V2_ Knowledgebase

Active Environments is a project which reveals one small piece of a vast puzzle which is slowly, but persistently becoming our reality. The project is based on the idea the Internet of Things. It is a system that supports and enables people to connect their environments to the Internet with a purpose of monitoring their health. In this way, helping people to take greater control over the state of the environment they live in or care about. This is achieved through the access to their real-time data send by a networked environment connected through a Pachube platform. The system uses social network mechanisms to connect people and create communities around a mutual interest—an environment they care about. In this way, facilitating civic responsibility and local cooperation, supporting people to actively use the technology at their hands. It would also functions as a platform for the comparison of different environments' health, based on the data they send.

In the summer of 1996, Æ was initiated as an artistic research unit based on a philosophical exchange between artists Gisèle Trudel and Stéphane Claude, with the regular participation of other collaborators. Through a more anonymous framework, Æ cristallizes their interest for an ecological awareness in the use of technology, as echoed in the arts, science and shamanic traditions. Æ prepares audiovisual essays, electronic performances, databases, in-situ installations, publications, psycho-geographic walks, audio recordings to be listened in the dark... Æ is striving to reintroduce a certain figuration of the mineral/vegetal/animal world into the electronic medium, as a concrete and enlarged view of the human condition, with the objective of breaking down a generally anthropocentric societal view.

Christa Sommerer& Laurent Mignonneau are two of the most renowned and innovative artists on the international media art and interactive art scene. In a natural and intuitive way, their work develops interactive interfaces that apply principles of the theory of living systems related to ecology, artificial life and the complexity science.

A website about research in the field of Architecture. I have been exploring novel ways to passively harvest energy from around buildings with devices and mechanisms and finding ways to make it do useful work, this website is about that ongoing exploration. This is a research topic where there is an opportunity to gain because the principal energy resource is the sun which is completely free. A measure of success in this area is to balance the available energy from ambient resources with the possibility for buildings that respond to the dynamic changes in their surrounding environment. This is a research topic that is as much about observation of what there is to be harvested as creative thinking about matching it in time and place with the design of buildings. I think that this can be achieved in effective but subtle ways in the passive design of building enclosures, and this is a research topic that has been explored through doing design projects to demonstrate this. Please explore

Earth: Art of a changing world is the second annual contemporary art season at 6 Burlington Gardens. The exhibition presents new and recent work from more than 30 leading international contemporary artists, including commissions and new works from the best emerging talent. Supporter's statement: "This second year of GSK Contemporary is an important collaboration between GlaxoSmithKline and the Royal Academy that builds on our long-standing support for the arts in the UK. Creativity and innovation are critical to our business of improving health and well-being, so we want this year's topic 'Earth' to encourage debate, discussion and creative thinking and the role art can play on the relevance that climate change has on our daily lives."

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.

Jae Rhim Lee is a visual artist, designer, and researcher whose work proposes unorthodox relationships between the mind/body/self and the built and natural environment. Jae Rhim’s work follows a research methodology which includes self-examination, transdisciplinary immersion and dialogue, and diy design, ultimately taking the form of living units, furniture, wearables, recycling systems, and personal and social interventions.

Makrolab is an autonomous communications, research and living unit and space, capable of sustaining concentrated work of 4 people in isolation/insulation conditions for up to 120 days. The project started in 1994 and was first realised during an art exhbition, documenta X in Kassel in 1997.

myforestfarm is a carbon offset program in the form of a reforestation project in partnership with Thomas Daquioag and Renato Habulan located in the mountains near Antipolo City, Philippines. We started to develop 17000 sqm of deforested land in June 2008. In the first stage 500 fruit trees were planted. In 2009 more than 1000 forest trees followed. The effectiveness of tree-planting offsets faces controversy, the logic of the carbon credit market questionable. myforestfarm is an experiment to research on these issues with an artistic approach.

Open Columns is a system of nonstructural columns, made from composite urethane elastomers and can be deployed in a variety of patterns to reconfigure the space beneath them. The system is a mutable architecture that responds to its inhabitants by changing its shape based upon the carbon dioxide (CO2) content in the air. It is capable of learning about its environment by directly acting within it. The genesis of this research and design comes out of an interest in self-organizing systems, which exhibit phenomena of nonlinearity, instability and adaptability. Open Columns is part of a research project exploring computationally inspired and augmented materials for responsive architecture.

Reservoir of Seasons, our microecosystem is not about presenting phenomena which many people will never experience, like dying polar bears, melting icebergs or the cooling of the Gulf Stream, but about the subtle changes we experience every day, it is an experimental project to show how we loose our springs and falls…

In Synthetic Biology, the Biobrick has been used as an abstraction or template for creating standardized functional living parts. Searching for UGEM is an alternate re-appropriations of the BioBrick by using existing BioBrick primers as random-PCR(Polymerase Chain Reaction) primers in investigating soil samples. This random PCR will provide a succinct signature of the biological diversity present in these samples. These investigations of soil lead us to ask questions about citizen’s science "performed" by non-institutional actors using accessible tools as well as gives us a glimpse into the "post-natural world" where BioBricks may end up in our environment and may very well show up as bands in a gel. By imagining a world in which the Biobrick has become the accepted standard for synthetic biology, and where these engineered products are ubiquitous in our lives and environments, the samples we archive will serve as the baseline from which the subsequent extent of human influence can be measured. These investigations are carried out in a custom built public research laboratory, the blueprints for making one are available online. These Autonomous Public Laboratories can be used as template for creating a citizen's research lab with which one can carry out "experiments"-biotechnological or otherwise.

SymbioticA is the first research laboratory of its kind, enabling artists and researchers to engage in wet biology practices in a biological science department. It also hosts residents, workshops, exhibitions and symposiums. With an emphasis on experiential practice, SymbioticA encourages better understanding and articulation of cultural ideas around scientific knowledge and informed critique of the ethical and cultural issues of life manipulation. The Centre offers a new means of artistic inquiry where artists actively use the tools and technologies of science, not just to comment about them but also to explore their possibilities.

The World in a Shell, an ambitious work in progress by artist Hans Kalliwoda, brings together themes including art and science, communities and cultural heritage. The World in a Shell is a high-tech, self-sufficient container that functions as a mobile laboratory and living unit. The container can be folded out into a large shell-shaped construction in which exhibitions, presentations and workshops can be held. In collaboration with Delft University of Technology, Kalliwoda and his team have equipped the container with the very latest sustainable technologies. Solar energy, water recycling, and communication facilities ensure the container can function autonomously in every possible environment. The project is a model of sustainability and spreads the message that the most advanced technologies can be used without harming the environment or disturbing a community's way of life.

The Environmental Health Clinic at NYU is a clinic and lab, modeled on other health clinics at universities. However the project approaches health from an understanding of its dependence on external local environments; rather than on the internal biology and genetic predispositions of an individual. The clinic works like this: you make an appointment, just like you would at a traditional health clinic, to talk about your particular environmental health concerns. What differs is that you walk out with a prescription not for pharmaceuticals but for actions: local data collection and urban interventions directed at understanding and improving your environmental health; plus referrals, not to medical specialists but to specific art, design and participatory projects, local environmental organizations and local government or civil society groups: organizations that can use the data and actions prescribed as legitimate forms of participation to promote social change.