Created for the niche target group of nostalgic button freaks, by Aram Bartholl.

“…Until now, the major obstacle that has prevented people from thinking critically about stray shopping carts has been that we have not had any formalized language to differentiate one shopping cart from another. In order to encourage a more nuanced and comprehensive understanding of the phenomenon, I have worked for the past six years to develop a system of identification for stray shopping carts. Unlike a Linaean taxonomy, which is based on the shared physical characteristics of living things, this system works by defining the various states and situations in which stray shopping carts can be found. The categories of classification were arrived at by observing shopping carts in different situations and considering the conditions and human motives that have placed carts in specific situations and the potential for a cart to transition from one situation to another.” – Julian Montague.

More at Julian Montague’s StrayShoppingCart.com. Thanks Ronald.

It is a widespread belief that, contrary to people living in urban areas, farmers have a strong connection with ‘nature’. One seriously starts to doubt that after watching this peculiar video. Thanks Roel Wouters.

At ISEA 2010, the International Symposium on Electronic Arts, media artists and media researchers from all over the world present their work in Dortmund (Germany). This year, many projects focus on the relationship between man and nature and man and technology. An overview of contemporary artistic practices of NextNature at ISEA 2010.

For media artists, in short, technology can be a tool, a methodology, an object of research and a thing of beauty in itself. Apart from the creative use of technologies, such as sensors, video-screens, GPS,  sound technologies and so on, many works also explicitly question our relationship with technology. Some critically refer to the hidden control and surveillance society and the informational overkill, such as the Sentient City Survival Kit (by Mark Shepard), Desire of Codes (by Seiko Mikami) or Otondro Prohori, Guarding Who (by Naeem Mohaiemen). Other works show our dependence upon technology or explore the autonomy of technology such as Diary of a Cyberbabe (by Anna Gonzalez Suero), Ein Tag Ohne Handy by Eve Arpo & Riin Roos) and Lonely Record Sessions (by Joan Leandre).

Issues of sustainability and climate change are a popular trend – also among media artists. Some art works criticize our urge to control nature, while others show our dependence on technological mediation in these debates. Many try to reinvent our ‘broken’ relationship with nature by either changing its function or its appearance. Plants become musical instruments, adopted children, or are genetically remodifiyied to their ‘original’ state’, such as the project Common Flowers/White Out (by Shiko Fukuhara & Georg Tremmel).The freezing of water or the decomposition of dying leaves are transformed into sound scapes in the works Inhale Exhale; Succesion (by Terike Haapoja) and Permafrost (by Aernoudt Jacobs).

An intriguing project is BioModd by Belgian artist/scientist Angelo Vermeulen. His installations aim to fuse a living ecosystem with a modified computer network.  In collaborative workshops with local people from the Philippines, Brasil and Belgium, used computer systems are recycled and turned into interactive sculptures. A nice project that blends biology, electronics, and cross-cultural dialogues.

The art works at ISEA play with the appearance and our sensory interpretation of nature, using technology as a mediator, enabler or criticized object of research. When wandering through the many exhibitions and performances, it seems that contemporary media artists as no-other understand and explore the notion of NextNature in creative and critical ways.

Next week: NextNature at Ars Electronica (Austria).

“Owning the Weather” is a documentary about geo-engineering by Robert Greene.  It’s about whether or not we should engineer the weather and the different impacts that this has. And not only because we can, but also because actually we are already doing so.

“There are more than fifty active weather modification programs in the United States alone. Through the eyes of key individuals on the front lines of a crucial but largely unknown debate, the film introduces the cloud seeders struggling for mainstream recognition, the ‘legitimate’ scientists who doubt them, and the activists who decry any attempts to mess with Mother Nature.”
-Source: www.owningtheweather.com

Climate change is often thought to have its winners and losers, with Canada, Nordic countries and Russia being portrayed as among the lucky few chilly nations where moderate climate change could mean net benefits such as lower winter heating bills, more forest, longer crop growth and perhaps more summer tourism.

Russia’s two-month heat wave, which wrecked a quarter of Russia’s grain crop and may cut $14 billion from gross domestic product, is dimming prospects that northern countries will “win” from climate change.

While Prime Minister Vladimir Putin in 2002 joked that less icy weather would enable Russians to buy fewer fur coats, President Dmitry Medvedev now blamed the heat wave on global warming – even though most experts say it is impossible to link individual weather events to climate change.

People in Nordic nations and Canada are becoming aware that climate change will not be a simple blessing for them. Possible damaging side-effects of less chill weather, including the risk to forests and crops of insect pests normally kept in check by winter frosts.

Via Reuters, Thanks to the Canary Project. Image via English Russia.

At the beach, I’m always on the look-out for seashells big enough to hold against my ear to hear the sound of the sea. This child-like behavior still resonates with me. But I got really puzzled when I saw this movie on wired.co.uk.

How it it possible that I can look at an installation, created by Nils Völker using 108 plastic bags, two CPU cooling fans. MDF, relays, countless screws and an Arduino controller and all I can think of is the sea?

However, the same properties that allow nanotechnology to be valuable give it the potential to cause unforeseen consequences for ecological and human health. To date, it’s unclear whether the benefits of nanotech outweigh the risks associated with environmental release and exposure to nanoparticles.

Environmental Health News reports that nanoparticles in sunscreens, cosmetics and hundreds of other consumer products may pose risks to the environment by damaging beneficial microbes.

Researchers Cyndee Gruden and Olga Mileyeva-Biebesheimer from the University of Toledo added varying amounts of nanoparticles to water containing bacteria. The bacteria were grown in a lab and stained with a green fluorescent. It turned out the nano-titanium dioxide – also used in personal care products – reduced biological roles of bacteria after less than an hour of exposure. The findings suggest that these particles, which end up at municipal sewage treatment plants after being washed off in showers, could eliminate microbes that play vital roles in ecosystems and help treat wastewater. Oops!

Nanotechnology is yet another example of mankind playing with fire: It requires enormous care and restraint, yet on the other hand, playing with fire is perhaps one of the very special abilities that defines us as humans.

Via: Environmental Health News.

Imagine you were an intelligent alien from outer space that just landed on Earth. Before you can mingle with the earthlings you’d need to learn their language. It seemed like a smart idea to start at Google image search. Just type in a word and you’ll immediately get a collage of images that show you what it means.

Lets start for example with the word ‘dandelion‘. That learns you a lot about the different phases of this flower and how it propagates! So far so good, but things are rapidly getting more bizarre.

For instance when you try the Beetle.

The Puma is also somewhat confusing.

Lion seems to be fine, it is that meat eating animal that jumps on other animals.

Jaguar seems to be more schizophrenic again.

Beware for the caterpillar.

Cherry seems edible.

Better to avoid the apple?

Shell is some sort of stylized predator.

Blackberry is peculiar, unsure where they grow.

Strawberries look sweet.

Unsure if you can eat the Berry.

And finally the mouse.

By ASTON REVOLA, Paris 21-08-20, for NextNature.net

Last year, in May, Manko released an artistic Augmented Reality (AR) application that showed what the missing arms, legs and even heads of some of the most famous sculptures in art history were supposed to look like. Based on artist sketchbooks he remodeled them in 3D and with the use of the new contact lenses of the museum, visitors could now see the whole picture. It was a huge success and soon enough Manko licensed others to remix these virtual body parts he designed. One of the best remixes was actually done by Manko himself, where he transposed the arms of Milo’s Venus onto Dali’s version, making the arms move and search all the drawers in her chest, frantically and endlessly.

It is interesting to see how this idea was soon used by the Neurotopian Group to treat people with phantom pains. Adding a virtual limb, controlled by eye-tracking technology created a way to help them overcome pain in phantom limbs. One could argue that ideas like this are “in the air” yet until this day NG has never attributed their application to that of Manko. In one of Manko’s many ongoing trials, Manko is challenging NG’s patent, demanding a share in revenues.

A more complex intrusion on artistic ownership was the case of Manko’s AR work called KM3. This was the first artwork to be awarded both the achievement for largest known land art and biggest AR artwork to date. With 5 years in the making and measuring up to exactly one cubic kilometer in size, KM3 is a marvel to the eyes. Special designed cars are allowed in and even small airplanes sometimes fly through, yet it is best to experience it by foot. It is hard to describe the beauty of what you will see: white cherry blossom falling down continuously as if carried by a small breeze, with no known source (no tree) and simultaneously small white butterflies, about the same size as the blossom leaves, fluttering upwards. All of this has been well executed with processing techniques that are hard to distinguish from natural flight and falling patterns. The result is a genuine meditative experience. The leaves and butterflies fly right through the observer and by using a parameter that prevents them from coming too close to the eyes (by avoiding the locative AR contact lenses) it never feels annoying in any way.

KM3 was originally commissioned by the Louvre museum in Paris. Selected art critics worldwide and representatives of the French government received invitations to the event, with personalized (iris scan) contact lenses that would give them an exclusive premiere. Little did they know that their viewing would be very exclusive indeed. As I was one of the lucky few to be invited, it is hard to describe the enchanting effect of these white elements going up and down at the same time. It is quite a marvel to the eye and, in my opinion, is one of the more aesthetic works of Manko to date.

As we walked around the Louvre, suddenly a fierce discussion broke out among government representatives. One of them, a State Law representative, questioned the legality of the artwork. If, he explained, Manko’s artwork takes up one square kilometer, including it’s airspace, this would surely mean that the Louvre itself and an important area of Paris would now become part of the artwork. Another representative agreed and claimed that this was not acceptable. The buzz soon came to an end when the President himself had just arrived to come and see the work with his own “eyes”. I have no account of what has been said between officials, but soon enough after half an hour or so, it was announced that the exhibition was over and was to be removed immediately. The official statement was that no artwork should ever contain parts of Paris in it and that no museum or artist could be permitted to own parts of the city this way, for obvious reasons of legality.

This created quite a stir in the art world and I can only guess the artist’s feelings upon hearing this. Nevertheless, word got out quite soon after that, that Manko had gained the interest of investors from Dubai. Not only did they have enough money to buy it, they also had enough empty desert area to host such a spacious work of art, without the legal issues. And that would have been that. If misfortune had not struck again…

A major market player in AR technology in Shanghai had apparently gotten an interest in Manko’s work and had decided that they not only wanted this work of art for themselves, they wanted to beat Dubai in size and had secretly copy-pasted together a version of KM3 with 10×10 of the KM3 cubes stacked together into an even bigger cube, now 10KM3 in size. No one knows how they got hold of the application, yet rumor has it that the technician that worked on the Paris Premiere had simply copied the application on his iPhone. Copyright infringement was dismissed by Shanghai authorities and they were not in the least worried about the 10 square kilometers of villages around Shanghai being swallowed up by the artwork. Upon hearing this, the Dubai investors felt cheated by Manko and now refused to acquire the work. The achievement award for biggest artwork still remains in Manko’s possession yet his original KM3 to this day has never been realized as intended.

Hence Manko was only able to make some money off his artwork by selling it as souvenirs. He offered small versions online of the original KM3, now 10cm3 in size. The 10CM3 version to many people seemed a cheap rip-off of the old Snowflake globes and with this last unforeseen artistic ownership issue Manko decided to abandon the whole project all together.

Next month we’ll look at Manko’s next move.

These watercraft vessels started appearing from 1997 and have been evolving at a rapid pace. Seabreachers enable their controllers to maneuver swiftly through the water: diving, jumping, rolling, porpoising… all within the safety and comfort of a dry, sealed cockpit.

Click here to view the embedded video.

The average copy is capable of reaching 40 mph / 60 kmh on the surface, and up to 20 mph / 40 kmh under water. But the rare Seabreacher X model is capable of 50 mph / 80 kmh on the surface and up to 25 mph / 40 kmh under water! They have been designed to operarate in salt water as well as fresh water.

Unlike their organic ancestors that can dive as deep as 990 feet / 300 meters, they are capable of diving 5 feet under water for recreational purposes only. And where sharks and dolphins survive on a variety of fish, the elegant Seabreacher runs on gasoline. It is because of these characteristics that Seabreachers must be classified as objects of ‘biomimic marketing’.

Imagery via Innespace

If this gasoline advertisement would be submitted to our infotizement contest, we would probably dismiss it for being too cynical and far fetched. Nonetheless, this ad was actually published in Life magazine in 1962. It shows pretty much the exact opposite image of what oil companies are trying to communicated today. If the letters are too small for you – and they are – here is the transcript:

EACH DAY HUMBLE SUPPLIES ENOUGH ENERGY TO MELT 7 MILLION TONS OF GLACIER!

“This giant glacier has remained unmelted for centuries. Yet, the petroleum energy Humble supplies- if converted into heat- could melt it at the rate of 80 tons each second! To meet the nation’s growing needs for energy, Humble has applied science to nature’s resources to become America’s Leading Energy Company. Working wonders with oil through research, Humble provides energy in many forms- to help heat our homes, power our transportation, and to furnish industry with a great variety of versatile chemicals. Stop at a Humble station for new Enco Extra gasoline, and see why the “Happy Motoring” sign is the World’s First Choice!”

Despite the ignorance of global warming and the environmental impact of oil drilling, they apparently were in 1962 already quite aware of the benefits of a biomimicmarketing strategy.

Via Boingboing, via Sociological Images, via MsMarx.