more interesting to look at.

heARTbeat: Miru Kim’s Nudes – the Pig That Therefore I Am

Miru Kim’s bravery, sensitivity and originality made this my favorite heARTbeat of the year. With art, I aspire to be surprised, even a little shocked, and Kim does just that with this series.

Here’s to more artistic inspiration in the same vein in 2012.

Eco, trends, art, creativity and how they tumble through social media to shape culture fascinate EcoSalon columnist Dominique Pacheco. Her trends blog, mixingreality, speaks to these topics daily, and here at EcoSalon, she takes a weekly look at the intersection of eco and art. We call it heARTbeat.

The post heARTbeat: Our Readers’ Top 5 Favorites of 2011 appeared first on EcoSalon.

Stop and take a snapshot of the roses the next time you #walktowork.

Perhaps, dear reader, you’re wondering what the deal is with that # in the title. A late night writing mishap that slipped past the editors? Hardly. It’s part of the curious language of  Twitter, like a compound noun, that the Twitter-savvy refer to as the hashtag. For the uninitiated, it’s a way of organizing your tweets so that others looking for similar content can search and find it.

#Walkingtoworktoday is a photography project started by Michael Surtees, a multidisciplinary designer, writer and educator who strives to explore people’s daily experiences and observations through design.

The concept behind #walkingtoworktoday is to create a “library” of shared experiences utilizing open source tools, mobile devices and cameras, and an everyday occurrence, like walking to work.

Here’s the drill:

#Walkingtoworktoday is open to anyone and the guidelines are pretty straightforward.

1.Take an image while walking to work.
2. Post the image to flickr and tag it with walkingtoworktoday (all one word).
3. Tweet the title of the image with the hash tag #walkingtoworktoday along with a link to the image on flickr.

Sometimes the results are banal; other times, sublime. At the very least, they’re usually interesting.  The subject matter’s not really the point since the beauty of Surtees’ project goes beyond the pictures themselves. Contributors might be in New York, where Surtees resides, or halfway around the world. The hashtag is what unites the effort.

More meaningfully, the concept slows us down and asks us to interact with our surroundings with a fresh perspective (something this column aims to achieve).

Should you find yourself #walkingtoworktoday, perhaps you will be inspired to open up, pause, and take the opportunity to share.  If you do, let us know. Just remember to use the hashtag.

All images are from  flickr.  Two years ago Surteess put this video together as he was thinking about design in New York City.

Eco, trends, art, creativity and how they tumble through social media to shape culture fascinate EcoSalon columnist Dominique Pacheco. Her personal blog, mixingreality, speaks to these topics daily, and here at EcoSalon, she takes a weekly look at the intersection of eco and art. We call it heARTbeat.

The post HeARTbeat: #walkingtoworktoday Project by Michael Surtees appeared first on EcoSalon.