WaterBar, 2011-2013
Without a doubt computing has changed private and personal lives. But how has it, might it, change the public realm?
The installation WaterBar is a public water-well designed for the post-sustainability age when clean water is simply not good enough.
WaterBar geoengineers mineralized water. It begins with a cleaning stage via an anthracite filter followed by a remineralization stage through a filter bank with select chemical properties. Water in contact with these filters receives measurable trace elements of magnesium, iron, calcium and other elements. But the filters also share, though origin and history, a connection to place. Water travels the world in endless cylces of evaportion and rainfall. A drop of water in Africa today may be a drop of water in Europe in the future. Waterbar accellerates the global flow of waters through many regions of the planet, and produces a drinkable water mix in the process. WaterBar includes quartz-rich granite from Inada by Fukushima, home of the latest devastating high-tech catastrophe; sandstone from La Verna, Italy, where St. Francis cared for the poor; marble from Thassos Greece, source of art and architecture and the beginning and possible end of democracy; limestone from Jerusalem/Hebron, Israel, a place of eternal conflict and shared hopes; and basalt from Mount Merapi, Indonesia, an unpredictable, active volcano. An internet-scanning, text-processing control system continuously circulates water through these filters, exposing the water to trace elements of the minerals and rocks. An algorithm mixes these remineralized waters in proportion to the intensity of related problems found in pertinent realtime online news to a daily mineralized water mix, the catch of the day. This mix is then offered for public consumption as an antidote to the bad news on water of the day, and available only as long as limited supplies last.
MicroPublicSpaces, 2009-2011
MicroPublicPlaces (mpps) are a response to two strong global vectors: the rise of pervasive information processing technologies and the privatization of public matters. Mpps bend information systems to offer better access to what we all need: air, water, quiet places, information and more.
A Nature Interpretation Center with Second Thoughts, 2002 – 2003
UNSEEN is a nature interpretation center with second thoughts. Set in the Reford Gardens of Grand-Métis on the Gaspé Peninsula of eastern Québec, the multi-camera real time machine vision system observes select plants indigenous to the region. The Dogwood, the Wild Sarsaparilla, the Harebell, the Foamflower, the Wild Columbine, the Garden Columbine, the Alpine Woodsia, the Lowbush Blueberry and the Canadian Burnet are under continued observation during the entire summer. Using data analysis and classification techniques, the system searches for instances of these plants. Short texts depict factual knowledge on the select plants. Over the course of the summer, however, the flavour of the texts changes. As the initially sparse garden grows luscious, the system alters the nature of the texts from descriptive to hypothetical, confronting the visitor with imagined future plant scenarios. Which types of knowing are valid here? UNSEEN is a patient observer designed to make you unfamiliar with plants.
Fridge Companion, 2001 – 2002
Fridge Companion is an information appliance designed not to make domestic life easier but warmer. It monitors ambient temperature in and outside of the refrigerator, maps the data over time and gives, at its owner’s request, periodic but very informal lectures on the laws of thermodynamics, including love.