Free Change

After 6 weeks of tracking Black Clouds in LA, our observation is that in some places the air recovers, and in others, it gets worse. Recovery happens either because powerful HVAC systems run all night to clear the air, say, in the Metro Transit Authority office building, or because someone put many plants in their space, such as at Machine Project. In places like the Manual Arts High School room p74, pollutants concentrate throughout the week and get barely a chance to clear up during the weekend. If we scale these observations up to the whole city, well, LA’s air does not recover because it moves offshore at night just to move onshore again the next morning. Our conclusion is that we must find ways to let the air recover. We call it eco-fasting. How about not using the car every other day, voluntarily? How about growing plants indoor to clear the air while we’re at work? How about using no electricity all weekend? We can recycle concepts from Sabbath, from Ramadan, and from Easter and apply them to our ice-cap-melting age, and yes we should observe all three. Let’s give our whole system a break before it collapses from relentless abuse. It is what we do not do that will help with the break, and not doing anything at all, turning it all off for a bit, is the greatest change.

On Saturday, August 30, at 8 PM, Machine Project is presenting the results of a week-long air quality study in Echo Park. For the study, the Black Cloud Citizen Science League focused its cheerful “Pufftron” sensors on CO2, VOC’s, Light, Noise and Temperature in 12 distinct locations along Sunset Boulevard. To see current measurements, you can click on the images to the right. We have, from top to bottom, I and A Cleaners, K&C Donuts, the Sunset Nursery, the Vermont & Hollywood Gas Station, the beautiful Downbeat Cafe, Virgil Nails, Machine Project itself with key members of the Black Cloud Citizen Science League, and the No Place Like Home Restaurant. The graphs reveal the poetry and the bare facts of everyday life cycles. Temperarture data shows when the Donut baker starts baking, VOC’s show when Virgil Nails is the busiest, and Noise levels between 3 and 4 am show a brief moment of quietude at the intersection of Vermont and Hollywood.

How do these sites and measurements relate to your air quality experiences? How do our Citizen Science measurements relate to the work of the South Coast Air Quality Management District? The Citizen Science League (represented by Greg Niemeyer) and John Higuchi, retired AMQD researcher, will discuss these questions and explain the challenges and opportunities of air sensing at Machine Project (1200 D North Alvarado Blvd, LA, CA 90026) on Saturday, August 30, at 8 PM. Participants at this event will also receive an iron-on patch with the cloudy logo.

After this study, the League will set up its next study in Cairo, Egypt.
The Black Cloud project is the public part of the work we did with Andy Garcia’s English class at Manual Arts High School this summer. Funds for the project are provided by a Digital Media Learning Grant from the MacArthur Foundation.

The Black Cloud Citizen Science League is organized by: Rhea Cortado (Costume Designer), Aida Eltorie (Arts Manager), Andy Garcia (Teacher, Manual Arts High School), Laura Greig (Artist/Programmer), Farley Gwazda (Artist), Nik Hanselmann (Programmer/Artist), Reza Naima (Hardware Engineer), Greg Niemeyer (Principal Investigator) and Daye Rogers (Video Documentary).

Imagine climate change

Originally uploaded by gregoniemeyer

The tools and the space available at Manual Arts High School are extremely limited, but the joy of thinking is not. Here two students are imagining what pollution levels will look like in their Ecotopia. To do this, they are modifying a Black Cloud pollution graph.

They are following the path of “Inform, perform, transform” and they are currently performing, playing pretend. In the previous stage, they were learning to read and collect information about their neighborhood. They found wireless air quality sensors hidden 14 neighborhood locations based on cryptic clues. Then, they learned to interpret the sensor graphs online and assess the work conditions at the various sensor locations. To their dismay, they found that their own classroom was the most polluted site during school hours, probably because of overcrowding, very poor ventilation, and white-board cleaning fluids. In the next stage, they will build two ecotopia models, where they will perform communication, collaboration and execution of a plan for change, both in a citywide model and in their classroom.

Sensor at Vermont Oil

Originally uploaded by gregoniemeyer

One of the first sensors we placed is in this gas station kiosk. We expected more VOC’s from the gas, but it seems that these don’t tend to waft into the store. Instead, we get a good sense of when the station is the most active. We also see occasional late night VOC peaks. For more detail about this sensors reading, visit the this graph page here.

Handing out seeds at Manual Arts High Garden

Originally uploaded by gregoniemeyer

Our Black Cloud new media project took a turn to the more physical, embodied, as Mr. Maury Green invited the LA Guerilla Gardeners to Manual Art High School. Ms. Rolly Polly and Mr. Stamen came to the English class to teach the students how to make Seed Bombs. These are balls of clay, soil, and seeds that can be propelled into unreachable no-mans-lands by guerilla-garden-hands.

The Manual Arts students seemed to enjoy the process of mixing the seed bombs. Too bad they have to wait many months before they can see these seeds affect the climate, reduce the heat island effect, and hopefully improve all our lives.

We’ve been running an algorithmically timed 0n0n0n conference series on New Media since 01/01/01, and 08/08/08 is upon us. This time we’re stripping the conference down to the T-Shirt!

Well, we are also seeking your registration and your input in our online conference topic discussion. The conference theme is 080808 True Colors What we are talking about is the standard digital color format of 24-bit color. In this format, each one of 24 bits (0 or 1, true or false) describes how computer displays should mix light to achieve a specific color. We will focus in on this process with our website (designed by Nick Reid), which allows you to change individual bits of the color format to see colors change.

When you register (fee $30.00), you can reserve a bit, set the bit to either 0 or 1, and then explain your choice. You can also review other participants’ explanations of their choices. This, we hope, will produce a conversation online about color, something and nothingness, truth and falsehood. It will also determine a palette of four colors which will define the custom-designed and custom sewn conference t-shirt (hence the fee). The conference t-shirt will be shipped to all participants after the conference closes.

All this is happening here:

http://studio.berkeley.edu/080808

It would be great to see your comments up there, and you will get a unique T-Shirt from the process, which starts today, and ends on Friday August 8 at 8 PM!

Berkeley: Pedestrians instead of Tree Sitters

Originally uploaded by gregoniemeyer

These images just keep getting “better”. This photo, featured on UC Berkeley’s main page, promotes the idea that we can all take leisurely strolls among live oaks, with bucolic views of the Campanile. The irony is that we are spending millions on clearing an Oak Grove for a new campus building. Yes, departments all around camus are cutting classes (opportunities for California to grow) due to statewide budget cuts. At the same time, the UC Berkeley administration is spending millions on trying to resolve a thorny conflict over the Oak Grove near the football stadium. UCB wants to cut them, but tree sitters insisting on the trees’ environmental value have occupied these trees since 18 months. The cost of dealing with the issue so slowly must be in the millions. The site is surrounded by fences, flood lights and 24-hour police presence. It looks like Guantanamo West. The cost of the planned building on the Oak Grove site itself went from 125 to 140 million due to rising costs during the construction delay. With these millions, we would have better funded more classes on civil disobedience, native biology, and photography. We could have planted new trees in half of Berkeley, too. That, and a picture of the Oak Grove in question, would bring us closer to the truth, but it takes courage.

Snapshot 2008-07-05 11-15-39

Originally uploaded by gregoniemeyer

This photo gracing the UC Berkeley website has a strange image-caption relation. The attractive woman in the image remains unnamed, and instead the caption details what kinds of couches one might find in the reading room. I suspect the woman is a hired model, and therefore is not credited by name. Is she a Cal Student/Staff/Faculty? Who would know. For sure is that her facial expression does match my experiences of what someone looks like reading. The shot is too posed, the lighting too balanced. Berkeley is a place where plenty of thinking and reading is done by women and men, so why do we have to resort to a posed shot like this? Turn off the Chimera Flash, and look at Berkeley with a journalistic, not a publicistic eye. We love the truth here, even if it is not attractive

UC Berkeley front page image

Originally uploaded by gregoniemeyer

I may be on sabbatical, but the photos on UC Berkeley’s new website need to be discussed a bit. They send very strong and strange messages, and they go by without any discussion. Today’s photo, for example, shows a black man, seated, explaining something to a white woman, standing. Initially it looks very good: The man is transmitting knowledge across gender and race, and he is doing so with humor and inspiration. A more subtle message could be that the man, for some reason, is wearing no protection, but the woman is wearing glasses and gloves. Does she have to protect herself from him? Is he immune to the dangers of the lab? Does the white female body need protection and the black male body not? Luckily, the full legend of the image situates a more substantial and compelling learning experience. But images work in many ways, and interpretations reflect the beholder.

Dear 01 I love you!