OOZ » Projects

Cross(x)Species Adventures

admin — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 02:11:18 +0000

The Cross Species (xSpecies) Adventure Club enlists humans to explore a biodiverse and delicious future; to engage in culinary experiments; invest in food innovation; and participate in re-designing our collective relationship to natural systems.

Each event is an experience of the depth and complexity of our interconnections with nonhumans, exploring the web that traces our gastronomic, economic and material interdependency with butterflies, snails, geese, bats and other intelligent and delicious creatures. This supper club will present 5 courses of foods delicious and nutritious to both humans and nonhumans, with wine, beer and edible cocktail pairing and a take-home. This on-going lifestyle experiment is created by Natalie Jeremijenko, Mihir Desai (gastronomist superstar), Emilie Baltz of Fork & Design (design oversight), and other intelligent creatures.

Cross(x)Species what?
Reducing the environmental costs involved production, distribution, preparation and ingestion of foods is necessary but not sufficient. We can do more. Jeremijenko’s Cross(x)Species Cook Book and Adventure Club addresses the challenge of designing food systems that promote, augment and remediate ecosystems, that amplify the positive androgenic effect, rather than simply lessening the negative. Through wilderness adventures for your pallette you can support the research behind the Cross(x)Species Adventure Club and explore food webs, community structure, chemistry, nutrient cycles and the behavior of organisms within the context of complex ecological systems. For instance when enjoying the luxuriant creaminess of nanoWaterBuffalo Icecream [nano because of the size of the liquid nitrogen submerged ice crystals] you promote the producers (water buffalo) who demand reconstructed wetlands to reverse ongoing wetland loss for their own grazing and culinary preferences. Wetlands, are also the most effective ecosystems for sequestering carbon, and are required to produce the delectable; Wetkisses: Marsh*mallows for Kissing Frogs formerly known as Prince; and other items from the Lifestyles of the Wet and Slimy menu. Constructed wetlands can be designed as biodiversity hotspots to redress the greatest species extinction crisis the earth has witnessed since the disappearance of dinosaurs. Each adventurous mouthful of Cross(x)Species Adventure Club menu experiments will guide and instantiate these emergent food systems and habitats.

Testimonials from previous guests:
Hari Kunzru said of the drinks “like futurist jelly shots with added science” and on the dinner “a delicious banquet that was also a chemistry experiment and a message from the river” (www.harikunzru.com)

Information on more Cross(x)Species events

More delicious details about Cross(x)Species Drinks

Cross(x)Species Dinner at Bronx River Art Center

Cross(x) Species Adventure Club on Facebook

$ Note
There is a fee associated with these events to defray the costs involved in producing the food and drinks, in addition to the lab equipment, and costs to our marvelous hosts: Eyebeam Museum. The cost is comparable to other supper clubs in NYC, and is a fraction of a similar restaurant meal. Initially we thought that your monetary contribution could support OOZ, Cross(x)Species research, and our supporting organizations as fund raising dinners. However, we decided to keep the fee to a minimum while sufficient to cover food of exceptional provenance. A contribution that exceeds the minimum will support this research and development–any micro-investment will be acknowledged. However, it is your participation that is most valuable to these Cross(x)Species experiments. Furthermore it is your potential experiential and intellectual contributions that are invaluable to developing food systems that improve environmental health.
Your monetary contributions are none the less appreciated and do confirm your seat. Leave comments for any clarifications required. Thank you for exploring these culinary possibilities.
Here’s to adventurous eating.

4PM Hands-on workshop introducing molecular gastronomy, nutrient cycling and the effects of the oil spill on connected environments

6PM An extravagant 5 course cross(x)species dining experience for the adventurous. Delicious edibles with paired alcoholic drinks trace the transport of oil thru effected ecosystems.

EXPLORE emerging food systems that augment biodiversity and improve environmental health.

INVEST in a biodiverse future.

LOCATION: NEUBERGER MUSEUM OF ART 41° 2′ 19.2444″N 73° 41′ 51.0432″W
Purchase College, State University of New York, 735 Anderson Hill Road, Purchase, NY 10577-1400

PRICE: For workshop and dinner $125

RSVP: drew.loesch@purchase.edu (914)251-6115
To reserve a seat, please click the button below to proceed:

Taste a biodiverse and delicious future!
Get updates to Cross(x)Species Dinner and xClinic

Amphibious Architecture

admin — Sat, 22 May 2010 17:57:44 +0000

Installation leading to a fish restaurant and a “fwish interface” to signal fish presence; A grid of floating sensor and lighting elements is currently under development for the East River off Pier 15 in Manhattan, and we aim to install a complementary display adjacent to BRAC in the Bronx River.

This project is designed to visually represent the movement of fish through the grid, resulting with a dynamic and captivating layer of light above the surface of the river that makes visible important conditions that are normally invisible, providing a quiet spectacle drawing people to the area, and sparking public interest and discussion.

Get into amphibious architecture…

Fish Restaurant

admin — Sun, 23 Aug 2009 21:18:44 +0000

Beyond sustainable fish farming and aquaponics, the fish restaurant — where you feed fish, not eat them — is a project to reconnect nutrient cycles, augment fish populations and remediate the bio-accumulated heavy metals, PCBs and other industrial contaminants.

A successful demonstration of the amphibious architecture facilitation of the cross(x)Species interaction at the FishRestaurant deployed in East River (Sept thru Nov 2009), and in the Bronx River (Sept 2009-Feb 2010) showed extensive use of the text messaging interface and general enthusiasm.

Zooz

admin — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 22:44:03 +0000

Developing a little reciprocity in the BRONX zoo.

ZOOZ is a project aimed at developing a number of interactive exhibits that productively engage humans and nonhumans in the ZOO. Akin to developing a collection of animal and human enrichment devices, this project is based on designs comprehensible from both human and non-human points of view. They thus enable and encourage cross-special reciprocal interaction.

Enrichment devices for humans can be called “art”. Likewise, enrichment devices for animals might be called art for animals. This suggests a modification of the “is it art” question to “for whom is it art?” What is art for polar bears/hippopotami/flamingos?

In other words, what do polar bears like to look at/play with/do, and why? Particularly, ZOOZ explores the question of what polar bears / flamingos/ hippopotami like to do in Zoo environments where there are humans aplenty. What do they like to do with their leisure time? Zoo inhabitants have considerable amount of this (not unlike their human contemporaries) given that most of their feeding and territorial management issues are controlled by service providers. If given more opportunity, how would they manage this human presence?

Similar to interactive museum exhibits, ZOOZ fosters the very interaction most zoo and museum/exhibition designs try to prevent. The essential concept is to design and manage interaction so that it is productive for both parties involved.

MUD for birds

admin — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 22:43:22 +0000

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Ducks

admin — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 22:42:56 +0000

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Swans

admin — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 22:42:44 +0000

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Water Striders

admin — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 22:42:41 +0000

We have developed a prototype water strider communication device, to be used seasonally to communicate with the water striders. This device is a robotic water strider that can suspend on water, and a pager motor to transmit vibrations through the surface. This allows people to send (what are thought to be) mating calls to the other striders. The appendix is a poster prepared by the engineering student, Lawton Laurence, who built the working water strider robot.

Stickleback

admin — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 22:41:18 +0000

Lifestyles of the sticklebacked and fabulous

How do female sticklebacks decide which basket to put all their eggs into? How did they convince the guys to do all the housework, tend the babies, look after the bigger kids and build the house as well, all while they pursue their dreams? What does a luxury stickleback pad look like anyhow? And what are just bare necessities of stickleback life?

Why, given the pollution in their silted up home, are they still there? They could have moved up stream? Does that mean that they’ve learned to cope with not being able to really see each other, large amounts of lead and the absence of aquatic plants? how did they do that?

If sticklebacks eat crustaceans, and the crustaceans eat the algae, could we clear the water by removing the sticklebacks (temporarily) and increasing the crustacean population so they eat more algae?

Robotic Geese

admin — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 22:41:14 +0000

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.