The following images were part of an exhibition of Persian miniature paintings organized in 2005 by the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art. Dating from as early as the 14th century to the 17th century, during the Timurid and Safavid eras, they illustrate scenes not only from the Qur'an and One Thousand and One Nights but also from the Persian literary masterpiece The King's Chronicles by Ferdowsi and the poems of Saadi.
All the miniatures, nearly 300 in total, were available for viewing online during and after the exhibition. Unfortunately, they're now offline, a kind of redaction that we can't help but relate to the total erasure of our entire image archive. With (almost) full restoration of our pretty decorations, we thought we'd post some of the firewalled paintings as a complementary resurrection.
Our Flickr account was just unceremoniously terminated due to an NOI. You'll therefore be noticing our beautiful decorations disappear one by one as they get purged out of the system. Fortunately, most of the earliest posts will be unaffected, since their images are on Blogger's server.
We'll try to regroup as fast as we can, but in the (very very extended) meantime, please pardon the mess (or the lack of it).
Sarah Rich and Nicola Twilley are taking The Foodprint Project to Los Angeles. And they need your help.
Rich and Twilley:
As with the last twoevents, we'll host an afternoon of panels on numerous topics, including school lunch, city food policy, restaurant entrepreneurship, community meals as public art, and the future of urban farming and food distribution.
For Foodprint LA we're also adding some exciting social and interactive events, including an urban food map walking tour and a VIP party for supporters of the project.
To raise money for these upcoming events, the co-founders started a campaign on the online crowdfunding platform, Kickstarter. They're more than halfway towards their goal of $5000, but as with every Kickstarter project, Foodprint LA will only be funded if they reach that target.
Any amount will definitely bring them closer to their goal. You can contribute as little as $1, though you'll get some goodies if you donate more. Whatever amount you decide to give, just be sure to make your pledge before Thursday, August 26, which is only 11 days away!
1) Go check out BIG's beautiful proposal for a forest crematorium at the famed Woodland Cemetery in Stockholm.
2) Also go check out what InfraNet Lab has been up to this summer. You'll find out that Bracket #1 will be available this October and that the call for submissions for #2 is imminent. The grapevine earlier told us what the chosen theme is for the next issue, and it is awesome. Repeat: AWESOME!
3)Chicago Magazine takes an illustrated look back at an interesting civic project: “Mid-19th-century Chicago was an emerging titan of agribusiness, a burgeoning transit hub, a potential star of the Midwest—and a disease-infested swamp in danger of being reclaimed by Lake Michigan. By 1855, with roads knee deep in sludge, city hall faced a massive undertaking: hoisting Chicago out of the muck by raising the streets and structures as much as 14 feet.” You can read more about the raising of Chicago here.
5) “Parasite is an independent projection-system that can be attached to subways and other trains with suction pads. Parasite projects films inside a tunnel. These tunnels bear something mystic – most people usually have never made a step inside any of those tunnels. Confusing the routine of your train-travelling-journey, your habits and perception the projections parallel worlds – making use of parasite – allow you a glimpse into a different world full of surrealist imagery.”
The team's project statement is worth quoting at length:
Unlike current renewable energy fields where technologies are publicly inaccessible, static, and always on, WeatherField offers a range of public engagement dependent upon wind, sun, and moisture. Energy generation becomes a public performance, dynamic, reactive, and interactive. The park is active when weather events are active, and calm when weather is calm, in each instance offering the public a compatible experiences.
The park is organized and designed to respond efficiently and creatively to climate. The intention is that the park serve as a barometer of regional weather events. WeatherField is simultaneously a public space, a dynamic energy icon, and a public weather service. The field is a registration of daily weather events including weather events such as Shamals winds, dense fog, and sandstorms, among others.
The Yas Island energy park is comprised of a field of 200 “Para-kites,” each is equipped with a base station of two flexible posts. Except for the posts that tether the para-kites, the ground and aquatic ecology is undisturbed. The para-kites use a parafoil system to remain aloft and a Windbelt™ system to harvest “flutter” energy from the wind.
At the Yas Island test site, the 200 para-kites extend across the site in a 60 meter grid that marks the tide levels. Each para-kite is capable of 6,220 kwh annually. Preliminary calculations generate approximately 21.6 kwh/month for each cell of the para-kite. With 24 cells per para-kite, that yields 518.4 kwh/month for each para-kite. Across the WeatherField, we calculate 1.24 GW annually, or about 620 energy-efficient homes. Or, more colloquially, each para-kite is able to power three homes for a year.
Whether these calculations are accurate or not, it should be noted that the competition is an art competition, and entrants were briefed to conceive their installations as art first and power plants second. The goal was not to design and engineer a device that provides cost effective renewable energy generation. Rather, the proposal should function primarily on a conceptual and aesthetic level.
Quoting the brief again at length:
As a park, visitors or residents can witness and experience their commitment to renewable energy field in many different ways. They can be stake holders, investing in a single generator para-kite. The investor receives energy equivalent to that harvested by that generator, as well as a live feed view of the landscape from the para-kite into their home. This in house artwork serves a weather gauge and a ‘living’ landscape painting. Visitors to the energy park can also approach the support posts and have a ‘periscope’ view from the ground of the para-kite’s view. And finally, a visitor, may elect—with managed permission—to ride up in a para-kite. This allows the economic models for the implementation of the project to be distributed either before, through residential stakeholders, or after capital costs, through tourism. The project has an entrepreneurial spirit.
The park generates other phenomenal events such as playful shadows on the ground and dynamic patterns in the sky. These geometries could be commissioned to environmental artists, or could be coordinated with regional events or seasonal holidays.
Unlike large-scale energy infrastructures that are out-of-scale, off-site, and off-limits, WeatherField is interactive, and its energy capacity is scalable to the size of a single-home. In other words, energy use is quantifiable and qualitative at the scale of a single user, promoting energy efficiency and energy consciousness.
Be sure to check the Land Art Generator Initiative website for other entries, which are being posted one by one on their blog until the winner is announced in January 2011 at the World Future Energy Summit in Abu Dbahi.
