Sticky PostingsAll 242 fabric | rblg updated tags | #fabric|ch #wandering #reading
By fabric | ch -----
As we continue to lack a decent search engine on this blog and as we don't use a "tag cloud" ... This post could help navigate through the updated content on | rblg (as of 09.2023), via all its tags!
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-- Note that we had to hit the "pause" button on our reblogging activities a while ago (mainly because we ran out of time, but also because we received complaints from a major image stock company about some images that were displayed on | rblg, an activity that we felt was still "fair use" - we've never made any money or advertised on this site). Nevertheless, we continue to publish from time to time information on the activities of fabric | ch, or content directly related to its work (documentation).
Posted by Patrick Keller
in fabric | ch
on
Monday, September 11. 2023 14:29
Defined tags for this entry: 3d, activism, advertising, agriculture, air, algorithms, animation, archeology, architects, architecture, art, art direction, artificial reality, artists, atmosphere, automation, behaviour, bioinspired, biotech, blog, body, books, brand, character, citizen, city, climate, clips, code, cognition, collaboration, commodification, communication, community, computing, conditioning, conferences, consumption, content, control, craft, culture & society, curators, customization, data, density, design, design (environments), design (fashion), design (graphic), design (interactions), design (motion), design (products), designers, development, devices, digital, digital fabrication, digital life, digital marketing, dimensions, direct, display, documentary, earth, ecal, ecology, economy, electronics, energy, engineering, environment, equipment, event, exhibitions, experience, experimentation, fabric | ch, farming, fashion, fiction, films, food, form, franchised, friends, function, future, gadgets, games, garden, generative, geography, globalization, goods, hack, hardware, harvesting, health, history, housing, hybrid, identification, illustration, images, immaterial, information, infrastructure, installations, interaction design, interface, interferences, kinetic, knowledge, landscape, language, law, life, lighting, localization, localized, machinelearning, magazines, make, mapping, marketing, mashup, material, materials, media, mediated, mind, mining, mobile, mobility, molecules, monitoring, monography, movie, museum, music, nanotech, narrative, nature, networks, neurosciences, new-material, non-material, opensource, operating system, participative, particles, people, perception, photography, physics, physiological, politics, pollution, presence, print, privacy, product, profiling, projects, psychological, public, publications, publishing, reactive, real time, recycling, research, resources, responsive, ressources, robotics, rules, scenography, schools, science & technology, scientists, screen, search, security, semantic, sharing, shopping, signage, smart, social, society, software, solar, sound, space, spatial, speculation, statement, surveillance, sustainability, tactile, tagging, tangible, targeted, teaching, technology, tele-, telecom, territory, text, textile, theory, thinkers, thinking, time, tools, topology, tourism, toys, transmission, trend, typography, ubiquitous, urbanism, users, variable, vernacular, video, viral, vision, visualization, voice, vr, war, weather, web, wireless, world, worldbuilding, writing
Tuesday, May 29. 2018A Big Leap for an Artificial Leaf | #artificial #leaf #material
Note: some progressive news... Published almost two years ago ((!) I find it interesting to bring things back and out of their "buzz time", possibly check what happened to it next), the article present some advances in "bionic-leaf". One step closer to the creation of artificial leaves so to say. The interesting thing is that the research has deepened and continues towards agriculture, on-site soil enrichment to boost growth rather than treating it with fertilizers and chemicals to be transported from far. Behind this, some genetic manipulations though (for good? for bad?): "Expanding the reach of the bionic leaf".
----- A new system for making liquid fuel from sunlight, water, and air is a promising step for solar fuels.
The bionic leaf is one step closer to reality. Daniel Nocera, a professor of energy science at Harvard who pioneered the use of artificial photosynthesis, says that he and his colleague Pamela Silver have devised a system that completes the process of making liquid fuel from sunlight, carbon dioxide, and water. And they’ve done it at an efficiency of 10 percent, using pure carbon dioxide—in other words, one-tenth of the energy in sunlight is captured and turned into fuel. That is much higher than natural photosynthesis, which converts about 1 percent of solar energy into the carbohydrates used by plants, and it could be a milestone in the shift away from fossil fuels. The new system is described in a new paper in Science. “Bill Gates has said that to solve our energy problems, someday we need to do what photosynthesis does, and that someday we might be able to do it even more efficiently than plants,” says Nocera. “That someday has arrived.” In nature, plants use sunlight to make carbohydrates from carbon dioxide and water. Artificial photosynthesis seeks to use the same inputs—solar energy, water, and carbon dioxide—to produce energy-dense liquid fuels. Nocera and Silver’s system uses a pair of catalysts to split water into oxygen and hydrogen, and feeds the hydrogen to bacteria along with carbon dioxide. The bacteria, a microörganism that has been bioengineered to specific characteristics, converts the carbon dioxide and hydrogen into liquid fuels. Several companies, including Joule Unlimited and LanzaTech, are working to produce biofuels from carbon dioxide and hydrogen, but they use bacteria that consume carbon monoxide or carbon dioxide, rather than hydrogen. Nocera’s system, he says, can operate at lower temperatures, higher efficiency, and lower costs. Nocera’s latest work “is really quite amazing,” says Peidong Yang of the University of California, Berkeley. Yang has developed a similar system with much lower efficiency. “The high performance of this system is unparalleled” in any other artificial photosynthesis system reported to date, he says. The new system can use pure carbon dioxide in gas form, or carbon dioxide captured from the air—which means it could be carbon-neutral, introducing no additional greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. “The 10 percent number, that’s using pure CO2,” says Nocera. Allowing the bacteria themselves to capture carbon dioxide from the air, he adds, results in an efficiency of 3 to 4 percent—still significantly higher than natural photosynthesis. “That’s the power of biology: these bioörganisms have natural CO2 concentration mechanisms.” Nocera’s research is distinct from the work being carried out by the Joint Center for Artificial Photosynthesis, a U.S. Department of Energy-funded program that seeks to use inorganic catalysts, rather than bacteria, to convert hydrogen and carbon dioxide to liquid fuel. According to Dick Co, who heads the Solar Fuels Institute at Northwestern University, the innovation of the new system lies not only in its superior performance but also in its fusing of two usually separate fields: inorganic chemistry (to split water) and biology (to convert hydrogen and carbon dioxide into fuel). “What’s really exciting is the hybrid approach” to artificial photosynthesis, says Co. “It’s exciting to see chemists pairing with biologists to advance the field.”
Commercializing the technology will likely take years. In any case, the prospect of turning sunlight into liquid fuel suddenly looks a lot closer.
Related Links:
Posted by Patrick Keller
in Science & technology, Sustainability
at
08:48
Defined tags for this entry: bioinspired, biotech, energy, farming, materials, research, science & technology, sustainability
Friday, May 12. 2017The World’s Largest Artificial Sun Could Help Generate Clean Fuel | #conditioning #energy
Note: an amazing climatic device. For clean energy experimentation here. Would have loved to have that kind of devices (and budget ;)) when we put in place Perpetual Tropical Sunshine !
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Don’t lean against the light switch at the Synlight building in Jülich, Germany—if you do, things might get rather hotter than you can cope with. The new facility is home to what researchers at the German Aerospace Center, known as DLR, have called the “world's largest artificial Sun.” Across a single wall in the building sit a series of Xenon short-arc lamps—the kind used in large cinemas to project movies. But in a huge cinema there would be one lamp. Here, spread across a surface 45 feet high and 52 feet wide, there are 140. When all those lamps are switched on and focused on the same 20 by 20 centimeter spot, they create light that’s 10,000 times more intense than solar radiation anywhere on Earth. At the center, temperatures reach over 3,000 °C. The setup is being used to mimic large concentrated solar power plants, which use a field full of adjustable mirrors to focus sunlight into a small incredibly hot area, where it melts salt that is then used to create steam and generate electricity. Researchers at DLR, though, think that a similar mirror setup could be used to power a high-energy reaction where hydrogen is extracted from water vapor. In theory, that process could supply a constant and affordable source of liquid hydrogen fuel—something that clean energy researchers continue to lust after, because it creates no carbon emissions when burned. Trouble is, folks at DLR don’t quite yet know how to make it happen. So they built a laboratory rig to allow them to tinker with the process using artificial light instead of reflected sunlight—a setup which, as Gizmodo notes, uses the equivalent of a household's entire year of electricity during just four hours of operation, somewhat belying its green aspirations. Of course, it’s far from the first project to aim to create hydrogen fuel cheaply: artificial photosynthesis, seawater electrolysis, biomass reactions, and many other projects have all tried—and so far failed—to make it a cost-effective exercise. So now it’s over to the Sun. Or a fake one, for now.
(Read more: DLR, Gizmodo, “World’s Largest Solar Thermal Power Plant Delivers Power for the First Time,” “A Big Leap for an Artificial Leaf,” "A New Source of Hydrogen for Fuel-Cell Vehicles")
Posted by Patrick Keller
in Science & technology, Sustainability
at
08:49
Defined tags for this entry: artificial reality, atmosphere, devices, ecology, energy, environment, research, science & technology, sustainability, weather
Monday, November 23. 2015The Information Age Is Over. Welcome to the Infrastructure Age | #infrastructure
Note: this article was published a while ago and was rebloged here and there already. I kept it in my pile of "interesting articles to read later when I'll have time" for a long time as well therefore. But it make sense to post it in conjunction with the previous one about Norman Foster and by extension with the otehr one concerning the Chicago Biennial. It is also sometimes interesting to read posts with delay, when the hype and buzzwords are gone. Written in the aftermath of the Tesla annoncement about its home battery (Powerwall), the article was all about energy revolution. But since then, what? We're definitely looking forward...
Via Gizmodo -----
Photo: SpaceX
Nobody wants to say it outright, but the Apple Watch sucks. So do most smartwatches. Every time I use my beautiful Moto 360, its lack of functionality makes me despair. But the problem isn’t our gadgets. It’s that the future of consumer tech isn’t going to come from information devices. It’s going to come from infrastructure. That’s why Elon Musk’s announcements of the new Tesla battery line last night were more revolutionary than Apple Watch and more exciting than Microsoft’s admittedly nifty HoloLens. Information tech isn’t dead — it has just matured to the point where all we’ll get are better iterations of the same thing. Better cameras and apps for our phones. VR that actually works. But these are not revolutionary gadgets. They are just realizations of dreams that began in the 1980s, when the information revolution transformed the consumer electronics market. But now we’re entering the age of infrastructure gadgets. Thanks to devices like Tesla’s household battery, Powerwall, electrical grid technology that was once hidden behind massive barbed wire fences, owned by municipalities and counties, is now seeping slowly into our homes. And this isn’t just about alternative energy like solar. It’s about how we conceive of what technology is. It’s about what kinds of gadgets we’ll be buying for ourselves in 20 years. It’s about how the kids of tomorrow won’t freak out over terabytes of storage. They’ll freak out over kilowatt-hours. Beyond transforming our relationship to energy, though, the infrastructure age is about where we expect computers to live. The so-called internet of things is a big part of this. Our computers aren’t living in isolated boxes on our desktops, and they aren’t going to be inside our phones either. The apps in your phone won’t always suck you into virtual worlds, where you can escape to build treehouses and tunnels in Minecraft. Instead, they will control your home, your transit, and even your body. Once you accept that the thing our ancestors called the information superhighway will actually be controlling cars on real-life highways, you start to appreciate the sea change we’re witnessing. The internet isn’t that thing in there, inside your little glowing box. It’s in your washing machine, kitchen appliances, pet feeder, your internal organs, your car, your streets, the very walls of your house. You use your wearable to interface with the world out there. It makes perfect sense to me that a company like Tesla could be at the heart of the new infrastructure age. Musk’s focus has always been relentlessly about remolding the physical world, changing the way we power our transit — and, with SpaceX, where future generations might live beyond Earth. The opposite of cyberspace is, well, physical space. And that’s where Tesla is taking us. But in the infrastructure age, physical space has been irrevocably transformed by cyberspace. Now we use computers to experience the world in ways we never could before computer networks and data analysis, using distributed sensor devices over fault lines to give people early warnings about earthquakes that are rippling beneath the ground — and using satellites like NASA’s SMAP to predict droughts years before they happen. Of course, there are the inevitable dangers that come with infusing physical space with all the vulnerabilities of cyberspace. People will hack your house; they’ll inject malicious code into delivery drones; stealing your phone might become the same thing as stealing your car. We’ll still be mining unsustainably to support our glorious batteries and photovoltaics and smart dance clubs. But we will also benefit enormously from personalizing the energy grid, creating a battery-powered hearth for every home. Plus the infrastructure age leads directly into outer space, to tackle big problems of human survival, and diverts our impoverished attention spans from gazing neurotically at the social scene unfolding in tiny glowing rectangles on our wrists. The information age brought us together, for better or worse. It allowed us to understand our environment and our bodies in ways we never could before. But the infrastructure age is what will prevent us from killing ourselves as we grow up into a truly global civilization. That is far more important, and exciting, than any gold watch could ever be.
Posted by Patrick Keller
in Architecture, Culture & society, Science & technology, Sustainability, Territory
at
12:11
Defined tags for this entry: architecture, culture & society, energy, hardware, infrastructure, science & technology, sustainability, territory
Wednesday, November 27. 2013Form & Landscape in LA | #infrastructure #energy #photography
Note: an interesting and superb photo/documentary collection about the electrification of the Los Angeles Basin (40-90ies). Thanks Yoo-Mi Steffen for the link!
----- A project by William Deverell and Greg Hise.
"In the aftermath of Pacific Standard Time (PST), a uniquely successful collaborative project of exhibitions, public programs, and publications which together took intellectual and aesthetic stock of southern California’s artists, art scenes, and artistic production across nearly the entirety of the post-World War II era, the Getty launched an initiative with a tighter focus on architecture during the same era. “Pacific Standard Time Presents: Modern Architecture in L.A.” has as one of its ambitious goals a collective explication of “how the city was made Modern.” For PST, the Getty partnered with dozens of cultural and educational institutions to offer a diverse and eclectic array of exhibits and programs. The institutional and grant-making alchemy of Getty leadership mixed with centrifugal funding and freedom worked magnificently; in sheer volume and insight alike, the meld of scholarly consideration with public programming revolutionized our collective understanding of the regional art world across four or five decades of the twentieth century. Pacific Standard Time Presents (PSTP) benefits from and builds on that considerable momentum. And that is where this on-line photographic exhibition comes in."
More about it HERE.
Posted by Patrick Keller
in Culture & society, Science & technology, Territory
at
09:10
Defined tags for this entry: culture & society, documentary, energy, infrastructure, photography, science & technology, territory
Monday, October 14. 2013World's Largest Solar Thermal Energy Plant Opens in California
Via Inhabitat via Computed·By -----
The much-anticipated Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System just kicked into action in California’s Mojave Desert. The 3,500 acre facility is the world’s largest solar thermal energy plant, and it has the backing of some major players; Google, NRG Energy, BrightSource Energy and Bechtel have all invested in the project, which is constructed on federally-leased public land. The first of Ivanpah’s three towers is now feeding energy into the grid, and once the site is fully operational it will produce 392 megawatts — enough to power 140,000 homes while reducing carbon emissions by 400,000 tons per year. Ivanpah is comprised of 300,000 sun-tracking mirrors (heliostats), which surround three, 459-foot towers. The sunlight concentrated from these mirrors heats up water contained within the towers to create super-heated steam which then drives turbines on the site to produce power. The first successfully operating unit will sell power to California’s Pacific Gas and Electric, as will Unit 3 when it comes online in the coming months. Unit 2 is also set to come online shortly, and will provide power to Southern California Edison. Construction began on the facility in 2010, and achieved it’s first “flux” in March, a crucial test which proved its readiness to begin commercial operation. Tests this past Tuesday formed Ivanpah’s “first sync” which began feeding power into the grid. As John Upton at Grist points out, the project is not without its critics, noting that some “have questioned why a solar plant that uses water would be built in the desert — instead of one that uses photovoltaic panels,” while others have been upset by displacement of local wildlife—notably 100 endangered desert tortoises. But the Ivanpah plant still constitutes a major milestone, both globally as the world’s largest solar thermal energy plant, and locally for the significant contribution it will make towards California’s renewable energy goal of achieving 3,000 MW of solar generating capacity through public utilities and private ownership.
Personal comment:
After the project in Spain, early images and controversy dating back 2012, here comes a new amazing infrastructure / solar power plant in California. Welcome! Wednesday, September 18. 2013Lightning Farm
Via BLDGBLOG -----
[Image: Triggered lightning technology at the University of Florida's Lightning Research Group].
[Images: From a project by Farah Aliza Badaruddin at the Bartlett School of Architecture].
[Image: Triggered lightning technology at the University of Florida Lightning Research Group].
[Images: From a project by Farah Aliza Badaruddin at the Bartlett School of Architecture].
[Image: Triggered lightning technology at the University of Florida's Lightning Research Group].
[Image: Aerial collage view of the lightning farm, by Farah Aliza Badaruddin at the Bartlett School of Architecture].
[Image: Collage of the lightning farm, by Farah Aliza Badaruddin at the Bartlett School of Architecture].
[Image: Farah Aliza Badaruddin].
[Images: From a project by Farah Aliza Badaruddin at the Bartlett School of Architecture].
[Images: From a project by Farah Aliza Badaruddin at the Bartlett School of Architecture].
[Images: From a project by Farah Aliza Badaruddin at the Bartlett School of Architecture].
Posted by Patrick Keller
in Architecture, Territory
at
14:23
Defined tags for this entry: architecture, artificial reality, ecology, energy, engineering, fiction, geography, research, speculation, territory
Tuesday, September 10. 2013fabric | ch at Close, Closer - Lisbon Architecture Triennale
By fabric | ch -----
We are glad to announce that we'll be taking part with an Associated Project to the next Lisbon Architecture Triennale (Close, Closer, cur. Beatrice Galilee) that will take place between September 12 and December 15, 2013.
Img: I-Weather as Deep Space Public Lighting, fabric | ch, 2010 01SJ, San Jose.
Project: The work we'll present with fabric | ch, in collaboration with TASML, will be in fact a call for projects (!): Deterritorialized Living (the Beijing sessions) / Inhabiting the Computer Cabinet. It follows the residency and the work we produced in Beijing last Summer at the Tsinghua University. The call is open to the international community as well as specifically to the Tsinghua University (two different dedicated awards). We will also present two talks. On the 21st of September, I'll present this call, some related projects by fabric | ch and the results of our residency in Beijing at the LX Factory (CoworkLisboa, 103 Rua Rodrigues Faria, PIso 4). On the 14th of December, we'll present along with TASML the results of the call, with a presentation by the winning entry from China.
Dates: 30.08. - Competition launch. Tsinghua University, Beijing 21.09. 5pm - Talk by fabric | ch: Deterritorialized Living. At the LX Factory, Lisbon 14.10. Competition submissions deadline, Beijing 01.11. Announcement of winning entries 14.12., 5pm - Talk by the winner of the competition, along with fabric | ch & TASML. At the LX Factory, Lisbon
Call: http://call.deterritorialized.org Program in Lisbon: http://beijing.deterritorialized.org/ Close, Closer: http://www.close-closer.com/en/
Posted by Patrick Keller
in fabric | ch, Architecture, Interaction design
at
13:45
Defined tags for this entry: architects, architecture, artificial reality, atmosphere, conferences, data, energy, exhibitions, exhibitions-fbrc, fabric | ch, globalization, interaction design, research, speculation
Wednesday, August 07. 2013Massive NSA data center will use 1.7 million gallons of water a day
Via Treehugger ----- By Megan Treacy
Undeniably one of the biggest stories of the year has been the leak about the NSA PRISM program, which has been monitoring American citizens' communications. Many people have been appalled by this revelation, but it turns out there is an environmentally appalling part of this spying program too. More details have been released about NSA's new Intelligence Community Comprehensive National Cybersecurity Initiative Data Center, otherwise known as that massive data center being built by the agency in Bluffdale, Utah. Turns out that collecting tons of information in the form of phone calls, emails and web searches is an energy and water-hungry business. According to reports, the one million square-foot facility will house 100,000 square feet of data-storing servers and will use 1.7 million gallons of water per day to keep those servers cool. The data center will account for one percent of all water use in the area and the city of Bluffdale is looking for additional water sources for when the facility is finished in September. It won't be an energy-sipper either, but that was obvious from the size of the place. The facility will require 65 megawatts of power, which is the equivalent of 65,000 homes. It will have its own power substation and back-up diesel power generators. The crazy thing is that this gigantic data center isn't quite enough. The NSA is also building another data center in Fort Meade, Maryland that will be two-thirds the size of the mega center, but that's still pretty darn big.
Posted by Patrick Keller
in Culture & society, Science & technology, Sustainability
at
11:58
Defined tags for this entry: culture & society, data, energy, monitoring, science & technology, surveillance, sustainability
Thursday, July 04. 2013How Energy Consumption Has Changed Since 1776
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The U.S. Energy Information Administration reviews big changes in energy use since the Declaration of Independence. By Kevin Bullis
Energy independence: Since the colonies parted from Britain there have been big changes in energy use. It’s easy to forget just how recently we started using fossil fuels in large amounts. In honor of the July 4th holiday, the U.S. Energy Information has produced a chart showing how rapidly the country shifted from using wood almost exclusively as an energy source to using first coal, then petroleum and natural gas. Here’s a couple of notable things about the chart. The first is the obvious staying power of coal (see “The Enduring Technology of Coal”). Coal wasn’t used in significant amounts until the mid-1800s, but then it increases quickly (and with it, overall energy consumption increases by about 5 times). When oil is introduced, it seems to displace coal, leading to a sharp drop in coal consumption. But coal use quickly recovers. A similar drop occurs when natural gas consumption starts to rise. But within a couple of decades coal use is growing again. Near the end of the chart coal use drops off again as natural gas production surges–a result of fracking technology. What the chart doesn’t show is that the EIA expects coal consumption to go up again this year. The stuff is cheap, and we seem to keep finding ways to use it. President Obama recently praised the reduction in carbon dioxide emissions that the surge of natural gas production enabled (see “A Drop in U.S. CO2 Emissions” and “Obama Orders EPA to Regulate Power Plants in Wide-Ranging Climate Plan”). Given the resilience of coal, though, it’s hard to be optimistic that the decreased rate of emissions will persist—absent regulations that prevent it. One other interesting bit. Renewables such as wind and solar power now produce more energy than was consumed in the mid-1800s. So if we want a society that runs completely on these renewables, all we have to do is reduce the population to what it was then, only use as much energy as they did, stop flying airplanes (big ones require oil), stop industrial processes that require energy in forms other than electricity, and only drive electric vehicles or ride horses. I may have left something out. The good news is renewables are increasing fast. But if history is a guide, the introduction of a new energy source doesn’t cause the other sources of energy to decrease, at least not in the long run. Even wood consumption has close to what it was in the 1800s, even though it’s less convenient in many ways that fossil fuels. Introducing new sources of energy seems to allow overall energy consumption to increase. Absent regulations or political crises that cause the cost of fossil fuels to rise, as technological advances make renewable energy cheaper we’ll use it more, but we’ll likely keep using more of the other sources of energy, too. Indeed, the EIA predicts that in 2040, 75% pf U.S. energy will still come from oil, coal, and natural gas.
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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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