Category Archives: Compositions
pibinko.org newsletter (April 17-23): a webinar recording and old card game tournaments
News
On April 14 the recording of the webinar we gave on April 7 concerning open-source geomatics, music, and rural areas was published. This is a 45-minute summary, with various live insets by Etruschi from Lakota, of the years of pibinko.org story. The presentation is in English and tuned to the free/open source software community, since we had an invitation from them, but it may be re-told in other languages and targeted to a different audience. We are posting this only now since several of you were on holiday in the past few days: http://www.pibinko.org/the-recording-of-the-webinar-of-open-source-geomatics-environment-and-music-from-southern-tuscany/.
- The week is quite calm on the outreach side, but start preparing for April 24 and 25 with large loads of live music coming up!
Ten years ago, today
Amy Winehous (RIP) was on the charts with Rehab.
Having received in mid-February the notification of acceptance for our proposal to bring palla a 21 e traditional card games at the Art of Play di Chicago, our fundraising phase was ramping up. This continued during all Spring and started with:
- a bingo evening in Torniella
- an Easter egg lottery, offered by the La Combriccola wine bar (note: the former managers, Antonella and Andrea)
- a “briscola” tournament in Torniella
- a “briscola” tournament inScalvaia
- a community lunch in Scalvaia
The word crowdfunding was a lot less used than it is now, possibly also among future metropolitan startuppers, but this is what this was.
The preparation of the mission was covered by Il Tirreno, Grosseto edition, (March 7, 2007) and by “La Banda” from Radio Popolare Milano (Apr. 18, 2007, listen to the MP3 version, 8’14”).
Meanwhile
- the bylaws for GFOSS.it (the future Italian chapter for the Open Source Geospatial Consortium) was circulating among the founding members to be signed
- I was inquiring with friend on how “ganzo” (a Tuscan version of “cool”) could be translated in Portuguese, but don’t ask me why
(…to be continued)
NOTES
- On http://www.pibinko.org/calendar you may check which events lie further ahead, or review the list past events starting from mid-December 2016, with the opening by the Farma Valley Winter Fest
- In the News sections of pibinko.org e attivarti.org you will find references to most of the stories mentiong above (respectively starting from November 1991 and March 2007).
- Please write to info@pibinko.org for additional information, comments or suggestions.
New management with Spanish spirit at “Il Boscaiolo” in Torniella (Southern Tuscany)
Simone Straccali, born in Torniella, a small hamlet in Souther Tuscany, in the woods of the Farma Valley, left the village in 2013 looking for a job in Spain. This nation, in fact, already hosts other folk from the same village, who started successful businesses in restaturants and pizzerie. Simone spent four years in a cocktail bar in Aguilas, in the region of Murcia. Between a mojito, a screwdriver and lots of movida, the idea of returning to his home and the possibility of starting an activity there never left him.
The opportunity arose at the beginning of the year. After a couple of months of paperwork, and a tour de force to renovate the premises, Wednesday, April 12, at 5.30PM the new management for “Il Boscaiolo” will start its operations, right in Torniella. Simone will be joined Marco Martinez, a Spanish chef, originally from Granada. At this point we are curious about the menu. “We will not forget about about the traditional specialities from the Southern Tuscan hills” -says Simone- “…and to these we will add fish dishes, plus Spanish recipes for specific events. In the meantime, you can start off with our Easter menu“.
The restaurant, in addition to the indoos premises (with a fireplace for those cold Winter evenings) has terrace, and four rooms if you like to stop over for the night, or use the Boscaiolo as a base camp for your visits to the Farma Valley and other Tuscan locations.
For more informatio: +393394367235
Where is “Il Boscaiolo”
As another young entrepreneur from the village once said: “the issue is not to find a place in Torniella, the issue is to find Torniella!“. The hamlet is at the centre of the Farma Valley, on the old state road connecting Grosseto to Siena (now SP73). It is halfway between Monticiano and Roccastrada, or Siena and Grosseto, or Firenze and Orbetello, or Monaco and Pescara: you choose the zoom level for the map:.
View Larger Map
Simone, Roccia, and the Eko X-27 rehearsing “Have love, will travel”
Last Sunday at the Tiglio farm, in Castelnuovo Val di Cecina, Tuscany, two out of five of the Etruschi from Lakota testing a Vintage Eko X-27 (owned by the Giacomelli family) with a great garage rock classic:
BMP Interviews #4: Davide Dominoni
Davide: introduce yourself…
My name is Davide Dominoni, a postdoctoral researcher affiliated with the Netherlands Institute of Ecology in Wageningen, the Netherlands, and the University of Glasgow in Scotland. My background is in Natural Sciences and Conservation Biology. After my Master’s degree at the University of Parma, Italy, I left my home country and worked as research and field assistant in Ireland and Australia before moving to Germany to start my PhD.
How did you get involved in light pollution studies?
It started with my PhD in Germany. I was always interested in anthropogenic impacts on wildlife, and I knew I wanted to do a PhD related to urban ecology. When I saw the job offer for a PhD on the eco-physiological effects of light pollution in the European blackbird, I thought it would have been an excellent opportunity to develop my interests.
Could you tell us a little about the scope of your research, and your most relevant findings to date?
My research integrates two main concepts. First, light is the most potent environmental factor that regulates the rhythms of life, because it signals when is the right time to be awake, to forage or to sleep, and it also indicates daylength, thus whether it is summer or winter, for instance. Light has therefore profound effects on the behaviour and physiology of virtually all organisms. Examples are daily rhythms of singing behaviour of birds or the up and down movement of leaves on plants, and the migration of millions of animals that happens at specific times of the year. Second, because organisms have adapted to these natural light/dark cycles, they have developed physiological and molecular mechanisms to synchronise to such cycles and even anticipate them. My research started from a simple hypothesis: if organisms tune their behaviour and physiology to natural light/dark cycles, then light pollution should affect such processes because it can disrupt such cycles.
In order to test this hypothesis, I first had to demonstrate that wild animals are exposed to light pollution in the first place. This is not trivial: animals move and can easily seek and hide in dark places to avoid light. To this scope I used tiny light loggers are deployed them on wild European blackbirds that were breeding in the city of Munich, in Germany, and in a nearby dark forest. Birds in the city were exposed to much higher light at night than the forest cousins, but the light intensity was still quite low if compared to the brightness of street lamps. Thus, the next question was whether such relatively low levels of light could impact the blackbirds behaviour and physiology. To answer this I brought city and forest birds to the laboratory and exposed to the same levels of light at night that I recorded in the field, to rule out any other confounding variables that may co-vary with light in the city, such as noise and temperature. What I found was impressive: birds exposed to light levels 20 times lower than the intensity of a typical street lamp bred 1 month earlier and show twice as much nocturnal activity than birds exposed to a dark, forest-like night.
Although these results were strong and intriguing, at the end of the PhD I was left with an important question: is light pollution bad, good, or neutral for birds? To solve this dilemma I had to integrate different approaches from different fields of research.
First, I used molecular techniques to understand what biochemical pathways were altered by light pollution, and what we know about such pathways. 
I found strong effects on pathways related to stress and cognitive function, suggesting that light pollution has to power to fundamentally altered processes that are now to be link to survival and reproductive success. Second, I went back to the field to understand what the long-term effects of light pollution are on the fitness of wild birds. This is an ongoing, 7-year project that is a part of a large initiative called “Light on Nature”. It is a Dutch project were street lamps of different colours are mounted in several different forests across the Netherlands. My own research looks at long-term physiological changes in the songbird Great tit. This species breeds in nest-boxes, which makes it ideal to recapture the same bird several times to obtain physiological samples, but also to look at age-related changes in reproductive success and survival, what we called “senescence”. I hope that this will better inform both science and policy-makers about the long-term effects of light pollution, as well as indicate what type of light colour might mitigate such effects, which is a very important issue as the current trend is to replace the old Tungsten lamps with LED lights.
To what extent your findings on birds may help to understand effects on humans?
My research has profound implications for human health too, as we are becoming more and more a 24-h society where we are constantly exposed to light. This is known to be a problem for human health, but studies on humans are mostly correlative, and the use of laboratory models such as mice and rats can only partially solve the problems because they are nocturnal animals. Birds are diurnal and warm-blooded, like us, they live in cities and show strong responses to light pollution. Plus, it is relatively easy to study them both in the wild and in the lab, making it easy to obtain several samples from the same animal or to follow it for its entire life, which is helpful if we want to really grasp the long-term effects of light pollution.
An audio track (what will we hear)?
This is the audio track we recorded during our work betwen 5.55 and 6.45PM CET on April 7, 2017….the actual recording will be made available shortly:
Apr. 7, 2017: At the confluence of Farma and Cecina a webinar on geomatics, environment, and music
Note: see also the official invitation published on March 31st
Experts in Tuscan hydrology might be puzzled recalling that the confluence of the Farma Creek and the Cecina river does not exist. In fact, they are not even part of the same catchment, so what’s up?
However, at times confluences may be created among territories and people. Unlike water, these occasionally flow not following the currents and -without having to oppose the flow – will propose thoughts and actions dealing with environment, resources, and culture.
Tomorrow, Friday Apr. 7, from 6 to 7PM CET, there will be a webinar by Andrea Giacomelli, aka pibinko, PhD and MS in Environmental Engineering with over twenty years of international experience in geographic information systems together with Dario Canal, Simone Sandrucci, Pietro Marini, and Luigi Ciampini (i.e. four out of five of the Etruschi from Lakota).
The presentation will review activities conducted over the past ten years, which from 2015 saw growing interactions among the authors in the area of outreach and dissemination intertwining scientific topics and music.
Mixing science and music or other performing arts is not innnovative in general, nor for the authors, who have been dealing with music for years: Etruschi as professional musicians and pibinko as creator of events and producer of projects with varying levels of musical presence. Indeed, the peculiarity of this experiment is in the process through which it started, i.e. connecting territories which are not far away but are normally disconnected, and outside of “traditional” scientific or artistic research.
After about a year of brainstorming, things went operational in December 2016, with the Farma Valley Winter Fest, where Etruschi from Lakota were the main act of the event, in parallelo with the presentation of the “alpha version” of the Farma Valley Community map.
This first gig paved the way for a subsequent poster presentation at the FOSS4G-IT conference at the Faculty of Engineering in Genoa, Italy, on Feb. 9, and the closing set related to the presentation of the updated Farma Valley Community map as one of the events in the International Open Data Day in Castelnuovo Val di Cecina. Now we wait for tomorrow’s webinar.
This originates from a call for topics by two international networks: GeoForAll, composed by over 100 open-source geomatics labs (if you are not in the business, figure folks working with multi-colour maps on large computers) spread across five continents, and the American Society of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing (ASPRS).
The webinar will be in English, and since a significant part of the audience is expected to be in the USA, the time will be from 6 to 7PM CET.
To follow the webinar you may register and be online tomorrow, or see the recording which will be published by GeoForAll after the event.
This is not the first international presentation we have on our BuioMetria Partecipativa project on participatory night sky quality monitoring, open-source mapping, or promotion of unknown parts of Tuscany. Since 2007 we gave presentations in the USA (Illinois and California), Scotland, Germany, China, United Arab Emirates, Romania, and for the European Commission. Furthermore, we invited international experts in the Farma Valley in 2012 and 2015. Still, there is interest from the hosting organizations to hear experiences from our “lesser known” territorities and -vice versa- we are curious of the feedback we will have from a very remote audience.
In the presentation we will also give some highlight on the Spring-Summer calendar of events representing the promotinal part of our team’s activities. After the webinar the information will be added as an update for pibinko.org’s calendar.
For more information: info@pibinko.org.
The Jam Session at the end of the three-day International Open Data Day suite by pibinko.org
The report on the three meetings will follow, but the two-hour jam session featuring some of Etruschi from Lakota, Wolfgang Scheibe and Pietro Crivelli needs to be shared now.
To make a long story short, during the preparations of the talk (between 5.30 and 6.30PM) Crivelli and Scheibe, laid out a warm-up session with bass and guitar.
Andrea Giacomelli MS PhD then had about half an hour of presentation…calling the musicians for a closing theme a variable-geomtery musical session started and went on until about 10PM with an acoustic set: banjo, bass, washboard, harmonica, snare drum with a table and four guitars (not all at the same time).
Below you will find three videos…the quality is not high, but they give you an idea of the mood:
Thanks to Wolfgang Scheibe for the photos and to Association il Tiglio for the organization (and the soul)
Closing the pibinko.org + Attivarti.org Winter tour (from the Farma Valley in eight regions) at Fa’ la Cosa Giusta
Saturday March 11 the presentation given a Fa’ la Cosa Giusta (the largest Italian fair on sustainable lifestyles) about participatory mapping closed the Winter tour by pibinko.org & Attivarti.org: fifteen events between mid-December and mid-March, with presentation in four Italian regions, and scouting missions in four more (including Côte d’Azur, Corsica, and Sardinia).
The tour (or the episodes from a serial?)
Eight out of the fifteeen events also had some form of musical score, spanning from real concerts, to jam sessions, to improvised poetry.
After the opening, represented by the Farma Valley Winter Fest, we logged some 5000 km, combining cars (due to the payload or the fact of having to reach off-the-beaten path locations), train, ferry, and feet. The tour was split in three segments, always departing from Torniella, our home base in Southern Tuscany, and was spiced up by interesting features, like extreme weather conditions blocking ferries for a week in Corsica, landslides in Sardinia, brasilian visitors looking for Italian ancestors, books on the bronze age read by shepherds, teleporting on Mount Amiata and involuntary re-enactments of parts of the “Vicky, Cristina, Barcelona” movie. Most of these stories have been documented along the way by pibinko in his News section (mostly in Italian on this occasion, so if you go to the News section and you see blog posts missing, try to switch to the Italian version), and many anecdotes have been embedded in the actual presentations during the tour.
The topics
This tour de force was partly engineered: the 2006-2007 Winter was the period when pibinko started proposing his projects intertwining culture, environment, and open innovations, and engaging teams to collaborate. Ten years after this phase, we wanted to share in a kind of interdisciplinary kaleidoscope the developments deriving from those early days. This was not done in a nostalgic mood, but to explain the collaborations, the services, the contents and the locations that we are proposing and which we would like to further develop in the future.
Among others, the BuioMetria Partecipativa Project on participatory night sky quality monitoring keeps finding curious and bewildered expressions of people learning about the at-times-tainted relationship between artificial light at night (lamp posts, billboards, and other man-made sources) and the natural light at night (reflected by the Moon and emitted by the stars).
The Farma Valley community map, first announced during the Farma Valley Winter Fest on Dec. 17-19, 2016, also raised great interest, both in the Valley where it originated, where it was presented during the Fifth International Open Data Day (march 4, 2017), and in the presentation given at Fa’ la Cosa Giusta.
As alway, the soundtrack was a key component of the proposed initiatives. In this respect, the support by Etruschi from Lakota, Pietro Crivelli, Wolfgang Scheibe, Fernando Tizzi and the Band of Torniella was incredible.
Last but not least, in several of the events we had a professional photo coverage (day and night, given his feel for nocturnal photography) with Federico Giussani .
Links between places
What felt different, compared to past editions of this type of ramble (started in 2007), was the sense of relationship between locations: during the Winter we made a substantial effort to connect sites which are not traditionally related, where it not for local soccer championships (Farma Valley, Cecina Valley and Scansano hills). In response, we received not just expressions of interest, but also the first collaborations by local actors. Operating in network mode is no news for pibinko.org and Attivarti.org (it’s been like this for almost 25 years), but the feedback received by the Winter Tour in some areas was definitely something interesting and to be further developed.
Next steps
The March 11 presentation closed the pibinko.org/Attivarti.org Winter tour, and now we’ll take a couple of weeks’ break from the outreach side of things.
In parallel, over the past months we have been working on our Spring-Summer calendar, which we are planning to release before Easter (April 16, this year).
To make sure you won’t be missing the upcoming action, we recommend you to check out the Per essere sicuri di non perdere le segnalazioni potete seguire il pibinko.org calendar (and the Attivarti.org one to also learn about events by our partner organizations). Better still, you may subscribe to our mailing list, in order to receive our announcements by e-mail.
Then, if you really want to not miss at least one of our events: why not organize one together, in your home town? Maybe Southern Tuscany, or the other locations in the current version of the calendar are not easily in your reach, but we are willing to travel and can adapt our schedule to many variations (with adequate lead time). Contact us if you are interested.
Coming up next we have:
- March 26 in Torniella, an info desk, during the visit of a delegation of and Italian trust for the protection of the environment (in collaboration with Pro Loco Piloni-Torniella)
- April 7, a webinar in English
For more information: info@pibinko.org or +39 351 133 7020
A summary of the event at Fa’ la Cosa Giusta
Here is a patchwork of accessories used during my the three days at Fa’ la Cosa Giusta: press clippings on the Farma Valley Winter Fest, a map of the fair, a sky quality meter, a luxmeter, the palla a 21 ball, the guest pass, a guitar, the Farma Valley Community map (beta Version).
The name of the Valley was pronounced at least four times per hour for three days, sometimes becoming a kind of mantra (Maval Leyfar / Maval Leyfar…). It still remains a lesser known location, like many others around the world, but several people were enticed by our stories and they might come to discover it now that the Winter is fading away.
Supporting the pibinko.org + Attivarti.org operation
If you like the projects you see through the pibinko.org and Attivarti.org sites, you can support us. Please contact info@pibinko.org for more information on how to do this.
Acknowledgements
This list is not exhaustive (if you’re not here but should be, please write), but covers the core of the team which supported in different ways the pibinko.org + Attivarti.org Winter tour.
- Antonella Pocci – secretariat and planning
- Elisabetta Vainigli – more planning, permits, and coordination with the Torniella Band
- Giulia Ceccarini (remote support) and Paola Bartalucci (local tortelli) at Casa del Chiodo
- Andrea Bartalucci – we need him!
- Mario Straccali – miscellanea and liaison with other organizations
- Giorgio Panerati, Alberto Bartolini and Casa Bazar – print service
- Carlo Nardi – mapping support
- La Filarmonica di Torniella – spaces in Torniella and permits
- La Pro Loco Piloni-Torniella – local promotional support
- Federico Giussani e Riflessi Associazione Fotografica di Grosseto – spaces in Grosseto and photo coverage
- Pietro Crivelli – live performances and paintings
- Etruschi from Lakota – live music (rock!) and audio service
- Attivarti.org – mailing list
- Andrea Giacomelli / pibinko.org – whatever the others didn’t cover
- Wolfgang Scheibe di Tatti Stampa – hand-made Winter Fest T-shirts, single string bass, washboard, and bread
- Giulia Rabissi – drafts
- Antonio Mori e Ilo Ferrandi – assistance with permits
- Piero Panerati – video coverage
- Enzo Panerati – historical notes
- Fabiano Spinosi e Liano Cenni: audio service
- Lucio Monocrom e Orsola Sinisi – video postproduction
- Loriano Bartoli – Strawberry juice
- Fernando Tizzi, Elino Rossi, Niccolino Grassi – Improvised poetry
- Matteo Ceriola – Support in Scansano (Tuscany)
- Gabriele e Daniele Sanna – Support in Sassari (Sardinia)
- Claudio Spinosi – historian
- Anna Giacomelli – more help than you can name
Photos and videos from the three-day tour during the International Open Data Day in Southern Tuscany
Highlights of the three-day set of events related to our Southern Tuscan participation to the International Open Data Day.
Kudos for the three-day marathon go to: Matteo Ceriola, Luca Pau from the “La Posta” cafe, Fernando Tizzi, Elino Rossi, Mario Straccali, Luigi Ciampini, Pietro Marini, Dario Canal, Simone Sandrucci, Pietro Crivelli, Wolfgang Scheibe, Enrico and the girls from the ARCI community centre in Castelnuovo Val di Cecina.