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Another project from the Royal College of Art Show which closed on July 5 (sluggishness has come to characterize my work these days!) This one comes from the department of Design Interactions. The Golden Institute, by Sascha Pohflepp, not only explores the energy issue through the lens of an alternate history of the USA, but also attempts to examine how visions of the future are being created and how they can make us reflect on contemporary issues. What would the world be like today if we could go back to the decade that followed the 1973 oil crisis? To paraphrase a title of an article published on Worldchanging over a year ago: Where would the U.S. (and thus the rest of the world) be now on climate if Carter had won the election of 1980?
As Pohflepp explained in an essay he shared with me, technological progress is often the outcome of very specific interests and decisions, mostly economical or strategic. Networked computers are a perfect example for that, not only because of their obvious history in military use but also the much more subtle opportunities that libertarian free-market advocates saw in the emerging Internet which lead to gigantic investments in these technologies (see Fred Turner, From Counterculture to Cyberculture and Langdon Winner, The Whale and the Reactor). Other examples are the Manhattan project which lead to the development of the atomic bomb, or NASA's Apollo program. Pohflepp's alternate history scenario zooms in a moment in the United States history when the fate of energy technologies could have taken a radically different turn. The neuralgic point in time is the US Presidential election of 1980 in which Jimmy Carter lost against his republican opponent Ronald Reagan. While he was governing the country, Carter implemented policies that focused on the quest for clean energy. He established generous tax incentives for solar energy and gasohol. He turned down the heating system in his office and wore sweaters. He even installed solar panels on the roof of the White House. On the day he presented the 32 panels to the press, the President declared: "A generation from now, this solar heater can either be a curiosity, a museum piece, an example of a road not taken, or it can be a small part of one of the greatest and most exciting adventures ever undertaken by the American people." After he won the election, Reagan almost immediately changed the nation's course on clean energy matters. The National Renewable Energy Lab (NREL) in Golden, Colorado lost about 95% of its funding and the solar panels got dismantled soon after.
What if the road heralded by the solar panels had been taken?
Its scope ranged from planetary engineering to the enabling of individual participation and profit from the creation of electricity. Notable projects include the development of the state of Nevada into a weather experimentation zone and the new gold rush in the form of lightning-harvesters that followed, or major modifications made to the national infrastructure in an attempt to use freeways as a power plants.
The project asks how visions like these are being created in the public imagination but also how they are being reflected by the economy and by individuals. In the case of weather modification, people are modifying their cars into lightning harvesters to participate in the experiments, both scientifically and commercially. The car presented in the model below is a modified Chevrolet El Camino that has been fitted with a lightning rod and various electrical equipment like variable resistors and capacitor banks to store the electricity from a lightning strike. Drivers are then able to sell the stored electricity at any one of the drive-through energy exchanges, which have opened around the zone.
The Golden Institute found a way to modify freeways and harness the energy which would otherwise be lost through braking when a vehicle exits the freeway at a velocity of about 55 miles per hour. Now, vehicles are equipped with magnets. As they exit the freeway at high-speed, the cars are gradually slowed down employing the Lorentz force as they pass through a series of induction-coils. The coils are typically operated by a franchise like Chuck's Café and if used effectively can get the driver a discount on a cup of coffee.
The projects presented in this rewriting of history offers an exaggerated yet serious view on current challenges which in scale may be considerably greater than the mega-scale projects of the past (see Saul Griffith, "Climate Change Recalculated": book and video). What logic lies behind major technological pushes of the past and how could it apply to future projects and what could we learn from the visions of an American past that never happened?
The Golden Institute for Energy is a vehicle for further investigation and new material will constantly be added. For example a running collaboration with Rick Guidice who was responsible for painting NASA's space settlements or interviews with various thinkers about the promise of unlimited power. Check out this six-minute corporate-style video in which senior strategist Douglas Arnd (played by Stuart Packer) explains the mission and the ambition of the Institute: More image. Related: Sorry, Out of Gas: Architecture's Response to the 1973 Oil Crisis. |
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In a bid to blast the clouds out of the sky for the Beijing Olympics last year, China's Weather Modification Office seeded clouds with chemicals. This Summer at the Design Interactions (RCA) graduation show, Zoe Papadopoulou and Cat Kramer proposed a much bolder and poetical take on the cloud seeding technology.
Their Cloud Project takes the shape of a retro van selling ice-cream flavored clouds. An industrial-strength water spray mounted on top of the ice cream van would shoot a mix of liquid nitrogen and ice-cream into the atmosphere as a fine spray, leading to flavored condensation nuclei that will seed ice-cream clouds and give them the flavour of your choice.
As scientist and emerging technologies advisor Andrew Maynard wrote on his blog, the gap between the designers' concept and the current state of nanotechnology research is still fairly large. What was read instead was the group of experts lined up to give talks and discuss with the public in the ice cream van. Ice cream was in fact the bait that lured passersby into having conversations about nanotechnology, geoengineering and emerging technologies in general.
Real ice cream was handed out along with explanations about the manufacturing process and the creation of nano ice cream crystals. The designers and scientists invited customers to ask questions and reflect on issues such as: Does using nanotechnology to control climate come without any caveat? What could be the long-tern effect of these technologies on the environment? And how about the food we are buying today? Should we embrace GM food? Should we jump on supercarrots genetically modified to contain more calcium?
As the designers explain: Developments in nanotechnology and planetary-scale engineering point to new possibilities for us to conform the global environment to our needs. These advances combined with a dream to make clouds snow ice cream have inspired a series of experiments that look at ways to alter the composition of clouds to make new and delicious sensory experiences. Using ice-cream as a catalyst for interesting dialogue, the project's focus is to welcome people into a mobile space that sits outside institutions, letting new audiences experience and imagine emerging scientific developments and their consequences. |
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Desperate to experience the thrill of a trip into space? If you can't afford Space Adventures's multi-million ticket to fly into space and if you don't want to wait till 2011 to hop on one of Richard Branson's upcoming Virgin Galactic flights, then the Soyuz Chair, designed by Design Interactions graduate Nelly Ben Hayoun is the best you can hope for right now. The comfortable living room chair won't fly you into space but it will replicate the experience of a liftoff.
Space tourism is said to become a booming industry. Today, the opportunities offered to would-be space tourists are limited and expensive. Space tourism company Space Adventures will ask you to shell out $20-28 million to get aboard a Soyuz spacecraft. The upcoming Virgin Galactic will take passengers into suborbital space at a mere US$200,000. Flights are expected to be made available to the public shortly after the construction of Spaceport America, the world's first purpose-built commercial spaceport is completed Around 2011.)
The designer consulted with astronaut Jean Pierre Haignere to ensure a take-off experience as close to the original one as possible: : the inclination of the chair, the frequencies of the vibration, the sound, etc. Soyuz Chair accurately reproduces the 3 stages of the Soyuz rocket launch. Reclining into launch position (on your back so as to stand better the acceleration), you face the sky, put on your headset, and use the control panel to select your mode; just a single stage, or the full lift off experience. Interview with astronaut Jean Pierre Haignere: Conceptually: The Soyuz chair brings the debate on Photography: Nick Ballon. You can try the Soyunz Chair for yourself, at SHUNT in London, from July 8 to 16. Departure of the chair 6pm to 8pm. And if you can't make it to London on time, the chair will be at the exhibition WHAT IF? Testing the boundaries of our future, running 09:10:2009 until 13:12:2009 at the Science Gallery in Dublin. See also: Brendan Walker at This Happened and Thrill Laboratory. |
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You do remember The Toaster Project, don't you? Thomas Thwaites has spent the past 9 months crafting his own electric toaster from scratch. I went to see the progress of his kitchen appliance last week at the Royal College of Art show and all i can say is: What a beauty!
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More nuggets from the RCA show. This time from Design Products' edgy and inspiring Platform 13, headed by the very talented Onkar Kular and Sebastien Noel.
Jen Hui Liao's Self-Portrait Machine is a device that takes a picture of the sitter and draws it but with the model's help. The wrists of the individual are tied to the machine and it is his or her hands that are guided to draw the lines that will eventually form the portrait. The project started with the observation that nearly everything that surrounds us has been created by machines. Our personal identities are represented by the products of the man-machine relationship. The Self-Portrait Machine encapsulates this man-machine relationship. By co-operating with the machine, a self-portrait is generated. It is self-drawn but from an external viewpoint through controlled movement and limited possibility. Our choice of how we are represented is limited to what the machine will allow.
The project aims to explore the cooperation process of human & machine. The designer explains: I found some the relationship between human and machine are amazing and could be horrible (like this one that shows how we human invent machines then put human inside to it to manufacture goods), The final object - A machine is a miniature of what I understand through the process of research, and the aim of the machine is to let people have a chance to feel the condensed process of how we generate our self identity from external point of view as from the society, which is a big machine we all in. P.S. the website of Self-Portrait Machine will be on line soon, it will show more about the background research and the building process of it. I'll update this post as soon as the website is up. Videos of the machine in action.
The Royal College of Art Show is open every day from 11amd to 8pm until July 5, 2009. |
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A couple of projects displayed at RCA Design Interactions's show are heading towards some new and extremely interesting directions this year.
Toys, by Tommaso Lanza, was initially inspired by the fall of American energy company Enron. The scandal that shocked America so deeply it was turned into a musical and a documentary film. By December 31, 2000, Enron's stock was priced at $83.13 and its market capitalization exceeded $60 billion, 70 times earnings and six times book value, an indication of the stock market's high expectations about its future prospects. The company was also rated the most innovative large company in America in Fortune's Most Admired Companies survey. Almost a year later, plagued by its questionable business model, clumsy accounting, financing maneuvers, and failure to hide any further its critical state of affairs, Enron's stock price fell to $0.61. The day Enron filed for bankruptcy, employees were told to pack up their belongings and were given 30 minutes to vacate the building Lanza's project brings us to 2005. A fictitious company he calls ENT International has filed for bankruptcy protection under Chapter 11 in the U.S. Bankruptcy Code. It progressively closes or sells all of its international operations.
The quick collapse of the company led to a fire-sale of most of ENT's assets. In the months following the Chapter 11 filing, the liquidation team split the enormous sale across a number of auction dealers. Lanza created a photographic essay of some of the items surfaced by the bankruptcy auction, some of them perfectly mundane (executive chairs, workstations, gold balls and clubs, luxury cars, a range of sat nav, etc.), others fictitious. They are listed in the catalogue of an auction that dealt with low to mid-valued items and leftovers from previous auctions; despite the low-key of the sale, the dealers got their hands on a few items which were sold at much higher prices than originally expected thanks to their unique nature.
The unabridged reprint of the SMA auction catalogue brings page after page a series of clues about the arcane and at times scandalous inner workings of a large corporation. It brings the keen observer one step closer to unravelling the secrets behind one the biggest bankruptcies in recent times. The Royal College of Art Show is open every day from 11amd to 8pm until July 5, 2009. |
