Wired Brand Labs
Heather Sparks
A marketing copywriter, content writer and journalist at the intersection of art, science, and tech
Wired Brand Labs
To find a drug kingpin like Pablo Escobar, U.S. and Colombian forces in the 90s had to rely on espionage equipment born from WWII and the Cold War. Cell surveillance wasn't an option. To topple a titan, the law had to take its tech to the streets.
What's great-and elusive-about a perfect New York strip? It's a timeless, deceptively simple recipe. While preparation requires just a few ingredients, professional chefs have the uncanny ability to recognize the sight, sizzle, and smell of a marbled slab of beef transforming into a perfectly seared and seasoned medium-rare steak.
iQ by Intel
A look into how the digital art genre has developed since its beginnings in the Sixties—and how it's finding a market today. #Multimedia
As part of "A Brief History of Digital Art," I helped develop this GIF of Warhol's computer drawings—the first time ever published. Twitter stats: 500+ retweets, 1.5k likes.
"After more than a decade of focused effort by artists and organizations, digital art is beginning to flourish."
Writing with Ready State
Playground Global is a consumer electronics incubator founded by Andy Rubin, maker of Android. I had the pleasure of interviewing Andy, and 35 others, then writing their bios.
A Silicon Valley VC firm, committed to promoting women in tech, wanted to get their opinions out to a broader audience. #Ghostwriter
Norwest Venture Partners hosted a talk featuring female board members. I reported on the event for NVP's blog.
Nautilus
A few months ago, I sat poolside with friends in Palm Springs. Amid the quiet desert sublime, we reminisced about all the live music we've experienced over the years, just about every big and small act since the mid-80s: Prince, David Bowie, Guns 'n Roses, Bruce Springsteen, and the Yeah Yeahs Yeahs among the them.
My grandfather wasn't a big farmer, but his small garden in Kentucky was a miracle. There was rhubarb, corn, and peppers a-plenty, but mostly I remember the tomatoes. He bred his own, saving the seeds of the best specimens every year.
One evening four years ago, photographer Andrea Tese received a phone call from a home-care nurse. Could she come to her grandfather's house to assess the situation? the nurse asked. Her grandfather had been very ill and had stipulated he did not want to die inside a hospital; he wanted to stay at home.
When was the last time you awoke right at the first peak of day? Or put away your work simply because night was falling? We are less and less tied to rhythms of natural time, living instead in the glow of computers and smartphone screens.
Many common air pollutants-ozone, various sulfur oxides, and even some particulate matter among them-are completely invisible to the eye. How interesting, then, that the EPA and other environmental organizations around the world, use color scales to communicate information about air quality.
The impact software has on modern life is certainly profound: Software runs our precious smart phones, our cars, and our power grids. This important cultural and technological thing, brought into our homes over the past few decades, is really no object in the traditional sense.
