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 ‘manufactured-landscapes’
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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. -
Antenna roofgarden
Don’t ask me what the purpose is of having your roof crowded with antennas. Solar energy roof-gardens I could understand, but antenna roof-gardens just seem hopelessly old fashioned.
Nevertheless I immediately realized I had to make a picture when I spotted this antenna roof-garden in Hong Kong, as I knew this could certainly go as our peculiar image of the week.
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Virtual Realities by NL Architects
Some beautiful “visual thoughts” by NL Architects. On the left: Minimum Speed 200 kh/h. On the right: United Airlines.
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Pimp My Planet
“We live in a time where everything or everyone can be upgraded or ‘pimped’. After the worldwide acceptance of plastic surgery, it was time to subject our worldly possessions (Pimp my Ride) and digital identities (Facebook) to an esthetical and/or functional upgrade. So it’s likely that eventually everything will be pimp-able. Even our own planet.”
The PIMP MY PLANET video, created the good people of Studio Smack, explores the possibilities of redesigning our planet according to ideals or aesthetic values. It is the wet dream of every modernist – I bet Mondriaan would have liked this – and then you wake up and realize that maakbaarheid is never finished and with every attempt to cultivate nature, a next nature arises that is wild and unpredictable as ever.
Related: If the implications of Global Warming were fair, Fight climate change, hack the planet, Ancient Man impacted environment already, Doggerland – mapping a lost world, Unfolding the Earth.
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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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Mistaking buildings for mountains
On a misty day in Aberdeen, Hong Kong, it is easy to mistake buildings for mountains. Nonetheless a captivating blend of old & next nature. Peculiar image of the week.
Related: Eruption, Behavioral Urbanism, Architecture of density, Exploding City.
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Phone Booths turned into Smoking Booths
With the emergence of mobile phones, classical phone booths are used less and less. Seems like the Dutch telecoms operator KPN is re-tooling its phone booths to function as smoking booths? Well, so far it is just a witty design proposal by graphic designer Simone de Graef. Unsure if the telecoms companies are actually planning on this.
Nonetheless, it is kind of fascinating that ‘calling’, which used to be constrained in fixed lines and locations, is now entirely mobile and it is now socially acceptable to call almost everywhere: restaurant, train, toilet, airplanes, operahouse, etc. While smoking, which used to be mobile and done everywhere, is becoming increasingly limited to designated locations.
Apparently, every generation has its own sort of legalized drugs.
Thanks Ton.
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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.
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Urban Camouflage
Laurent La Gamba makes photographic installations dealing with camouflage. His work juggles with the idea of natural procrypsis in the urban space and deals with the relations among people, living environment, and technology.
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Medicine Square Garden
Peculiar image of the week by Martin Denker.
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Wrapping Greenland
The Discovery series ‘Ways to save the planet’ the episode ‘Wrapping Greenland‘ shows how Dr. Jason Box uses reflective blankets to cover glaciers in Greenland. Due to global warming glaciers start melting causing land to flood. Dr. Jason Box argues that it is expensive to use blankets to cover all glaciers, but that it is more expensive to reorganize all coast lines.
Maybe we should make the expenses, as we ourselves have caused global warming. Maybe we should take another leap in evolution, just as our ancestors the Sapiens did to survive in constant changing conditions. But should we then focus on preventing the changes, or should we focus on adapting flexibly to them?
Related: If the implications of global warming were fair, Fight climate change, hack the planet, Doggerland – Mapping a lost world, Artificial ‘trees’ should stop climate change, Diesels global warming ready campaign, Let the Dutch bury the carbon, Humans to blame for global warming.
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Live with micro-algae
The Eco Pod is a experimental design proposal towards the production of clean and renewable energy, which should operate in old, abandoned buildings. Pending an eventual recovery, these buildings become vertical bioreactor that supports micro-algae which produce energy for the city.
The idea comes from the American studios Höweler + Yoon Architecture and Squared Design Lab. It was created to stimulate the economy and ecology of the city of Boston. This way, structures, ruins of abandoned buildings are turned into high-impact capsules coated with multiple ground source of bio-fuels. In this case the micro-algae is 30 times more efficient per acre than traditional.
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Plastic Birds
Bird spotting is not a typical activity for us next nature explorers, yet occasionally we bump into some birds worth mentioning (remember the amazing copy-paste bird, rubber duck XL, the wild birds illegally immigrating into city Zoo, or the plastic flamingos that almost became extinct?)
Undoubtedly these ‘plastic’ birds spotted by photographer Chris Jordan are the most macabre thus far. One wonders what Darwin would have thought of these Albatross babies fed bellies-full of plastic by their parents, who soar out over the vast polluted ocean collecting what looks to them like food to bring back to their young. According to the photographer thousands of chicks a year, kick the bucket from starvation, toxicity, and choking from their diet of human trash.
Feeding your babies plastic is definitely not a good survival strategy for these poor birds. On the other hand, plastic seems to be thriving as a new material all over our planet, with no living organism able to break it down or consume it. Nietzsche already learned us that every second nature typically stresses a first nature, which in effect deteriorates, after which the victorious second nature becomes the first.
Are we ready for a plastic planet? Surely that bit of mindful recycling you are urging yourself to turn into a habit, won’t undo the effect. How long should we wait for the microbes to evolve that are able to digest plastic? Certainly there is more than enough ‘food’ for them available within the ecosystem by now. Somebody please call one of these synthetic biologists to fix us a microbe that eats plastic.
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Houston, we’ve got a dome!
Houston, Texas, the fourth-largest city in the U.S., has always been vulnerable to severe weather and heat. A 2 million-square-meter dome should protect downtown from hurricanes and regulate the climate, though only covering 0,33% of the total Houston area.
Scientists made up plans to cover a part of the city with a polymer structure manufactured in Germany. Compared to glass, the light and durable material (ETFE) that withstands winds up to 290 km/h, is only 1% the weight.
A video at Discovery Channel shows how maybe one day this giant structure will save Houston from a terrible natural disaster.
On a different note, what will the weather be like inside the bubble? Will artificial rain still evoke the same reactions?
Related: Space Station | Biosphere 2 | Romantic Sunsets
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Wii Gardening
For people who live small…
Via Gizmodo. Related: Game on, Games become jobs, Boomeranged Metaphors, Simulating old nature on next nature. Thanks Jurrian.
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GPS Parody
And you thought GPS was supposed to make life easier? Created by Sheepfilms.
Related: Find Brain, replace with GPS, GPS influence on street signage. Via Beyond the Beyond.
