American Power
Amos coal powerplant in Raymond, West Virginia. Taken from the series “American Power” by Mitch Epstein.
What is Next Nature?
With our attempts to cultivate nature, humankind causes the rising of a next nature, which is wild and unpredictable as ever. Wild systems, genetic surprises, autonomous machinery and splendidly beautiful black flowers. Nature changes along with us.
Posts Tagged ‘utopian-suburbia’
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Dubai Globe: Sea versus Economy
Above: artist impression 2003 | below: Nasa January 2010
When developers launched the globe project just off Dubai’s coast in 2003, they hoped that the rich and famous would land there to populate the 300 islands.
Within five years Nakheel Properties leveled up 11 billion cubic feet of sand and 47 million tons of rock. However, a year ago (2009) the work stopped and now it looks like the project will never be completed. While officially the project has just been delayed, the obvious conclusion would be that it is the economic recession causing the islands to gradually wash back into the sea. -
Oil Diet: Recipes for Disaster
Do you know how much oil you use per day? Neither did director John Webster. In 2005 he decided to make a documentary about oil from his own families perspective. How would it be to live a life without fossile-based products? John put a ban on things packaged in plastic like food, makeup, shampoo, toothpaste and kids’ toys in order to reduce their carbon footprint. “Recipes for disaster” (2008) is the result of a one year oil-detox.
From the director’s statement:
“(…) The first concern of every film maker is how to make the subject matter visible. One of the difficulties of this subject, and the great tragedy of the world, is that greenhouse gasses are invisible. So too, is the 31 billion barrels (1 barrel = 159 litres) of oil the world consumes every year. When that oil is burnt, it releases as much carbon as a forest fire four times the size of France. If France was burnt to cinder every three months, we would be aware of it, but somehow the oil we use (and mostly burn) fails to catch our attention.” -
Nano Care™ Blueberry Paste Wax
Surely we are quite attuned to some unexpected flavors in these quarters, but this Nano Care™ Blueberry Paste Wax wins our syncretic mash-up award for combining technorethoric with biomimicmarketing.
Who wouldn’t fall for the prospect of giving your car an all-natural-hi-tech massage with a Nanotech Blueberry wax? The creators of the car wax must have wanted to make sure they would reach all imaginable target groups with their product.
“This easy to use formula uses nano-technology based polishing agents and waxes for enhanced surface penetration, durability and gloss. Nano Care Blueberry Paste Wax is made with pure Carnauba and Nano waxes and contains no abrasives. Because it contains a special non-swirl agent Blueberry Paste Wax is especially effective on dark or bright colored cars.”
Sometimes it seems the surrealists were telling the truth after all. Peculiar product of the week.
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How people spend their day
Contrary to what may be your first impression, you aren’t looking at a graph of the Earths geological layers. The layers in this visualization represent an average of how thousands of Americans spent their day.
The data was collected by the American Time Use Survey, which NY Times translated into this interactive map that allows you to see the differences between various groups like employed, unemployed, men, women, Black, White and Hispanic.
Would be fascinating to compare the graph with a day in the life of a caveman – the hunting & gathering type. Surely there would be less time watching TV & movies back then, but how about household activities? Traveling and Socializing? We wonder how the border between work and leisure worked for them and whether they were active during the same ‘office hours‘.
Related: Time pilots us, Office Rebellion, Supermarket – our next savanna.
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Birdfeeders spit Blackcaps in two species
Until now, most people have likely regarded bird-feeders as merely a pleasant addition to their gardens. But scientists have now discovered that bird-feeders in the UK are actually having a serious long term impact on bird life – they’ve found that the feeders have brought about the first evolutionary step in the creation of a brand new species.
Historically, European Blackcap birds migrate to Spain to spend their winters, where they feed on fruit and berries. While in the past the part of the population that accidentally flew to the UK had a hard time surviving, since the rise of bird–feeders in the UK things changed.
The food supplied by animal-loving Brits, along with the luxury of not flying over the Alps, have made Britain an increasingly popular holiday destination for wintering blackcaps. And that has set them down the path towards becoming two separate species, Gregor Rolshausen from the University of Freiborg and colleagues write in the journal Current Biology.
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Highway Nomads
Whereas 40.000 years ago we used to roam the Savanna, today many people live the live of highway nomads. As an investigation of this lifestyle, artist Melle Smets and philosopher Bram Esser spent four continuous weeks on the highway.
Their journey brought them to tank stations, motels, gay-meeting spots, road-restaurants and industrial outskirts. The question they tried to answer is intriguingly simple: Is it possible to live on the highway? And what does it to people?
Website: Snelwegmuseum (Dutch). Related: Observing Next Nature, Waves of Asphalt, Magic Highway USA, Interchange, On the Road, Via Trendbeheer.
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Orthorexia Nervosa: the healty eating disorder
Following anorexia nervosa (under eating) and bulimia nervosa (overeating), orthorexia nervosa (healty eating) is the latest eating disorder in the book. It is characterized by a fixation on eating what the sufferer considers to be healthful food, which can ultimately lead to early death.
While anorexia is typically associated with our visual culture and its unreachable beauty ideals, orthorexia seems closely related with our information age and the easy access to facts and figures. Today so many data about health benefits of our food are available – how it was processed, prepared, etc– and food packages are routinely decorated with scientifically detailed data on their contents. We are suffering from ‘overknowledge’.
While most of us respond to the food-data-overload with an occasional dosage of self chosen ignorance – forget about the facts, grab a burger! – people suffering from orthorexia will spend just as much time and energy thinking about food as someone with bulimia or anorexia.
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Aging Barbie
You wouldn’t give it to her but Barbie is already over 50 years old. The doll made her debut at the American International Toy Fair in 1959 and has been a young girls (and gays) beauty icon for decades. Just image what Barbie would have looked like today if only she wasn’t so utterly plastic fantastic by nature. Still a pretty woman, stylish too! Peculiar image of the week (creator unknown: let us know).
Related: Beauty kit for little girls, Virtual Miss, Photoshop Beauties, Objects of desire, Real Mario, Software that ranks female beauty.
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Nocturnal Life of Diurnal Birds
English Robins are forced to sing their song during the night. Not because they have figured out that music just sounds better in the dark, but because they can’t compete with the noise we make during the day.
Research by Richard A. Fuller et al. has revealed that English Robins are active during the night in 18 out of 67 observed areas across Sheffield, England. In one area, an English Robin was only active during the night. As it turns out, there was significantly more (human caused) noise in those areas than in the 49 areas where the English Robin only sang during the day.
Where will this lead to? Maybe our 24/7 society will silence all English Robins and other birds during the day, forcing them to develop their nocturnal lives, which in turn will lead to sleepless nights for us, because we will be treated to midnight concerts every night.
Related post: Copypaste bird, Wild birds illegaly imigrating to city zoo, Flying penguins.
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Natural Fountain
Fountains are peculiar objects: We associate them with nature even though they are typically entirely artificial and man-made (unless you are living in Iceland of course).
Recently however, a fountain that wasn’t planned for emerged in California’s San Fernando Valley. An urban water pipe carrying purified recycled water, used for irrigation and industrial purpose, began leaking. The rupture sent water gushing in an immense column that towered over the roof of a nearby business.
Thousands of gallons went down the sewer before the next natural fountain was closed down more than three hours later.
Via BBC NEWS. Related: Datafountain – Money translated to water, Water shows when the heat is on. Thanks Tara.
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Moscow won’t let it snow
Already in the early days of modern civilization, people claimed that they could control the weather. A known example from recent history are the rituals that American Indians used to induce rain.
Nowadays, many people still tend to regard these stories as fairy-tales and consider controlling the weather impossible. In Moscow though, the mayor recently proposed a snow-free city. It proves that several countries, including the People’s Republic of China, USA and Russia, are modifying precipitation for several decades. In Russia, it is common practice to engineer dry days on public holidays and special events in Moscow.
Moscow’s plan is to disperse a mixture of silver iodide, liquid nitrogen and cement powder into clouds to trigger precipitation. This ensures that snow is banned from Moscow’s city centre, but results in a regional climate change in the areas just outside Moscow where the clouds empty their load. You can imagine the consequences…
Related: Hurricane control causes storm of lawsuits, Fight climate change: Hack the planet, China controls weather for olympics.
