Monday, February 14. 2011They have "landed" on Mars----- 14 February 2011
Walking on 'Mars' Three crewmembers of the virtual flight to Mars have 'landed' on their destination planet and two of them today took their first steps on the simulated martian terrain. The highlight of the Mars500 mission lasted for one hour and 12 minutes, starting at 13:00 Moscow time. Three of the crew, Russian Alexandr Smoleevskiy, Italian Diego Urbina and Chinese Wang Yue, entered the lander on 8 February and they ‘landed’ on Mars four days later. After this first sortie, they will venture twice more onto the surface simulator wearing Russian Orlan spacesuits. “Today, looking at this red landscape, I can feel how inspiring it will be to look through the eyes of the first human to step foot on Mars. “I salute all the explorers of tomorrow and wish them godspeed.” The next sortie, by Alexandr and Yue, will be on 18 February, followed by the last, again by Alexandr and Diego, on 22 February.
Gusev crater Gusev, an old lakebed filled with sediments, is one of the most interesting targets for investigation by robotic explorers and humans. NASA’s Spirit rover landed there in 2004 and has shown the crater holds many clues to the planet’s wet history.
Soyuz-like living for 16 days The lander will return to orbit on 23 February and dock with the mothership the following day. The hatch between the modules will be opened on 27 February for them to rejoin Romain Charles, Alexey Sitev and Sukhrob Kamolov, who have continued to ‘orbit’ Mars. Already a successful mission “The science community is very pleased with the quality of the material but, as this is a long experiment, we have to wait for the results until their ‘arrival’ at Earth. “At this point, everything looks very good.” The most difficult but the most interesting part of this psychological study of long flights is still ahead: the crew is now faced with another monotonous ‘interplanetary cruise’ without a highlight like the Mars landing to look forward to. They will start their eight month journey back home on 1 March, after loading the lander with rubbish and discarding it, as will likely happen during the first real Mars flight.
Related Links:Personal comment: “I salute all the explorers of tomorrow and wish them godspeed.”
Posted by Patrick Keller
in Science & technology, Territory
at
15:07
Defined tags for this entry: artificial reality, conditioning, fiction, research, science & technology, space, territory
Tuesday, January 25. 2011Une ère conditionnéeVia Libération ----- By Sylvestre Huet Récit - Le glaciologue Claude Lorius démontre que l’homme est devenu un «géo-ingénieur» climatique aussi puissant que les forces géologiques, et annonce l’anthropocène, l’ère de l’homme.
Iceberg dans les eaux antarctiques. (REUTERS) - More about this book, Claude Lorius and the Anthropocene directly on Libération.
Related Links:Personal comment:
Anthropocene is a word we hear more and more about. It probably just gives a name to what we all observe everyday: that our environment is getting more an more artificial, conditioned at a global scale with ecological costs.
Posted by Patrick Keller
in Culture & society, Science & technology, Territory
at
12:33
Defined tags for this entry: artificial reality, books, climate, conditioning, culture & society, geography, science & technology, sustainability, territory, theory
Friday, September 03. 2010I-Weather as Deep Space Public Lighting
By fabric | ch ----- fabric | ch will present a new work entitled I-Weather as Deep Space Public Lighting during the 2010 01SJ Biennial in San Jose (San Francisco Bay Area, CA, September 4-19, 2010). Curated by Steve Dietz and assistant curator Jaime Austin, the 2010 01SJ Biennial will develop a full range of radical exhibitions in the Bay Area around this year's biennial theme, Build you own world. Our installation will be part of San Jose / South Hall exhibit: Out of the Garage into the World, which title takes its inspiration from the nearly mythological times of the early California's Silicon Valley, when young scientists supposedly started their future world scale business in their home's garage or backyard. Curator Steve Dietz about this year's biennial: "Build Your Own World: The future is not just about what’s next. It’s also about what we can build to ensure that what’s next matters. How can we, as resourceful, innovative, and knowledgeable local and global citizens build and participate in a desirable future in the face of global climate change, economic meltdown, political instability, and cultural divisiveness?"
-------------------------------- I-Weather as Deep Space Public Lighting: I-Weather as Deep Space Public Lighting, yellow-orange phase. I-Weather as Deep Space Public Lighting, cyan-blue phase. I-Weather as Deep Space Public Lighting, full gradient and time rainbow.
In 2001, architect Philippe Rahm and fabric | ch jointly set up I-Weather, an open source artificial climate based on human metabolism, circadian rhythms and on the medical knowledge of the time about light therapy and chronotherapy. I-Weather.org intended to allow the growing number of de-territorialized locations and people to synchronize their atmosphere and metabolism with this Internet distributed climate: a parallel day of 25 hours, that diffused its colored “daylight” in any physical or digital space connected to the I-Weather’s server. In 2008, NASA made an announcement about a first successful communication with a 20 million miles distant spacecraft on the Deep Space Internet, the model for a forthcoming interplanetary Internet. Late in 2009, the team upgraded I-Weather to a new version, as scientific knowledge of biological rhythms has evolved, demonstrating that melatonin regulation is enhanced by using a minimum wavelength of 460nm (blue) and a maximum wavelength of 597nm (orange) rather than between 385nm (deep purple) and 509 nm (green). Actually, blue light suppresses the diffusion of melatonin in the body, while orange light allows performing actions without altering the body clock. In summer 2010, fabric | ch will set up a project called I-Weather as Deep Space Public Lighting, during the 01SJ Biennial in South Hall. It will propose a critical use of I-Weather as a model for a metabolic public lighting source, distributed and synchronized through an imaginary Deep Space Internet into the confined and conditioned environments of space exploration vehicles or into speculative public spaces of “distant colonies”. It will be question of public space, public data, public technology and artificial climate.
fabric | ch, May 2010
I-Weather as Deep Space Public Lighting fabric | ch -------------------------------- Exhibition: Build Your Own World 2010 01SJ Biennial September 4-19, 2010 San Jose, CA -------------------------------- Workshop: I-Weather: open source artificial climate (how to) Christian Babski, Patrick Keller 2-4 pm, September 16, 2010 San Jose, CA -------------------------------- Conference: Deep Space, Public Space, I-Weather as Public Climate & Technology Patrick Keller 1-2.30 pm, September 19, 2010 San Jose, CA --------------------------------
Project, conception and programmation: fabric | ch - Ligths: 3B Lighting Structure: Stages Unlimited On site supervision: G. Craig Hobbs - Curatorship: Steve Dietz, Jaime Austin Produced by Zer01
I-Weather as Deep Space Public Lighting has been produced with the support of swissnex San Francisco and the Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia. It is a 2010 01SJ Biennial creation by fabric | ch.
Related Links:Personal comment: Like for previous exhibitions, new posts will follow while (and after) we set up the work in San Francisco.
Posted by Patrick Keller
in fabric | ch, Architecture, Art
at
20:50
Defined tags for this entry: architecture, art, artificial reality, climate, conditioning, fabric | ch, installations, internet, space, speculation, weather
I-Weather, www.i-weather.org, libraries, apps and etc.
By fabric | ch ----- fabric | ch and architect Philippe Rahm recently released an updated version of their I-Weather artificial light climate on www.i-weather.org.
I-Weather is an international consortium created in 2001 that has set itself the goal of creating the world’s first artificial climate to satisfy the metabolic and physiological requirements of a human being in an environment partially or completely removed from earthly influences: mediated reality, networks and netlag, the disruption of the body clock that comes with air travel, as well as with extra-terrestrial trips and holidays. Accessible everywhere and to everybody thanks to the Internet, this artificial climate called I-Weather makes it possible to live in a situation completely removed from natural locations by producing an artificial circadian rhythm synchronised to match the inner cycle of the human hormonal and endocrine system. In the absence of the natural terrestrial cycle of day and night, it becomes apparent that this inner cycle in fact lasts around 25 hours, and that body temperature, the alternation between sleep and wakefulness, and the accumulation and secretion of substances such as cortisone and oligopeptides, all depend on it. i-weather.org has therefore put together the first specifically human climate. This version of I-Weather operates solely on the basis of fluctuations in the rate of melatonin, which in turn is influenced by variations in the intensity of light received by the retina. I-Weather acts as a kind of personal artificial sun, oscillating over a 25-hour 7 minutes and 40 seconds period between a maximum light frequency of 652 THz and a minimum of 503 THz. The original version of I-Weather was launched on 26 October 2001 (version 1.0). It has been improved on June 5, 2009 (version 2.0) as scientific knowledge of biological rhythms has evolved, demonstrating that melatonin regulation is enhanced by using a minimum wavelength of 460nm (blue) and a maximum wavelength of 597nm (orange) rather than between 385nm (deep purple) and 509 nm (green). Actually, blue light suppresses the diffusion of melatonin in the body, while orange light allows performing actions without altering the body clock. Melatonin diagram over a natural 24h hours, night and day cycle. Projected melatonin diagram over an an artificial 25h 07min 40sec, I-Weather cycle.
I-Weather is an open source, speculative architecture and art project. Its code exists for several platforms and can be downloaded for free to be used in personal projects (light installations, web sites, mobile phone applications, etc). --- You can now download development libraries (Flash, Javascript, Processing) for your own applications or projects directly on the "download" section of I-Weather's website. Thanks you to mention the www.i-weather.org website and project if you do so.
I-Weather used as a synchronized website background and office lighting system.
Last but not least, fabric | ch just released two free mobile applications of our common project. One is for iPhones, iPods (Touch) and possibly for the iPads too, while the other one is dedicated to Android platforms (Google phones, HTC, tablets, etc.).
The I-Weather application in Personal Mode on iPhone and HTC's Android.
I-Weather Global Mode, on the Internet or on mobile devices, globally synchronized through networks.
Related Links:
Posted by Patrick Keller
in fabric | ch, Architecture, Art
at
20:30
Defined tags for this entry: architects, architecture, art, artificial reality, climate, conditioning, fabric | ch, research, speculation, time, weather
Monday, August 30. 2010Cloudscapes in VeniceA project by Tetsuo Konda with the help of Transsolar engineering. The cloud is supposed to stay in a certain area of the space due to conditioning over and under it.
Related Links:Monday, August 16. 2010Making Smart Windows that Are Also Cheap-----
"Tunable" windows would let people adjust light and heat levels, but so far it's been hard to make them affordable.
By Ucilia Wang
Existing electrochromic window designs cost around $100 per square foot. Soladigm has not disclosed how much its windows will cost, but some experts say the method could reduce the cost to around $20 per square foot. The Milpitas, CA-based company uses a thin-film deposition process that creates conducting layers between two panes of glass for controlling the amount of sunlight and heat that can pass through. A homeowner or office dweller could control how much light or heat a window lets in or absorbs and reflects. The company's windows contain two transparent conducting oxide films sandwiching an ion storage layer, an electrolyte, and an electrochromic layer--all between two layers of glass. Applying a low voltage to the conductive oxide kicks the ions out of the storage layer and across the electrolyte to meet with the electrochromic layer. The collision prompts the electrochromic material to absorb or reflect light. It also causes the material to darken, giving the window a tinted look. Reversing the voltage sends the ions back to its storage layer, causing the window to lighten in color and let more light in. "We did a case study in five cities, and the average savings in commercial buildings are about 25 percent of the heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning energy use annually," says Rao Mulpuri, CEO of Soladigm. The trick to making electrochromic windows cheaply is the right materials and latest manufacturing method, says Mulpuri. Today's thin-film deposition equipment--the same used to make flat panel display and thin-film solar panels--is much better than that used a few decades ago, when the electrochromic window concept emerged. Soladigm will use a tungsten oxide-based electrochromic layer for its first windows. Tungsten oxide can endure repeated cycling between ion-rich and ion-free stages-which makes it durable, says Delia Milliron, a Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) researcher in electrochromic materials. However, using tungsten oxide can heat up a window until it's too hot to touch; it also doesn't block infrared light very well, meaning it lets plenty of heat through. Soladigm has licensed research from LBNL that could solve these problems. The research came from Tom Richardson, a researcher at LBNL's Advanced Energy Technologies Department who found novel alternatives to tungsten oxide. In one, a magnesium-based electrochromic layer reacts with hydrogen ions to reflect light. In another, an alloy of antimony with materials such as copper or silver is used with lithium ions to do the same. The reflective approaches not only prevent heat buildup, but also can precisely control the amount of visible and near-infrared light that the window blocks, Richardson says. Either approach could better control the amount of heat from near infrared, making it possible to significantly warm up a room in cold days. "There might be time when you want light blocked but you want the near-infrared to get in. In the winter, you want light and the heat to warm up the house, so having the ability to switch both or independently will be ideal," Richardson says. The ability to manage the amount of light and heat that gets into a room sets electrochromic windows apart from low-emittance, or low-E, windows. Low-E windows have a metal oxide coating that reflects near-infrared light and allows most visible light to pass through. These windows generally cost around $10 per square foot. Some experts say that installing electrochromic windows could cost considerably more than installing low-E windows for certain types of buildings. "To do a whole façade, you would have to run electricity to each window, and that might be cost-prohibitive," says Aaron Smith, a researcher in the Lighting Research Center of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. "It also would be more difficult to install them when retrofitting older buildings." Copyright Technology Review 2010.
Posted by Patrick Keller
in Science & technology, Sustainability
at
12:23
Defined tags for this entry: architecture, automation, conditioning, materials, science & technology, sustainability
Friday, July 09. 2010Quotes of the Day: On the Evils of Air ConditioningVia TreeHugger -----
Cover, Henry Miller's Air Conditioned Nightmare Air conditioning is not only an environmental problem, it is also a social problem. In the post Air Conditioning and Urbanism, I wrote: We should consider also the insidious effect of central air- how it enables the development of parts of the country previously uninhabitable and which would still be but for the constant cooling, and how it is destroying the street culture of areas already established. How we are sacrificing neighbourhood and community by forcing our immediate personal climate to adapt to us instead of us adapting to it. Read the full story on TreeHugger
Posted by Patrick Keller
in Architecture
at
10:02
Defined tags for this entry: architecture, artificial reality, books, climate, conditioning, theory, thinkers, urbanism
Wednesday, July 07. 2010Personal Artificial Sun (and luminous night!)
Accessible everywhere and to everybody thanks to the Internet, this artificial climate called i-weather makes it possible to live in a situation completely removed from natural locations by producing an artificial circadian rhythm synchronised to match the inner cycle of the human hormonal and endocrine system. In the absence of the natural terrestrial cycle of day and night, it becomes apparent that this inner cycle in fact lasts around 25 hours, and that body temperature, the alternation between sleep and wakefulness, and the accumulation and secretion of substances such as cortisone and oligopeptides, all depend on it.
Personal comment:
We very recently released a new version of I-Weather, a speculative proposition for an artificial climate based on light therapy principles, mainly. It will be used for an installation later this year in San Francisco - San Jose (the 01SJ biennal of curator Steve Dietz).
The climate is open source and free to use. More free applications and pieces of code should appear along the way.
Posted by Patrick Keller
in fabric | ch, Architecture, Art, Territory
at
13:54
Defined tags for this entry: architecture, art, artificial reality, climate, conditioning, design (environments), design (interactions), fabric | ch, interferences, publications, publications-fbrc, territory
Monday, June 21. 2010White Paint Is the New Peruvian GlacierVia GOOD
-----
by Andrew Price
A scheme to bring back a glacier on the Chalon Sombrero peak in the Peruvian Andes by painting the mountain white was awarded $200,000 by the World Bank. A team is already at work. From the BBC:
The idea is that the white surface will reflect more light, thereby creating a cooler micro-climate, which might coax back some glacial ice. Similar ideas have been bandied about to cool cities. As Ariel Schwartz points out, the local community is doing this for water, not just a love of glaciers. Climate change can disrupt how we stay hydrated, too, remember?
Posted by Patrick Keller
in Territory
at
09:06
Defined tags for this entry: artificial reality, climate, conditioning, environment, sustainability, territory
Monday, June 07. 2010The Mars 500 "Launches"Via GOOD ----- Back in March Cliff Kuang wrote about the Mars 500, a simulator that will put a crew of six men in a small ship replica in a warehouse on the campus of the Russian Institute for Biomedical Problems—for 520 days. The Guardian reports that the mission has now "launched."
All the crew members are male, which the organizers hope will prevent such occurences as a 1999 brawl between two men over an attempted kiss of a female astronaut during a similar experiment. Could you endure the psychological pressure of spending 520 days in that kind of isolation? Personal comment:
With a bit of delay...
Posted by Patrick Keller
in Science & technology
at
09:28
Defined tags for this entry: artificial reality, conditioning, research, science & technology, space
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fabric | rblgThis blog is the survey website of fabric | ch - studio for architecture, interaction and research. We curate and reblog articles, researches, writings, exhibitions and projects that we notice and find interesting during our everyday practice and readings. Most articles concern the intertwined fields of architecture, territory, art, interaction design, thinking and science. From time to time, we also publish documentation about our own work and research, immersed among these related resources and inspirations. This website is used by fabric | ch as archive, references and resources. It is shared with all those interested in the same topics as we are, in the hope that they will also find valuable references and content in it.
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