Friday, March 04. 2011McCall's mile high Column of cloudVia Creative Review ----- by Patrick Burgoyne Artist Anthony McCall has unveiled plans to create a spinning column of cloud a mile high on Merseyside next year as part of the Cultural Olympiad for 2012 McCall's Column will be sited at Wirral Waters in Merseyside and be visible across the North West region throughout the Olympic year. It was commissioned by Arts Council England as part of Artists taking the lead, a series of 12 public art commissions across the UK to celebrate the London 2012 Cultural Olympiad. Apparently, a “coherent convection” of cloud and mist, will be created by gently rotating the water on the surface of the Mersey and then adding heat which will make it lift into the air like a water spout or dust devil (see here). A scale model of the installation is on show at McCall's current London show. Related Links:Personal comment: Anthony McCall strikes back! I really wonder if this will work (and if it will look like the picture...), but it's a quite beautiful project nonetheless.
Posted by Patrick Keller
in Art, Territory
at
15:20
Defined tags for this entry: air, art, artificial reality, artists, conditioning, public, territory, weather
Wednesday, November 24. 2010Out in the wind, above ground, out in the weatherVia Mammoth ----- by rholmes [Appropriate for the gradual approach of winter in the mid-Atlantic: photographs from Alexander Gronsky's "The Edge", a series of shots taken along the outer boundary of Moscow; via @ballardian. Thinking about whitesward and glacier wrap again...]
Friday, November 05. 2010Deep Space Public Lighting, Chilean Copper-Gold Mines, Rare Earths Geopolitics, and iPhones as Portable Artificial Suns(Deep Space Public Lighting by fabric | ch. Image courtesy of the artists.) For the past few months, I-Weather.org, developed by Philippe Rahm and fabric | ch, has been churning up a pastel maelstrom here on this blog for use by our spatially and temporally displaced readers to restore their circadian rhythms, whether this is actually possible or not. You, too, can embed this artificial sun on your website to blast your asynchronous readers into metabolic normality. Its open source code is freely available. At the recent 01SJ Biennial in San Jose, California, we saw a less earthbound and less private platform for this quasi-light therapy: a flickering light tower for “confined and conditioned environments of space exploration vehicles” and “speculative public spaces of distant colonies.” To distribute and synchronize these pockets of simulant terrestrial cycles of day and night across vast distances, fabrica | ch proposes using a theoretical Deep Space Internet. (Deep Space Public Lighting by fabric | ch. Image courtesy of the artists.) (Deep Space Public Lighting by fabric | ch. Image courtesy of the artists.) By happy coincide, we first learned about this project just as the first reports about the trapped miners in Chile started trickling in to our attention, specifically, the news that NASA scientists have been flown in by the Chilean government to offer advice on how to help the men stay physically and mentally healthy during the weeks-long rescue. (Graphics and research by C. Argandoña, I. Muñoz, C. Araya, J.Cortés/LA TERCERA, via The Washington Post. Source) Al Holland, a NASA psychologist, says during a press conference: One of the things that's being recommended is that there be one place, a community area, which is always lighted. And then you have a second area which is always dark for sleep, and then you have a third area which is work, doing the mining, and the shifts can migrate through these geographic locations within the mine and, in that way, regulate the daylight cycle of the shift. It occurred to us that one should make a portable version of Deep Space Public Lighting for future mining disasters. It should be able to fit through bore holes and then easily assembled by survivors in the murky depths of a collapsed tunnel. A deployable piazza for subterranean “distant colonies.“ (Trapped miners at the Copiapó mine on video. Image via Reuters/Chilean Government. Source.) Rather than being illuminated by the anemic brightness of a hard hat or video camera, one bathes in soothing electromagnetic wavelengths from a technicolor torch. Or from an i-weatherized iPhone. (There's an app for that.) And yes, considering the high demand for coal and industrial minerals, there will be many more mining disasters, many more trapped miners and, depending on various fortunate circumstances, more tunnels to be reconfigured. In fact, only a few days after the last Chilean miner was brought to the surface, 11 miners were trapped at a coal mine in China after a deadly explosion. Consider, too, the recent export ban by China on shipment of rare earth elements to Japan after a kerfuffle between the two countries involving a collision between a Chinese fishing trawler and Japanese Coast Guard patrol boats near some disputed islands. The ban may have been brief, and China may have denied having instituted one in the first place, nevertheless, the incident points again that China is willing to use its near resource monopoly of rare earth metals as a political tool, to get its way, in other words. Other countries have again taken notice, and are scrambling to develop alternative sources, if not already, to ensure future supply. With new mines opening and even old mine operations being restarted, there are more potentials for disasters. Reformatted in this context, Deep (Inner) Space Public Lighting engages not just with issues such as “public space, public data, public technology and artificial climate” but also with the geopolitics of natural resources, globalization and our collective networked boredom that seemingly can only be satiated by an epic spectacle natural and man-made disasters and the ensuing heroic rescue of survivors.
Posted by Patrick Keller
in fabric | ch, Architecture, Art
at
10:06
Defined tags for this entry: architects, architecture, art, artificial reality, climate, digital, fabric | ch, lighting, physiological, publications, publications-fbrc, weather
Monday, October 04. 2010Las Vegas Death RayVia BLDGBLOG ----- By now, you've no doubt heard of the Las Vegas death ray: "The tall, sleek, curving Vdara Hotel at CityCenter on the Strip is a thing of beauty," the Las Vegas Review-Journal reports. "But the south-facing tower is also a collector and bouncer of sun rays, which—if you're at the hotel's swimming pool at the wrong time of day and season—can singe your hair and melt your plastic drink cups and shopping bags."
Related Links: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:Friday, July 23. 2010Arctic Opening (Fenêtre Arctique) - follow up & pictures
By fabric | ch -----
As a follow up to our recent post about fabric | ch's installation (Arctic Opening / Fenêtre Arctique) on the Frioul Island in Marseilles, here are some pictures shot during the exhibition. It has been a quite difficult project to achieve due to hard climatic conditions (40°C all day long during installation and exhibition... This was certainly hard for us, but even more for computers and electronic equipment...), but also due to the fact that the location, size of installation and lighting technology have changed one week prior to opening! ... Definitely not easy to manage... We thought of this project as a sort of fictional expedition, but it ended up to be a real one! We worked during one week on site to set it up, test, code and modify it. The result was some sort of hypnotic leftover of this experience, running in standalone mode.
Interfaces and programs analyze the meteo as well as the lighting conditions north of the Artic Circle, where daytime is permanent at this time of the year (we were still close to the summer solstice in the Northern Hemisphere). These illumination conditions were then channeled (though a LED based large "window-display") to the Frioul Island to light up a piece of its deserted landscape. This distant light appears only at sunset in Marseilles and until sunrise.
Pictures: Frank Petitpierre, Nicolas Besson, Leticia Carmo, fabric | ch
-------------------------------- Project, conception and programmation: fabric | ch Ligths: Lumens8 On site supervision: Etienne Fortin, AMI MIMI Direction: Ferdinand Richard, AMI Curatorship: Pierre-Emmanuel Reviron, Seconde Nature
With the support of Marseille-Provence 2013, MIMI Festival and Lumens8. Arctic Opening is a MIMI 2010 creation by fabric | ch.
Posted by Patrick Keller
in fabric | ch, Architecture, Art, Territory
at
17:52
Defined tags for this entry: architecture, art, design (interactions), exhibitions, exhibitions-fbrc, fabric | ch, installations, interferences, landscape, territory, variable, weather
Thursday, July 15. 2010Google climate map offers a glimpse of a 4C worldVia The Guardian (environment blog) ----- By Adam Vaughan
Interactive tool layering climate data over Google Earth maps shows the impact of an average global temperature rise of 4C
Think it's hot this summer? Wait until you see Google's simulation of a world with an average global temperature rise of 4C. Using a map that was first launched by the former Labour administration in October 2009, the coalition government has taken temperature data from the Met Office Hadley Centre and other climate research centres and imposed it on to a Google Earth layer. It's a timely arrival, with warnings this month that current international carbon pledges will lead to a rise of nearly 4C and the Muir Russell report censuring some climate scientists for not being more open with their data (but exonerating them of manipulating the scientific evidence). Unlike a similar tool using IPCC data that was launched by Google in the run-up to the Copenhagen climate conference last year, this map will be updated regularly with new data. It also has a series of YouTube videos of experts across the globe, with Met Office staff talking about forest fires in sub-Saharan Africa and researchers at the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research explaining sea level rises. To go more in-depth you can follow links to government sites, such as this one on water availability in a warming world. Playing with the layer is surprisingly addictive, mainly thanks to Google Earth's draggable interface. Unlike the static map of last year, it also has the bonus of showing more obviously how temperature rises will differ drastically around the world. The poles glow a red (a potential rise of around 10C) while most of northern Europe escapes with light orange 2-3C rises. Other hotspots, such as Alaska, the Amazon and central Asia, also stand out. Neatly, you can turn different climate "impacts" on and off. If you just want to see which regions will be worst affected by sea level rises - such as the UK and Netherlands as well as low-lying island states - you can. One limitation is that you have to zoom out to continental level to see the layer: if you're zoomed on your street, you can't see it. Climate change minister Greg Barker launched the map today alongside the government's chief scientist, Prof John Beddington. Barker said: "This map reinforces our determination to act against dangerous man-made climate change. We know the stakes are high and that's why we want to help secure an ambitious global climate change deal." The layer, of course, isn't the only one with an environmental theme to land on Google Earth. The UN's environment programme has one showing deforestation, WWF has a layer highlighting its projects across the globe and Google even has its own climate change "tours" for Google Earth. What other good green Earth layers have you stumbled across? And how do you rate the newest addition from the UK government? • The KML layer of The impact of a global temperature rise of 4C is available now (you'll need a browser plug-in or the Google Earth app installed to view it)
Personal comment:
An interface and layer (Google Earth) to monitor the evolution of the predictions about climate. Should be updated as knowledge evolves.
Posted by Patrick Keller
in Sustainability, Territory
at
13:21
Defined tags for this entry: climate, data, earth, geography, information, mapping, monitoring, sustainability, territory, visualization, weather
Thursday, July 08. 2010Geoengineering with Space Particles, Artificial Volcanoes, and Special KVia GOOD ----- by Mother Nature Network I ran into author and Rolling Stone contributing editor Jeff Goodell at Arizona State in Phoenix, where he was a speaker at the Covering the Green Economy conference (I also spoke). Though he had just published a book, the rumpled-looking Goodell didn’t talk about it until prodded by his fellow journalists. The book is How to Cool the Planet (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $26), and it’s about geoengineering—scientific approaches to reduce the Earth’s temperature that can achieve positive results without actually reducing the carbon dioxide (CO2) we seem unable to stop pumping into the atmosphere.
Goodell’s book is not science-lite: There’s not a lot of pages devoted to crazed schemes and the dreamers who advance them. Instead, he focuses on some key scientists—including a bleeding-heart liberal who used to organize anti-nuke rallies and a former Dr. Death who created weapons systems with H Bomb designer Edward Teller—who might actually be on to something. The book’s message is that there’s no substitute for reducing CO2 emissions, but given the results of the underachieving Kyoto Treaty and the dramatic failure of COP 15, it doesn’t look like that’s happening anytime soon. And if we continue to ignore the Earth’s dire warnings, geoengineering may be a Hail Mary pass for a planet in trouble. I talked to Goodell after the conference: MNN: How do you define geoengineering? GOODELL: The British Royal Society defines it as large-scale, intentional intervention in the climate system to offset global warming. It’s figuring out ways to reduce the amount of sunlight that hits the planet in order to cool things off. It’s also about developing new technologies that could suck carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere in artificial ways in order to reduce concentrations in the atmosphere. Most people would think that was an impossible task. Did your research in how to cool the planet show that these kinds of things are really achievable on such a big scale?
One of the things that’s really surprising is that when it comes to cooling off the planet by blocking sunlight you don’t have to block very much, only 1 or 2 percent. That could offset a doubling of CO2 emissions, and doubling is the common yardstick you’ll find scientists use to talk about climate sensitivity.There are simple things that would mimic natural processes. For instance, we know that big volcanoes like Mount Pinatubo, which erupted in the Philippines in 1992, put a lot of sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere. The particles act like tiny mirrors. Mount Pinatubo actually lowered the temperature of the Earth by about a degree for several years.
One of the most promising and interesting ideas here is to mimic nature — build an artificial volcano that would put small amounts of such particles high into the stratosphere, higher even than a volcano would do, and reflect away a small amount of sunlight. That has not been done yet, but it is very doable, and it could have the effect of cooling off the planet. It does not eliminate the need for reducing carbon dioxide emissions, but if you wanted to find a way to cool off the planet quickly, this is one way to do it.
If I took these ideas to leading climate scientist James Hansen or to environmental writer and350.org founder Bill McKibben, would they scoff at them?
I was on a panel with Bill McKibben a few weeks ago inVermont. Bill says the fact that we’re even talking about this seriously is a measure of how desperate things have become. One of the reasons I got into geoengineering was that I wrote a book about coal ["Big Coal"]. I realized that the world was not going to stop burning coal anytime soon, and the technology to remove CO2 from the coal stacks is not likely to work on a large scale. And so that means we’re going to be pumping a whole lot more CO2 into the atmosphere for a long time, and we’re going to blow through a whole lot of the targets scientists have set in order to avoid the risk of dangerous climate change.
And so what might we do, what are other ways of dealing with this problem? I think people like Bill McKibben and James Hansen would say this is very dangerous, manipulating the climate on this level. And we really should focus our intentions on reducing CO2 levels. And I totally agree with them. But despite what Hansen has been saying for 30 years and McKibben for almost as long, we’re not doing a very good job of it. Emissions are going up, up, up, and by any meaningful measure we’re not making progress.
So I think it’s important to at least think about geoengineering, to at least articulate what the risks and dangers are so we can better understand it.
What are some of the more far-out geoengineering concepts for reducing global warming effects?
There are basically two categories of techniques, one of which is reducing the amount of sunlight that hits the planet, which would work very quickly — it’s like popping a parasol on a beach. And in that category are things like pumping particles high into the stratosphere, and also brightening marine clouds. We know that can work because ships do it — particles from diesel exhaust stimulate cloud growth and reflect away sunlight. Other ideas are about changing the reflectivity of the Earth — even Energy Secretary Steven Chu has talked about painting roofs white, and roads white, which would have a small effect.
The other category encompasses ideas that would suck CO2 out of the air, ranging from dumping iron into the ocean to stimulating plankton blooms (which would pull carbon out of the surface waters and out of the air). There is also using a chemical process to build machines called artificial trees that will pull CO2 out of the atmosphere directly. Think of a kind of iron lung for the planet that would allow us to dial in the kind of climate we want. Those are some of the more practical things.
One of the far-out, science-fiction ideas is putting mirrors in space—I don’t take those ideas very seriously because they’re very expensive and would take hundreds of years to implement. Researchers also have had the crazy idea of dumping plastic balls or Styrofoam into the ocean in order to change the reflectivity of the Arctic Ocean. Some have even talked about launching a nuclear weapon at the moon to create a lot of moondust and reflect away sunlight. There are a lot of wacky ideas.
Isn’t there some idea involving the breakfast cereal Special K?
Yes, one researcher has talked about dumping thousands of millions of tons of Special K into the ocean with the idea that it would change the reflectivity of the oceans while also adding nutrients and creating plankton blooms—so it would be a lot of bang for the buck. These are the nutty ideas that a lot of garage thinkers are putting out there. I tried to not focus too much on that stuff, because it just makes you laugh and this is a really serious endeavor. To focus too much attention on those things undercuts the seriousness of the science.
I think you were a bit surprised that the fossil fuel lobby actually loves your book.
When the galleys of the book came out, the first call I got was from one of the big fossil fuel lobbying firms, inviting me to Washington and offering to sponsor talks. They love the idea, because if it’s positioned for them in the right way, which for me is the wrong way. They hear the message, “We don’t have to worry about cutting back on oil and coal and other fossil fuels if we can just put some sulfur particles up in the sky and continue on our merry way.” It’s a diet pill for our climate problems. But in reality, that’s kind of a nightmare scenario because reducing the sunlight that hits the planet is not a cure-all for the problems of high CO2 levels. Among other things, we’d still have to deal with the most important consequence of those high levels, which is the ongoing acidification of the oceans.
Jim Motavalli is a New York Times contributor who blogs about green transportation for MNN.
Related posts on Mother Nature Network:
'Climategate' inquiry mostly vindicates climate scientists
Personal comment: When it comes to the point of intentionnaly architecture the planet as a whole (unintentionnaly we do for centuries). So to say, CO2 and other type of emissions are already the geoengineering of the planet.
Posted by Patrick Keller
in Architecture, Territory
at
08:28
Defined tags for this entry: architecture, artificial reality, climate, engineering, geography, globalization, interferences, territory, weather
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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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