Impacts of rising sea-level on coastal salinity
http://www.connectedwaters.unsw.edu.au/resources/articles/coastal_aquifers.html
Crown Casino: ‘A snarling, digitised mutilation’
“The consumer society is a kind of soft police state. We think we have choice, but everything is compulsory. We have to keep buying or we fail as citizens. Consumerism creates huge unconscious needs that only fascism can satisfy. If anything, fascism is the form that consumerism takes when it opts for elective madness.” -- J.G. Ballard, Kingdom Come (2006). "But →
Recycling/Pee-cycling
Sort-of looks like a coconut... http://www.thedesignblog.org/entry/agua-h2o-converts-pee-into-fresh-water/
Deep Ecology
The Stanford University Encyclopedia of Philosophy site (thanks Peter) contains a good overview of some of the environmental ethics questions we have been wrestling with. This section is about deep ecology. I thought it might appeal to some of our forest defenders. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ethics-environmental/#3
More on architecture, sci-fi and the virtual.
A sort of reply to Nicholas's post on the Lucas Arts: Fracture terra-forming computer game. There's been a lot of talk about how much video games and cinema (especially science fiction) have influenced wider design culture. With advancements in our ability to represent 'reality' digitally, the games and animation industry has also influenced the development of many of the →
Sublime/Ridiculous
I'm still very interested in the idea of floating islands as a paradigm for future architectures. This has arisen out of my responses to a range of future challenges such as future sea-level rise, increasing population, the possible future reliance on aquaculture for food. I suspect it also stems from the Australian cultural (and my personal) connection to the coast →
Bucky Fungus
The multiplicity of emergent themes and patterns in nature is endlessly fascinating. We are constantly seeing complex geometries and structures repeated across scales and across species. We've been looking at the microbialites and imagining how to turn their talents towards the architectural possibilities of our own future. In the same vein behold the Basket Fungus or as I like to →
Related to today’s session: Brian Massumi interview
An interview with Brian Massumi at Intelligent Agent discusses questions of flux and change, responsiveness and plasticity which seemed relevant in terms of autopoiesis and PALS - especially relevant to Peter's line of investigation. Not too long or even especially jargony. "The active emergence of form does not automatically carry over from the design process into the life of the building →
Diagramming (web pages as graphs)
This HTML Graph applet converts any website into a graph. It generates an animated "growing" representation of the linear or nested relationships between different HTML tags within the website. Here is what liveness.org/plasticfutures looks like. Each time you reload the page the graph "grows" in a new configuation like plants or microbes in a petri dish (or a city?). There is →
Margaret Wertheim TED Talk
People might be familiar with Margaret Wertheim's Crochet Coral Reef project already but I was really fascinated by some of the ideas in this talk at TED.com. I'm not sure how relevant it is but I thought it might be of interest since we've been talking about bio-architectures and ecology as well as textiles and ways of knitting and weaving →
Happy Snaps
I've added 2 Picasa albums: 1. The Making of iPatch™ 2. Thrombolites at Lake Clifton. (Easter, 2007) There is a video at the end (I made it by accident). Note the weird floating mud stuff.
Natural vs. Artificial? Interesting Stuff for Debate
A post in Kevin Kelly's blog The Technium entitled The Unabomber Was Right, brings up a range of issues regarding the natural vs. artificial. Modern man is strapped down by a network of rules and regulations… Most of these regulations cannot be disposed with, because they are necessary for the functioning of industrial society. When one does not have adequate opportunity →
Keywords & Quick Links
Looking deeper into the Biorock or as it's also called "Seament" (thanks to Pia via twitter for the link) I've stumbled upon a few terms or keywords that have helped me focus: Biomimetics (also called Biomimicry or Bionics), Biogenic Structures, and something I'm interested in pursuing in terms of our self-sustaining autopoietic community, that is Aquaculture and/or Mariculture. I've also stumbled →
Repo! The Genetic Opera
“ In the not-so-distant future, an epidemic of organ failures devastates the planet. Out of the tragedy, a savior emerges: GENECO, a biotech company that offers organ transplants…for a price. Those who miss their payments are scheduled for repossession and hunted by villainous ORGAN REPO MEN. In a future where surgery addicts are hooked on painkilling drugs and murder is sanctioned →
iPatch update.
Dear customers Thank you for your interest in the new iPatch ™ from Annelid Inc. Production of our exclusive limited edition iPatch Plastic ™ will begin after a brief period of research and development.
iPatch™ InfoDetox
The last few days I've been suffering from a sinus infection that's making it really hard to concentrate or give my full attention to anything because of the constant painful pressure in my head. Perhaps the glut of information we are subjected to in our media-junkie culture is similarly putting dangerous pressure on our mental capacity. TV, radio, magazines, social →
The Last Question
Trecia's last post reminded me that I've been meaning to share with you a short story by Isaac Asimov called "The Last Question" that I read when I was a kid. It seems pretty dated in many ways (it was written in 1956) but there is an underlying theme in it that has stuck with me. I've always thought of →
Rhinoplasty.
The first line of the algorithm streamed through his brain and he felt a burning sensation in his sinuses as the pattern formed itself in his mind’s eye. The job wasn’t going to pay, and it wasn’t particularly challenging in itself, but he felt it was a worthwhile thing to be helping these refugees. They were from London this lot. →
Life in the 40s.
A few questions about what life could be like in 2040-50: 1. Resources & Waste - What will things - e.g. food, clothing, buildings, tools - be made of in the future? How will people deal with resource depletion and waste from manufacturing and consumption? 2. Climate - Is dangerous climate change inevitable and if so how fast is it occurring? What →