V2_ Knowledgebase

David de Buyser's project Acoustic Mirror_Moss, subsidized by the Flemish Community, brings technology and biology together in several ways. First, the project’s longterm goal is an installation that uses vertical moss carpets for the projection of computer-generated images. The cultivation phase, however, features several subprojects that also forge interesting relationships between technology and biology. For instance, David recently developed a MAX/MSP-driven irrigation system to provide a constant supply of water to the moss in the installation at the Visual Arts Academy in Anderlecht.

The Active Phytoremediation Wall System is a modular system of pods, housing hydroponic plants. Its main purpose is to encourage airflow and contribute to the quality of life through its air cleaning capacities. The project is a result of a collaborative research between Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and Skidmore, Owings & Merrill. It is a bio-mechanical hybrid system that produces ‘fresh air’ from within buildings, thereby reducing the energy consumption. Because the plants’ roots are exposed, instead of being buried in soil, the plants’ air-cleaning capacity increases by 200 to 300 percent. The pods themselves are made from vacuum-formed plastic, and the form allows the maximum amount of air to reach the root rhizomes while using the minimum amount of material. It also creates a beautiful base for the plants. The wall system can be installed in large commercial interiors, but works equally well in small settings—a four-module system in an apartment would have the impact of 800 to

Bacterial Radio, first part of ongoing project envisioning many different kinds of electrical circuits created with bacteria. Circuits are formed from bacteria modified with genes that impart electrical qualities to cells. Bacteria cloned with variants of gene from marine sponges (Tethya aurantia) to chelate electronic circuits on growth media. Variants of Tethya gene optimized to chelate metallic conductors and semiconductors. Genetically modified bacteria and small amounts of growth media containing metal salts embedded in non-conductive materials and induced to plate electrical circuits. Bacterial Radio signifies artistic use of these materials to render music, voice and intellectual content off the air. Bacterial Radio represents safe and pollution-free alternatives to environmentally threatening practices.

Biomodd is an art project that integrates cross-cultural dialogue, ecology and technology while encouraging innovative collaboration. I and artist, scientist, and TED Fellow Angelo Vermeulen led a Biomodd workshop as part of the KIBLIX Festival and theInternational Computer Arts Festival in Maribor, Slovenia, from November 18th to the 28th, 2010. The workshop resulted in an installation piece which was exhibited at KIBLA until mid-December. Over the course of ten days, we disassembled old computers, tested computer components, installed Ubuntu (or in the case of some really old motherboards, Xubuntu) on them, designed and built different structures that incorporated plants and computers together, troubleshot algae, and met up and had long discussions with other new media artists participating in the festival.

WHAT IS BUS ROOTS? Reconnecting urban communities with nature in a practical and playful way. Bus roots is a public and playful project that uses plants as a creative medium. It connects the citizens with their community while trying to use the least amount of resources and improving the quality of the environment around it.

This system uses a computer controlled four-axis positioning table to “print” intricate bio-architectural constructions out of moss and seeds. Suspended in a clear gel growth medium, the moss continues to grow and the seeds sprout. The algorithmically-generated patterns drawn by the system are based on the Eden growth model and leverage mathematical representations of both urban growth and cellular growth, thereby connecting the concept of city with the concept of the organism. This project is working to make concrete the idea of dynamic and fluid computer space altering the expression and formation of a living and growing biological material, via its collaboration with an engineering mechanism.

Cinema for Primates is a series of videos designed and presented for chimpanzees at Edinburgh Zoo. Chimpanzees in captivity are shown television as a form of enrichment, but no artists have made videos expressly for chimps. After showing a series of test videos to the chimps to learn their preferences, the artist will script and produce a synthetic chimpanzee drama. The video will be installed at the zoo, so that both human and non-human primates can simultaneously watch the show and each other’s responses to it. The project is intended to imagine the inner world of the captive chimpanzee, producing an original artwork—enrichment for humans and chimpanzees.

ElectroStatic Architecture employs the natural regenerative static electricity for interactive and responsive architecture. This project intends to show the accessibility of static electricity and one way in which this existing source of energy can be used to generate another useful and practical form of energy, as well as adding an expressive element to one’s architectural surroundings. With the amount of wasted energy in today’s world and the many ways we are trying to conserve and find alternate sources of energy, why not look to ourselves as a source? We are constantly collecting static electricity through every interaction between people and objects throughout our day. We don’t notice as it builds or when it transfers until it we feel or see it in the form of an electric shock. electroStatic Architecture utilizes the static electricity humans constantly collect and give off, translating the electrostatic energy into light energy embodied in the form of pillars reminiscent of ancient Greek architecture.

The Flock House Project is a group of self-contained ecosystems migrating around New York City's five boroughs. What if mobile, self-sufficient living units were the building blocks for future cities? By reflecting the future of urban space and building off of what is already there, Flock House is a group of migratory, public, sculptural habitats that are movable and modular with the ability to merge. In a time when growing urban populations are faced with environmental, political, and economic instability, and when dislocation and relocation is important to consider and reconcile, Flock Houses are choreographed throughout urban centers in the United States and three planes of living (subterranean, ground, and sky).

Future Cities Lab’s HYDRAMAX Port Machines project proposes a radical rethinking of San Francisco’s urban waterfront post sea-level rise. The proposal renders the existing hard edges of the waterfront as new “soft systems” that would include aquatic parks, community gardens, wildlife refuges and aquaponic farms. A synthetic architecture is introduced that blurs the distinction between building, landscape, infrastructure and machine. Using thousands of sensors and motorized components, the massive urban scale robotic structure harvests rainwater and fog, while modulating air flow, solar exposure and intelligent building systems.

The objective of this project was to train young people living in Kibera slum (Kenya) to assemble portable solar lamps and then test them for daily uses with the intention of starting a small production centre if the pilot phase is a success. The solar lamps will then be produced by these trained young solar technicians and first sold to the local market. A part of the production will be exported to Switzerland and sold as fair-trade. Pre-fabricated lamps will be used as solar energy learning sets in schools and workshops in Switzerland. The youths were also trained to install solar home systems.

A multitude of individuals, groups and institutions will form a massive intelligent swarm that would move roughly along the unfinished “Highway of Brotherhood and Unity” in the former Yugoslavia. The road was made in sixties in the massive voluntary campaign of the peoples of all nationalities that constituted Yugoslavia. The expedition is meant to generate new projects, new art works, new networks, new architecture and new politics based on experience and knowledge found along the highway. Projects developed from the expedition will lead to exhibitions, publications and symposia of “Europe Lost and Found” in Stuttgart and Ljubljana in 2007.

This project is an exploration of the use of rhinoscripting – specifically in terms of data interpretation. The script takes data from a GPS, heart rate monitor, and stopwatch. During a 12 mile run, I tracked my heart rate, pace, latitude/longitude and elevation. This data was then interpreted by the script – generating a form that visualizes the relationship of the data to one another.

The project is inspired by nature’s ability to process and conquer even artificial materials and surfaces in order to sustain and enforce itself. Nature’s immense strength and power is accompanied by an aesthetic that indicates a peaceful progression of time. The emergence of moss, fungi and plants, as well as their disappearing, brings life into the inanimate materials and objects. The project explores how we can design materials that respond to nature and its resilience.

Open Energy aims to develop a platform to explore new systems of visualization energy use and to optimize it accordingly, both in domestic and industrial environments. The system is built along two dimensions: first one, Energy Monitoring Device, which investigates open hardware devices in which monitoring power consumption, and a second dimension, Open Energy Visualization (Data Visualization / Augmented Reality App), which explores new ways of real-time visualization power consumption in domestic environments. These systems will allow us to amplify our knowledge about the dynamic behavior of energy anywhere. Open Energy is a prototype of energy infrastructure completely Open Source.