have been working together as JAM since 2000. JAM creates projects 34 35 that offer poetic and practical ways of embedding sustainable habits within daily life; this approach extends to Palmer and Fairbanks' work as artists, teachers, and citizens.

JAM has combined its members' training in fiber arts with their interest in sustainable practices in a project that combines art, design, and a socially motivated form of entrepreneurship. They created a series of prototypes for garments and bags equipped with lightweight, flexible solar panels that power small-scale electric devices like cell phones. Through collaborations with technical and business experts, designers, and distributors, JAM plans to move beyond prototyping and to produce them on a larger scale while continuing to use sustainable production strategies such as hiring local labor and making the bags from sturdy and/or repurposed waste materials. As part of this push to get their technology into wider use, JAM is also developing kits that contain the electronics necessary to transform one's own bags and are sharing their plans with designers.

JAM originally called the project personal power and then changed the name to Noon Solar, a shift that suggests the ways in which JAM's creations can carry multiple identities as they move among different contexts. personal power grew out of Palmer and Fairbanks' Iraqheightened awareness of the political consequences of dependence on oil and other fossil fuels, but the pair decided that in the commercial arena it made sense to downplay a "crunchy" sensibility in favor of a more open-ended and contemporary-sounding name. This fits with the look of the objects. These fashionable bags allow users to step free of the electrical power grid while retaining the ability to hook into communication networks, be stylish, or simply enjoy a little music. The name Noon Solar thus provides a bit of camouflage for JAM's utopian aims, and the hip or eco-conscious consumers who will be the bag's first users will participate in a work of social sculpture whether or not they're aware of or interested in JAM's larger project of making personal solar technology desirable, affordable, and widely available.

To that end, JAM will continue to sell limited-edition prototypes of the bags and will show the project in exhibitions. Their new installation, Jump Off, presents a convivial grouping of the bags and includes an animation by Arthur Jones that highlights JAM's concerns about the interconnections between energy consumption and military action.