Projects

TreeLogic is an inverted avenue of 6 sugar maple trees growing upsidedown, suspended 30 ft in the air. This projects frames the trees as a dynamic adaptive system and as visual forms that display their histories. It emulates the neat regular spacings of urban street trees, often used to ‘beautify’ urban environments. However, the slow gymnastics of these trees invites interpretation and speculation on what they will do, could do, how much they have grown or changed, and what birds think of them. Trees are icons of the natural, however, uprooted, they display a logic that redefines our own.

see it at Mass MoCA

An information envionrment that involves electronic and biological instrumentation using a distributed instrument of genetically identical (cloned) trees planted throughout the San Francisco bay area; electronic clones; CO2 meters.

OneTree(s) is a public experiment that generates (material, scientific and cultural) evidence and public spectacles on issues of environmental and political concern. In the case of OneTree(s), global warming, air quality, and genetically modified organisms (GMOs) are currently being addressed. Other issues and parameters are in development.

Additionally the OneTree(s) project can be contrasted to mainstream representations of global environmental issues. The popular press introduces these into the public imagination as scientific discoveries and facts, with no access to the material evidence on which the truth claims are based. This promotes the passive consumption of ‘facts’ vs the active interpretation, even contestation that we can see in the OneTrees ‘faqs’. Below, is a selection of FAQs that viewers have addressed to the OneTrees project, demonstrating some of the complex questions that the public viewers pose, and engage.

See the OneTree(s) project website

Robotic Geese are remote controlled goose robots that enable participants or robotic goose drivers (aka goosers) to interact with actual geese in urban contexts. The robotic goose interface allows people to approach the birds, follow them closely and interact in a variety of ways that would not otherwise be possible without this interface. The goose drivers can ‘talk to’ the geese, issuing utterances through the robotic interface, delivering prerecorded goose ‘words,’ their own vocal impersonations, or other sounds (such as goose flute hunting calls). Each utterance via the robotic goose triggers the camera in the robot’s head to capture 2-4 seconds of video recording the responses of the actual biological geese. These video samples upload to the public web-based goosespeak database that the participants can annotate, i.e. “the goose was telling me to go away,” “he was saying Hi.” As this database of goose responses accretes, redundancy and correlations in the annotations may provide robust semantic descriptors of the library of video clips….

Unlike the traditional zoo this is place where the animals remain by choice, a zoo without cages. Like a traditional zoo, it is a series of sites where animals and humans interact. However, the interactions at an OOZ site differ from that of a Zoo. Ooz is interactive in that it provides human a set of actions, the animals provide reactions and these couplets add to a collective pool of observations.

In recognition of the remarkable and complex behavioral strategies of underrepresented and poorly understood animal populations that thrive in urban environments, OOZ proposes a spectrum of human-animal interfaces. This proposal focuses on the continued development, completion and public installation of three OOZ interfaces in New York City addressing NYC (non-human) inhabitants: Canada Geese, Shortnosed Sturgeon & Striped Bass of the Hudson River and Brown & Red Bats. What follows is a brief introduction to each of these elements, with specific attention to geese as a case study for understanding the OOZ project framework.

go to the project website

Communication Technology …For the Birds

Communicative Technology for the birds (and humans) i.e. the perches; The …

An Open Source robotics project providing resources and support for upgrading the raison d’etre of commercially available robotic dog toys; and facilitating mediagenic Feral Robotic Dog Pack Release events. Because the dogs follow concentration gradients of the contaminants they are equipped to sniff, their release renders information legible to diverse participants, provides the opportunity for evidence driven discussion, and facilitates public participation in environmental monitoring and remediation.

go to the project website

Renderings by Beth Soucy

The Solar awning provides a positionable solar array, easy accessed to set at the otimal angle seasonally. An additional performance benefit is the reduced solar heat gain though windows.

The solar awning strategy does not hide the solar cells on existing surfaces, but produces a highly visible feature that signals the internal systems externally. Internally the feature exploits the shading effects of the solar awning, patterning the interior surfaces and displaying the external conditions.

The GreenLight is a prescription product developed for the xdesign Environmental Health Clinic. The light is prescribed for Impatients* interested in changing their relationship to energy systems; improving indoor air-quality and developing experience with closed and coupled systems design–the chief strategies for improved environmental performance.

This lighting product diffuses light by coupling to photosynthetic processes. Planting strategies can be specified to address particular indoor air quality issues including VOC, benzene and formaldehyde removal.

Like other prescription products this product requires a clinic appointment to introduce the design parameters involved, and the novel issues involved in distributed power production.

The GreenLight was presented at Next Fest in LA. Watch a video here.

The GreenLight at Neuberger Museum

Napster, Gnutella and their descendant have demonstrated famously the sheer scale of p2p filesharing systems, and the difficulties of exploiting this for the benefit of traditional entertainment products under traditional intellectual property regimes. However, less attention has been paid to the emerging audio and video products and the new genres of cultural product that exploit netbased distribution and production. This panel will survey different experiments and projects in this realm, specifically, projects that are designed to promote and sustain diverse cultural resources, generating demonstrable social value.

As a service to readers, Biotech Hobbyist Magazine publishes available plans or information relating to newsworthy products, techniques and scientific and technological developments. Because of possible variances in the quality and condition of materials and workmanship used by readers, Biotech Hobbyist Magazine disclaims any responsibility for the sale and proper functioning of read-built plans or information published in this magazine.

Since some of the equipment or organisms in Biotech Hobbyist Magazine may relate to or be covered by patents, Biotech Hobbyist Magazine disclaims any liability for the infringement of such patents by the making, using or selling of any such equipment or organism, and suggests that anyone interested in such projects consult a patent attorney.

Project Website

There is the state side which is equipped with the full repertoire of Kevlar jackets, baton, banana slip, handcuffs, there is stradegies that remove the possibility of dicurssive peer to peer engagement between the people being paod to be there, being paid to treat the gathering as a national emergency, the participants as dangerous. And the people who are not being paid to be there, who will wander aimlessly, armed with cardboard placards, or a costume, some a loudspeaker. or drum. Discursive technologies vs. technologies of force.