fabric | rblg

A Faster Fourier Transform

Mon, 14 May 2012 09:27:00 +0000

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A mathematical upgrade promises a speedier digital world.

By Mark Anderson

In January, four MIT researchers showed off a replacement for one of the most important algorithms in computer science. Dina Katabi, Haitham Hassanieh, Piotr Indyk, and Eric Price have created a faster way to perform the Fourier transform, a mathematical technique for processing streams of data that underlies the operation of things such as digital medical imaging, Wi-Fi routers, and 4G cellular networks.

The principle of the Fourier transform, which dates back to the 19th century, is that any signal, such as a sound recording, can be represented as the sum of a collection of sine and cosine waves with different frequencies and amplitudes. This collection of waves can then be manipulated with relative ease—for example, allowing a recording to be compressed or noise to be suppressed. In the mid-1960s, a computer-friendly algorithm called the fast Fourier transform (FFT) was developed. Anyone who's marveled at the tiny size of an MP3 file compared with the same recording in an uncompressed form has seen the power of the FFT at work.

With the new algorithm, called the sparse Fourier transform (SFT), streams of data can be processed 10 to 100 times faster than was possible with the FFT. The speedup can occur because the information we care about most has a great deal of structure: music is not random noise. These meaningful signals typically have only a fraction of the possible values that a signal could take; the technical term for this is that the information is "sparse." Because the SFT algorithm isn't intended to work with all possible streams of data, it can take certain shortcuts not otherwise available. In theory, an algorithm that can handle only sparse signals is much more limited than the FFT. But "sparsity is everywhere," points out coinventor Katabi, a professor of electrical engineering and computer science. "It's in nature; it's in video signals; it's in audio signals."

A faster transform means that less computer power is required to process a given amount of information—a boon to energy-conscious mobile multimedia devices such as smart phones. Or with the same amount of power, engineers can contemplate doing things that the computing demands of the original FFT made impractical. For example, Internet backbones and routers today can actually read or process only a tiny trickle of the river of bits they pass between them. The SFT could allow researchers to study the flow of this traffic in much greater detail as bits shoot by billions of times a second.

fabric | ch - personal comment:

A faster digital world certainly means a faster (intertwined) world in general. It is fascinating to consider how important algorythms have become in this contemporary world and therefore, how mathematics are! Can a "tiny" piece of math (FFT?) modify the world? (of course it can, as it in fact already did many times --from Pythagore or Thales to Turing or more recently Wiles, through Euler, Descartes or Newton and many many more...--). It therefore also happen at the "atomic level" of the code (a math formula), and that's even more fascinating.

Feel Me by Marco Triverio Digital touch and new channels for bit-intimacy

Fri, 11 May 2012 09:18:00 +0000

Via Creative Applications

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Feel Me is a project by Marco Triverio that explores the gap between synchronous and asynchronous communication using our mobile device in attempt to “connect differently” and enrich digital communications. Whereas we draw lines between phone conversations and sms messages, Feel Me looks for space in between that would allow you to be intimate in realtime, non-verbally using touch.

Based on the finding for which communications with a special person are not about content going back and forth but rather about perceiving the presence of the other person on the other side, Feel Me opens a real-time interactive channel.

Feel Me first appears to be a text messaging application. When two people are both looking at the conversation they are having, touches on the screen of one side are shown on the other side as small dots. Touching the same spot triggers a small reaction, such as a vibration or a sound, acknowledging that both parts are there at the same time. Feel Me creates a playful link with the person on the other side, opening a channel for a non-verbal and interactive connection.

“Feel Me” was awarded honors at CIID. Marco is currently working as an interaction designer at IDEO.

See also concept development videos below.

Project Page

Water vs. World

Wed, 09 May 2012 08:27:16 +0000

Via BLDGBLOG

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[Image: Illustration by Jack Cook, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution; courtesy of the USGS].

In Charles Fishman's compelling exploration of water on Earth, The Big Thirst, there is a shocking statement that, despite the apparent inexhaustibility of the oceans, "the total water on the surface of Earth (the oceans, the ice caps, the atmospheric water) makes up 0.025 percent of the mass of the planet—25/10,000ths of the stuff of Earth. If the Earth were the size of a Honda Odyssey minivan," he clarifies, "the amount of water on the planet would be in a single, half-liter bottle of Poland Spring in one of the van's thirteen cup holders."

This is rather remarkably communicated by an illustration from the USGS, reproduced above, showing "the size of a sphere that would contain all of Earth's water in comparison to the size of the Earth." That's not a lot of water.

Only vaguely related, meanwhile, there is an additional description in Fishman's book worth repeating here.

[Image: The Orion nebula, photographed by Hubble].

In something called the Orion Molecular Cloud, truly vast amounts of water are being produced. How much? Incredibly, Fishman explains, "the cloud is making sixty Earth waters every twenty-four hours"—or, in simpler terms, "there is enough water being formed sufficient to fill all of Earth's oceans every twenty-four minutes." This is occurring, however, in an area "420 times the size of our solar system."

Anyway, Fishman's book is pretty fascinating, in particular his chapter, called "Dolphins in the Desert," on the water reuse and filtration infrastructure installed over the past 10-15 years in Las Vegas.

(Via @USGS).

Glitch jam

Mon, 07 May 2012 08:48:00 +0000

Via Mammoth

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de rholmes

[The Placer County Courthouse, in Auburn, California -- imagine it swarmed by a glitch jam.]

NPR reported this morning (ed. note: last morning due to the repost) on a traffic jam in California caused by an algorithmic glitch “accidentally summon[ing] 1,200 people to jury duty on the same morning”. An excellent reminder of the tendency of algorithmic dysfunction to manifest as physical dysfunction, and (at a relatively small scale) of the potentially disproportionate impact of glitches when they are translated from dataspace into an infrastructural system. The glitch may be as simple as having accidentally swapped the 0 indicating “do not come in” for the 1 indicating “come in”, but the resulting jam is rendered in aluminum autobodies and on asphalt corridors where it is much more difficult to clear than it was to create.

Creolization

Fri, 04 May 2012 08:23:21 +0000

Via Pasta & Vinegar

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The terms ‘Creole’ and ‘creolization’ are used in many different contexts and generally in an inconsistent way. It is instructive to start with the origins of the root word. It was probably derived from the Latin creara (‘created originally’)… The French transformed the word to ‘créole’… ‘Creole’ referred to something or someone that had foreign (normally metropolitan) origins and that had now become somewhat localised… To be a Creole is no longer a mimetic, derivative stance. Rather it describes a position interposed between two or more cultures, selectively appropriating some elements, rejecting others, and creating new possibilities that transgress and supersede parent cultures, which themselves are increasingly recognised as fluid.

— Robin Cohen, Creolization and Cultural Globalization: The Soft Sounds of Fugitive Power, Globalizations Vol. 4 (2) 2007

Why do I blog this? Some people wonder about the fact that we live in a perpetual present without the jetpacks, moonbases and virtual realities we were promised. This was actually the topic of the Lift 09 conference I co-organized. I’m more and more interested to uncover the the “alternative futures” to this, places where créolisation will play an important role. This is a new pet project for 2012 and I will file all the weak signals I collect about this under the category “creolization”.

fabric | ch - personal comment:

As we are very interested in that topic of creolization (see on our home page), so as Nicolas Nova with with we had a discussion on that topic last week, I take the opportunity to mention that he (Nicolas) will file projects under this subject on his blog.

The Descriptive Camera turns your photos into someone else's words

Thu, 03 May 2012 10:08:00 +0000

Via The Verge via Computed | Blg

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While most camera innovations are aimed at higher megapixel counts or new image capturing techniques, Matt Richardson is taking an entirely different route with the Descriptive Camera: creating a device that turns your captured imagery into words. Designed as part of a class for New York University's Interactive Telecommunications Program, the camera consists of a USB webcam, a shutter button, a small thermal printer, and an ethernet connection. When a picture is "snapped," it's sent off to humans for analysis via Amazon's Mechanical Turk API. The human on the other end then creates a written description of the image, which is sent back to the camera. The resulting text is printed with the thermal printer, framed by a Polaroid-style photo outline (an example Richardson provides reads "It's a dark room with a window. The image is quite pixelated."

According to Richardson's post about the project, the Amazon Human Intelligence Task — or HIT — cost is about $1.25 for each image, with results usually taking between three to six minutes to return. An "accomplice mode" actually lets the camera send out links to the image via instant messenger, providing a cheaper option for human interpretation. While the device currently requires external power from a 5-volt source, Richardson does hope to make a version at some point that runs off self-contained batteries and can use wireless data. It's certainly an interesting project, and we won't deny that we're smitten with the idea of taking images out and about in the world, and seeing them perceived through someone else's eyes.

In a 3-D Printed Future, Do Toymakers Have a Business Model?

Thu, 03 May 2012 09:25:00 +0000

Via MIT Technology Review (blogs)

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What's to stop kids from pirating LEGO sets as readily as they pirate music?

Christopher Mims 04/02/2012

Rendering of LEGO minifig head from Christmas Lego Men of Kansas City by Michael Curry

Let's assume for a minute that 3D printing becomes as good as its proponents say it will, and soon. We're talking high strength plastics, high resolution models, all at prices that the average consumer can afford.

LeoCAD, A library of over 4,000 LEGO bricks, already exists. It's distributed under a creative commons attribution license, so you can pretty much do what you want with it, as long as you give credit. Makers are already constructing custom LEGO pieces on their 3D printers. The existing model for creating LEGOs, in Denmark, is surprisingly labor-intensive.

Meanwhile, "out of print" LEGO sets are eye-openingly expensive. (Pretty much every Star Wars set from the movies that weren't awful is going for at least $300.)

It seems obvious that at the point where all these trend lines meet, there's a powerful incentive for tinkerers and teenagers to start downloading plans from the internet and simply making their own sets.

In this scenario, if physical objects made from single materials follow the same trajectory as other media that were physical until they became just bits, there will at first be resistance from toymakers, in the form of lawsuits. Collectors will be sued as a deterrent to other rogues, and websites for sharing designs shut down.

Meanwhile, an underground of Makers will continue to experiment. Amateurs will collaborate to create LEGO sets and other toys that no cadre of designers in Denmark could match. Some will go pro. Gradually, the industry will adapt.

I realize that some proponents of 3D printing envision this process eating pretty much all the manufacturing on the planet. There are good reasons that won't happen. But for certain industries that are uniquely susceptible to being disrupted by better versions of today's 3D printing technology, who knows? Perhaps the YouTube of the future deals in atoms, not bits.

Kickstart this!

Wed, 02 May 2012 13:27:01 +0000

Archinect opened a page on Kickstarter with curated content.

Check it out to see if you want to help build an eco-pool in NYC, to support Raumlabor to build an inflatable or David Lynch to be documented! Or else...

MIT creates invisible glass that's fog+glare free and self cleaning

Wed, 02 May 2012 13:16:49 +0000

Via Archinect

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de Ian Smith

One of the most instantly recognizable features of glass is the way it reflects light. But a new way of creating surface textures on glass, developed by researchers at MIT, virtually eliminates reflections, producing glass that is almost unrecognizable because of its absence of glare — and whose surface causes water droplets to bounce right off, like tiny rubber balls.

fabric | ch - personal comment:

Invisible glass, invisible cloacks, darker than black black, etc. : a whole range of new (meta)materials are around the corner.

Tele-present environments

Thu, 26 Apr 2012 07:48:35 +0000

In the "tele-present" environments serie and after the water, here comes the wind, by David Bowen:

See also his previous work, "Tele-present water" that has been published a lot already.

PS. Thanks Sinan Mansuroglu for the link.

fabric | ch - personal comment:

It is a very direct translation of the source, very readable and therefore quite efficient (but also possibly too direct, like a roboticized reproduction). In this case, we are confronted to a kinetic sculpture, which makes it works, especially in the case of the water. It is, literaly, a kinetic sculpture in the abstract realism tradition.
We would be in our case of course more interested in the creation of full livable environments (Perpetual (Tropical) SUNSHINE and Arctic Opening or RealRoom(s) are some examples of what we are trying on our side), possibly working more in the direction of a transposition and combination process (without going into a synestetic approach though!)

How the 10,000-Year Clock Measures Time

Tue, 24 Apr 2012 08:37:00 +0000

Note: I re-reblog this article about The 10'000 Years Clock because in the meantime (since last decembre, when I first rebloged it), I learned that this is a project from Stewart Brand (a.k.a. The Whole Earth Catalogue) and its Long Now Foundation.

A book has been published about this project by Mr Brand, especially around the question of "time and responsibility": The Clock of the Long Now, Time and Responsability (the ideas behind the world slowest computer) published back in 2000.

The book has just been translated to French.

Via MIT Technology Review (blog)

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By KFC 12/15/2011

The Earth's rotation is notoriously unpredictable. So how can a clock keep time for 10,000 years?

Ten thousand years is about the age of civilisation. Archaeologists have a few relics that have spanned this period, mostly stone tools and works of art. But most evidence of the earliest civilisations has long crumbled into dust.

So the plan to build a mechanical clock that will keep time for the next ten thousand years is hugely ambitious. And yet that is exactly the goal of the Long Now Foundation, an organisation set up to promote long term thinking and responsibility.

These guys are currently building a prototype of their clock inside a mountain in Texas near the border with New Mexico. And today, Danny Hillis at the foundation and a few pals, outline the way in which it will keep time.

Keeping time over such a period generates numerous challenges. First is ensuring the mechanical integrity of the machinery, which they achieve with long-lasting materials such as titanium, ceramics, quartz and sapphire.

Just as important is the environment: a series of tunnels carved into a mountainside in the high desert. Inside the mountain, the conditions are dry and the temperature constant.

Outside, however, the temperature varies between dessert extremes of hot and freezing. Hillis and co plan to exploit this temperature difference to power the clock using metal rods that change in length as the temperature varies. Human visitors will also be able to wind it.

As for time, the heart of the clock is a titanium pendulum with a 10 second cycles. Pendulum Time advances one unit once every 30 cycles, in other words every five minutes.

The rest of the clock is a digital computer using Pendulum Time as an input and generating analogue outputs in the form of various displays of time.

The mechanism first calculates Uncorrected Solar Time using a straightforward equation of time, which has been precomputed for the next ten thousand years to within the accuracy of the Earth's variable rotation.

Next, the clock calculates Solar Time using a correction provided by a solar sychroniser: a vertical chamber that heats up when the sun is directly overhead and shines into it. This can add or take away a tick if the clock is out of sync. "The correction is positive if the Sun is detected before the just-before-noon tick, and negative if it is detected after the just after-noon tick," say Hillis and co.

An obvious problem occurs if the Sun is obscured for long periods of time, perhaps because of dust from a volcanic eruption. In that case, the clock will keep uncorrected solar time until the Sun becomes visible again. Then it can correct the time in 5 minutes steps each sunny day.

It is this mechanism that corrects for any changes in the Earth's rotation, caused by climate change, shifts in the Earth's crust and so on. An accumulation of ice at the poles will cause the rotation to speed up, for example.

But provided the clock does not drifted by more than 12 hours, it should return to the right time. "This allows the clock to successfully recover after more than a century of overcast skies," say Hillis and co.

The clocks uses Corrected Solar Time to generate a Displayed Solar Time that visitors will see. It also calculates Orrery Time, a display of the position and phase of the Moon, the tropical year, the sidereal day, orbits of the visible planets, and the precession of the Earth's axis.

The plan is to use the lessons from building this prototype to create another clock in a mountain in Nevada. After that, the creators hope that other groups around the world will make their own millennium clocks, thereby spreading the pattern of long term thinking.

A profoundly impressive project.

fabric | ch - personal comment:

Obviously we are interested in "dimensions" and the way to architecture or interact with them. In this case, it is particularly interesting to underline the relationship between the construction of the clock (its materials, architecture) and the environment (the tunnels) that could/should last unchanged for 10'000 years.

Join Archinect in Hollywood this Thursday for "Publish Or... bracket [GOES SOFT]"

Thu, 19 Apr 2012 12:23:00 +0000

Via Archinect

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Archinect and Woodbury School of Architecture are proud to present:

Publish Or... bracket [GOES SOFT]
Thursday, April 19
6:00 p.m.

Sonic landscape by Health and Beauty.

WUHO Gallery
6518 Hollywood Boulevard
Los Angeles, CA 90028 (map)

Come say hello, mingle, and check out selected entries from bracket [goes soft]. Including work by Woodbury School of Architecture faculty member Ewan Branda.
Limited edition zine-syle [goes-soft] take-aways. First come, first serve.

Bracket [goes soft] examines the use and implications of soft today—from the scale of material innovation to territorial networks. While the projects in Bracket 2 are diverse in deployment and issues they engage, they share several key characteristics—proposing systems, networks and technologies that are responsive, adaptable, scalable, non-linear, and multivalent. Certain projects reveal how soft systems rely on engagement with their larger environment, collecting and sensingenvironmental atmospheric information, and through feedback, adapting the system to augment performance. Other projects examine how soft systems can function as interfaces with the environment—whether mitigating or harnessing it—operating at the scale of a wall, a building, or a landscape.Moreover, a particular strand of projects presented in Bracket 2 are tactical and strategic in nature, enabling them to operate, often covertly, within existing organizational structures, subverting rules and limitations for opportunism, to support new ecologies—whether natural, economic or political. Intelligence in other work lies in the organization and format of the system, accommodating transformation by rejigging components of the system itself. Adapting to extrinsic as well as intrinsic factors, enabling them to anticipate, recover and transform in unexpected situations, renders other speculations resilient to disturbances. Instead of mitigation, contingency in these soft systems is typically opportunistic. Lastly, select projects expose how the networking of smaller units or interventions, diffused across a larger territory, can generate, collect, or respond at a vast scale. Agile, these tentacular networks can diffuse or retract as resources or needs change.

The editorial board and jury for Bracket 2 includes Benjamin Bratton, Julia Czerniak, Jeffrey Inaba, Geoff Manaugh, Philippe Rahm, Charles Renfro, as well as co-editors Lola Sheppard and Neeraj Bhatia.

Bracket 2 is published by Actar and designed by Thumb.

fabric | ch - personal comment:

fabric | ch publishes its project Arctic Opening (pdf) in the second volume of Bracket. Subject of this edition of Bracket is "software", or how the projects that are presented "share several key characteristicsproposing systems, networks and technologies that are responsive, adaptable, scalable, non-linear, and multivalent."

(Paranoid Shelter) - Globale Surveillance

Thu, 12 Apr 2012 13:15:00 +0000

By fabric | ch

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Last week I published a post about Paranoid Shelter, a recent architectural installation by fabric | ch that deals with "smartness", sensing and surveillance. As explained then, this new work can be displayed on its own, as a study on the "contemporary shelter" that articulates the notions of (the nearly fantasized) shelter and the one of surveillance. But this installation or "architectural device" was also created with a collaborative context in mind.

This collaboration, or at lest the first one, was for a theatrical: Globale Surveillance, for which we worked on the scenography and co-initiated the project. This is a project and performance-like theatrical staged by Eric Sadin, a french essayist and writer, based on the books Globale Paranoïa (Éditions Les Petits Matins, 2009) --fiction-- & Surveillance Globale (Climats/Flammarion, 2009) --theory--, both written by him. NOhista (sound and video design) as well as Abigail Fowler (light design) joined the team to finalize the project as well, of course, as the two comedians, Laure Wolf and Gurshad Shaeman.

Rehearsals and opening of Globale Surveillance were last February and March in Caen (France), at the Comédie de Caen-Centre Dramatique National de Normandie (CDN). The play should travel to Paris for the new theater season (12-13) and then hopefully to other cities in France and Switzerland, before, eventually to travel further away and in english.

GLOBALE SURVEILLANCE

About the play (notice from the Comédie de Caen):

We live in a world under surveillance, no one would dispute that point anymore. But what configurations do the new devices of control take, in what forms and in which way are they different from the practices of the last century? How do they alter our relationship to the world and to the others? Do they reach the point of threatening the right to privacy? Globale Surveillance sets up an hyper-monitored zone, within which actors and spectators are subject to quantities of traceability procedures, in this case made visible, conversely many scary mechanisms at work daily that are affected by the phenomenon of invisibility.

Text & staging : Éric Sadin

Scenic architecture, responsive spatial device : fabric | ch

Sound & video design : Nohista

Light design : Abigail Fowler

Comedians : Laure Wolf & Gurshad Shaheman

Paranoid Shelter on stage during the play with the two comedians (Laure Wolf, Gurshad Shaeman), CDN (Centre Dramatique National) / ESAM of Caen in France.

A compressed preview and short of the play by NOhista.

Pictures: Nicolas Besson, Patrick Keller, Alban Van Wassenhove

Co-production: Comédie de Caen-Centre Dramatique National de Normandie (CDN), France; Ecole supérieure d'arts et médias de Caen (ESAM), France.

With the support of: DICRéAM, France; Office Fédérale de la Culture, Swirtzerland; Pro Helvetia, Switzerland; Ville de Lausanne, Switzerland and Etat de Vaud (Switzerland).

Largest Rooftop Farm by BrightFarms Coming to Brooklyn, NY

Thu, 12 Apr 2012 09:26:00 +0000

Via ArchDaily

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de Irina Vinnitskaya

BrightFarms CEO, Paul Lightfoot is obsessed with efficiency. Spending most of his career improving market supply chains he has now turned his attention to the market supply chains of America’s produce. BrightFarms is an innovative and straight forward program whose goal is to eliminate the wasted energy expended on travel times between the farm and the shelf, to provide more nutritious and safer produce that is grown for the table and not for the endurance of days and weeks of transport, and to create a local market where consumers know their farmers and where the food is coming from and who is responsible for growing it. Littlefoot describes the blatant problems with the food industry today – efficiently factory farming and preserving produce that moves from one and end of the country to the other and inefficiently providing nutritious and tasty produce.

The challenge is to create a model that ensures quality while keeping costs down and BrightFarms appears to have found a strategy that works: hydroponic rooftop gardening near supermarket distribution centers or local markets. The newly renam520/500 ed Federal Plaza #2, soon to be known as Liberty View Industrial Plaza to be developed by Salmar Properties, in Brooklyn, NY is set to be the world’s largest rooftop garden which will reportedly grow “1 million pounds of local produce per year, including tomatoes, lettuces and herbs”. Find out how it works after the break!

BrightFarms business model seems simple – and too good to be true. The company is essentially a middle man – connecting experienced and reliable local farmers with credited grocery stores – that finances, develops and builds the BrightFarm operation. BrightFarms ensures that both parties enter into individual agreements with the program. The grocery stores are obligated to purchase the output of the farms for a 10-year period, while farmers must guarantee the volume and quality of output. And of course the key ingredient to making this operation distinct from the trends of the country is the proximity of the farms, farmers and grocery stores. Community is essential.

Aside from providing goods that are fresher and more nutritious, BrightFarms hydroponic system also reduces carbon output drammatically. Hydroponic farming delivers nutrients to plants directly through the water without soil. These systems can be trays or columns made of PVC that expose the roots to the nutrient and mineral filled water. No soil means no land use and no heavy, gas-guzzling equipment. The water in the system can be reused, There is greater control of the nutrients which means reduced waste and the water stays in the system and can be reused which greatly reduces the agricultural runoff. It also consolidates space, which makes maintenance and harvesting much easier.

The system is perfect for urban rooftop applications, which is why Liberty View Industrial Plaza is set to be the model for urban agriculture covering the rooftop of an 8-story 1.1 million-square-foot warehouse building along Brooklyn’s Industrial Waterfront in Sunset Park. The project will provide innumerable benefits for the city. It will provide enough produce to feed 5,000 New Yorkers, will create an anticipated 1,300 permanent industrial jobs and 400 construction Jobs, and will relieve the over-burdened sewer system of 1.8 million gallons of storm water from entering the waterways. It is also a plan that is part of Mayor Bloomberg’s initiative to revitalize Brooklyn’s waterfront – which is already underway at the Brooklyn Navy Yard aka Navy Hill.

Everyone is optimistic that the project will not only bring fresh and healthy food and revitalized attitude toward local farming, but will also push the long-dormant industrial buildings into a new territory of sustainable development for cities. Follow this link to see other projects by BrightFarms.

via BrightFarms and New York Real Estate Lawyer’s Blog

fabric | ch - personal comment:

While I also definitely think that producing food closer to the place where it will be eaten is a necessary thing (but guess what? this was still the way we were producing and eating food, at least in my neighboorhood, when I was a very young kid --i.e. my grandfather was selling the excedent products of his garden to the local shop, which means: we need local shops again, as well as a different economic and consumption model--. We didn't need either to take a car to buy a few tomatoes so to say), I also question this whole idea of urban farming: how much energy does it really need to grow products? At least on rooftop and exposed platforms seems a good direction, on the contrary, to build skyscapers that need artificial lighting and air conditioning to produce food not really.
But it looks like that there will be a "competition" about the use of rooftops in the close future: will we use them to produce clean electricity (solar or by other means), locally, should we use white rooftops to reduce the global albedo index of our cities (the albedo index of soil and green plants is not good) and therefore artifically replace the solar reflexion of disappearing glaciers and ice cap, should we collect waterfrom the roofs instead, or should we use them to grow plants (and eventually capture CO2 locally too, and particles of pollution as well that we'll then eat...)?
I have the feeling that we need a more general view (systems theory?) that help take more parameters into consideration.
Maybe the solution will look like this: to bioengineer new white algae plants that we can eat, that need few enery and water to grow under a minimal amount of natural light and that help produce biocarburant... (but they will still eject C02 when you'll use that carburant... damn...)

Luz Interruptus: "Mutant weeds", pop-up installation

Wed, 11 Apr 2012 09:33:00 +0000

Taken out from this article on Domusweb, we just liked this image of a speculative "mutant glowing weed" that would grow under the permanent light of an overilluminated (green led based) pharmacy sign. A "pharma weed". As the group state "So much light emanates from the new led based crosses, that the environment that surrounds each pharmacy is permanently tinted a deep, vibrant and unnatural green color".

Based in Madrid, the group tries the point with its pop-up installation that "of all the environmental pollution that can be found in the city of Madrid, the most evident is light pollution. This overillumination is evident to the naked eye at a distance of more than 200 kms and produces a glow that can be seen with a medium-size telescope for more than 700 kms."

fabric | rblg

A Faster Fourier Transform

Feel Me by Marco Triverio  Digital touch and new channels for bit-intimacy

Water vs. World

Glitch jam

Creolization

The Descriptive Camera turns your photos into someone else's words

In a 3-D Printed Future, Do Toymakers Have a Business Model?

Kickstart this!

MIT creates invisible glass that's fog+glare free and self cleaning

Tele-present environments

How the 10,000-Year Clock Measures Time

Join Archinect in Hollywood this Thursday for "Publish Or... bracket [GOES SOFT]"

(Paranoid Shelter) - Globale Surveillance

Largest Rooftop Farm by BrightFarms Coming to Brooklyn, NY

Luz Interruptus: "Mutant weeds", pop-up installation

Feel Me by Marco Triverio Digital touch and new channels for bit-intimacy