Journeys

JALAN JATI (TEAK ROAD)

This post comes to you from Cultura21

phpThumb_generated_thumbnailjpgOn show at the John Hope Gallery Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh (UK) until July 7th 2013

The results of three years of research and production, the interdisciplinary exhibition from Singapore, Jalan Jati (Teak Road) opened at the Edinburgh Science Festival on 21 March 2013 and runs at the John Hope Gallery Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh until July 2013.

Jalan Jati (Teak Road) traces the material, genetic, historic and poetic journeys of a teak bed found in a Singapore karang guni junk store back to where the original tree may have grown, via photography, woodprint collage, animation and DNA tracking technology.

Cultura21 is a transversal, translocal network, constituted of an international level grounded in several Cultura21 organizations around the world.

Cultura21′s international network, launched in April 2007, offers the online and offline platform for exchanges and mutual learning among its members.

The activities of Cultura21 at the international level are coordinated by a team representing the different Cultura21 organizations worldwide, and currently constituted of:

– Sacha Kagan (based in Lüneburg, Germany) and Rana Öztürk (based in Berlin, Germany)
– Oleg Koefoed and Kajsa Paludan (both based in Copenhagen, Denmark)
– Hans Dieleman (based in Mexico-City, Mexico)
– Francesca Cozzolino and David Knaute (both based in Paris, France)

Cultura21 is not only an informal network. Its strength and vitality relies upon the activities of several organizations around the world which are sharing the vision and mission of Cultura21

Go to Cultura21

Powered by WPeMatico

Watch the Trailer for Waste Land, a Documentary About Beauty and Trash

WASTE LAND Official Trailer from Almega Projects on Vimeo.

Jardim Gramacho, outside of Rio, is the world’s largest landfill. In a new documentary called Waste Land, Vik Muniz, a Brazilian-born, Brooklyn-based artist, returns to create portraits, made from the trash itself, of the so-called “catadores” who work there.

It looks like an interesting peek at a subculture you’re not likely to be exposed to otherwise, a helpful reminder that we’re creating incredible volumes of trash, and a nice example of the redemptive power of art.

Filmed over nearly three years, WASTE LAND follows Muniz as he journeys from his home base in Brooklyn to his native Brazil and the world’s largest garbage dump, Jardim Gramacho, located on the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro. There he photographs an eclectic band of “catadores” — self-designated pickers of recyclable materials. Muniz’s initial objective was to “paint” the catadores with garbage. However, his collaboration with these inspiring characters as they recreate photographic images of themselves out of garbage reveals both the dignity and despair of the catadores as they begin to re-imagine their lives. Director Lucy Walker (DEVIL’S PLAYGROUND, BLINDSIGHT, COUNTDOWN TO ZERO) has great access to the entire process and, in the end, offers stirring evidence of the transformative power of art and the alchemy of the human spirit.

Astronaut combines art and science to awesome effect – The Irish Times

The Irish Times’ SHANE HEGARTY shows us what Soichi Noguchi sees.

On Wednesday he posted a picture of the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, its black tendrils looked eerily beautiful as it stretched through miles of ocean. It is a unique image, giving a sense of its scale previously unseen and with a touch of humanity that a satellite cannot. The picture looks as if it was taken by an interested photographer rather than a disinterested automaton.

What Noguchi does is to bring science and art together in a way that appeals to 250,000 people each day. He is one of the best things NASA has right now; up there at least with the rovers still toddling across Mars or the Voyager and Pioneer spacecrafts on lonely, perhaps eternal journeys into deep space. And if you want, you can talk to him and he may even talk back. If you need any proof of how wonderful modern technology can be, it’s that you can send a message to a man floating 400km above your head, and that he might reply with a holiday snap of your entire country.

He is not the only tweeting astronaut, but he is a reminder of just how awesome science can be. Not “awesome” in the modern way in which it is used merely as an everyday replacement for a nod, but “awesome” in a way that leaves your mind breathless from trying to appreciate the scale of it. And of how much fun it can be.

We’re fans of the macro view of planet. Check out there previous posts:

California City

STUNNING VIEWS OF GLACIERS SEEN FROM SPACE | WIRED.COM

via Astronaut combines art and science to awesome effect – The Irish Times – Sat, May 08, 2010.

Ashden signs up for 10:10

We sign up for 10:10


The Ashden Directory has signed up for 10:10, the collective campaign to reduce carbon emissions by 10% by the end of 2010.

Devised by the team behind Age of Stupid, 10:10 is supporting people and organisations in reducing their use energy in four areas: electricity from the national grid, fossil fuel use on site, road transport and air travel.
We’ll start by calculating our current energy use, see where reductions can be made, and keep track of our progress here on the news page. We are especially interested in the amount of electricity and fossil fuel use involved in supporting the internet, and in finding out how we might calculate the effects of our usage, and if possible reduce it. Beyond that, we are three people working part-time from our own homes. Any meetings are arranged to coincide with other purposes, and most journeys are by train. And, as shown in our video conference for ‘Earth Matters Onstage’ in Eugene Oregon, we are working on how more and different connections can be made without flying. We will start talking with the companies listed on the Directory, to see how they are reducing their energy usage. More on our progress here soon.

Bring on the electric cars?

Last week in New York the sculptor Seth Kinmont unveiled the first of three electric cars, bodywork made from wood. For three days he invited people to ride around the block in his new hand-built horseless carriage. Beautiful, huh?

I mention this because a) it forms a tenuous artistic link to the following story, and b) Kinmont’s work underlines the quixotic nature of electric transport.

The latest voyagers on this quixotic journey are Jeff Hoon and Peter Mandelson. Today they will announce a £250m scheme to kickstart the UK’s electric car infrastructure.  You might think they’re unlikely travellers on this road, given the fact that this are the pair who were most vocal about the impracticality the green movement’s objections to Heathrow expansion.

But no, Geoff Hoon in particular has retooled himself as the champion of green in this morning’s Guardian.

Hoon said yesterday that decarbonising road transport had a big role in helping the UK meet its targets of reducing CO2 emissions by 26% by 2020 and 80% by 2050. “Something like 35% of all our carbon emissions are caused by domestic transport,” he said. “Of that, 58% of the emissions are caused by motor cars.”

The implication is that electric cars will help cut that figure. And they might, but… Big but.

As a recent report commissioned by the Campaign for Better Transport suggests, if everyone in the UK moved to electric cars we’d need four times as much capacity in our electricty generation than we have at present, and even the government’s recently unveiled plans for nuclear generation aren’t enough to plug that gap.

Even a modest rise in electric car use doesn’t automatically reduce CO2 emissions – it just shifts emissions from the exhaust pipe to the power station. For those who use their cars only for short urban journeys, the CO2 reduction can be significant, but for average car use the figures are much less clear cut.

A few weeks ago the government let it be known that they were considering a scheme to encourage people to buy greener cars by offering an incentive for people to scrap their old ones. In reality, this was an attempt to boost the UK’s failing manufacturing sector, not a green scheme; given the embedded carbon costs of manufacturing, scrapping working cars in favour of newly built ones is about the least green strategy of all. That embedded energy calculation is the same for electric cars too.

This initiative is the start of Gordon Brown’s much touted green recovery plan; for a cabinet who have dismissed green concerns as impractical, they’re going to have to work extremly hard to demonstrate that this really is a practical scheme, not just another sop to industry.

Hat tip to Bad At Sports for the Seth Kinmont story.

Go to RSA Arts & Ecology