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(Yet another fine illustration found in Taking Measures Across the American Landscape by James Corner, of Field Operations, and Alex S. MacLean.)

On blogs discovered recently or otherwise.

airoots. This is a must-read.

Curious Expeditions

loud paper

PASSAGES

Varieties of Unreligious Experience. On Busby Berkeley, Marshall Island hoping, Arcosanti, Cohn's New House, San Francisco, the Delphic E, etc., etc.

Very Spatial

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Though this New Scientist article on “the biggest and baddest platforms for faking quakes, tsunamis, hurricanes and fire” is unfortunately behind a subscriber-only firewall, there is this short video on one of the featured “disaster machines” uploaded to YouTube. It's the Large High Performance Outdoor Shake Table, the largest of its kind, topped with a 7-seven story building weathering a seismic storm.

Personally, we'd like to subject the Farnsworth House to a few tests just to see if it can survive a major New Madrid event. We'll seat on plush, midcentury Eames chairs, eat popcorn, and wait for the moment of disintegration. Or maybe Mies will completely surprise us, and we witness his house escape a tectonic hurricane unscathed. That too much context, apparently, isn't a problem at all.

In the Archives:
Portable Hurricane

(Photo by Alex S. MacLean.)

An overlay of parking and sports grids, as spotted by Alex S. MacLean in Waltham, Massachusetts; there is also a carless version. In the middle of the night, after the last shopper and basketball player have gone home, guerilla gardeners do battle with Wal-Mart security guards.

Meanwhile, in the Portfolio section of MacLean's website, the series Dwelling merits a good look.

In the Archives:
Of tumuli, moonrises, and a nice Par 3

(Cinder Lake Crater Field #1, Flagstaff, Arizona. A patch of the moon grafted onto Arizona, perhaps with some help from Isamu Noguchi.)

A few years before the first landing of an Apollo crew on the moon, scientists recontoured a volcanic field just outside of Flagstaff, Arizona, with artificial impact craters resembling those found on Mare Tranquillitatis, the proposed first manned American landing site.

With high explosives, they terraformed a lunar surrogate right here on the surface of the earth.

There, during the 60s and 70s, nearly all of the Apollo astronauts who walked on the moon were taught the basics in extraterrestrial exploration and earthworks. They learned how to make field observations, how to make maps, and how to properly collect lunar samples. It is there as well that the tools with which human beings would physically deform another world for the first time were tried out.

Hammers, adjustable sampling scoops, rakes and tongs, rock drills and rover vehicles. Together with astronaut boots and gloves, these would soon leave an imprint, albeit minimal, where before meteors and the solar wind held a monopoly in lunar resurfacing.


(Two Apollo astronauts investigating one of the simulant craters.)


(An aerial view of Cinder Lakes Crater Field #1.)

If we can digress here briefly, it would be to ask whether these simulated landing sites — where the earth is turned and upturned, displaced and scarred — are a kind of Japanese rock gardens.

Because are not the tracings of human activity highly considered gestures, laden with abstract notions and cultural baggage?

Are not these scoured terrains imprinted with a complex, messy network of interrelated cultural, political, technological, philosophical and even metaphysical concerns that are worth contemplating? A field turned into a text which, if it cannot be understood through the writings of a revered Buddhist monk, can perhaps be deciphered through the Cold War speeches of John F. Kennedy.

Did the astronauts not use a rake?


(The moon being blasted into existence. Cinder Lake Crater Field #2, Flagstaff, Arizona.)


(More explosive scenography at Cinder Lake Crater Field #2.)

To return back to Crater Field, as the Arizona training site is called, one wonders whether there are other simulated moons out there, or in the drawing boards now that plans are underway for an American return mission.

And is there a surrogate Mars, wherein a duplicate Opportunity tested entry descent scenarios into a duplicate Victoria Crater?

A Titan facsimile?

An analogue for Venus?


(Two Apollo astronauts test drive Grover, a lunar rover, in the Crater Field.)

Two things seem worth mentioning right about now.

Firstly, a post at Wired Science last month told us that a group of nine intrepid scientists and engineers spent four months cooped up together in a remote simulated Martian habitat.

Their space habitat (the size and shape of an expected martian abode) is located near a crater on Devon Island above the Arctic Circle in Canada. The simulation is an experiment in planetary exploration and its demands. The team was looking at what happens to a crew in a remote, harsh, close-quartered environment under simulated Martian conditions (crews would only go outside the habitat during a fully simulated EVA) when they are working on real science.

Secondly, from an article in Reuters, we learned that “scientists are using the pine-forested slopes of a Mexican volcano as a test bed to see if trees could grow on a heated-up Mars.” At an elevation of 13,780 feet, planetary scientists from NASA and Mexican universities are investigating “what makes trees refuse to grow above a certain point, where temperatures drop and the air becomes thinner, to see how easily they could grow on Mars.”


(An explorer vehicle negotiating a crater in the Crater Field.)

But one last thing: are there others?

Please let us know.

(All photos courtesy the U.S. Geological Survey, Astrogeology Research Program. For lots and lots more images, go here. See our Flickr set for a sampling: Crater Field.)

In the Archives:
“Ground truth”: or, Wanted: Fake Moon Dirt

(The Medusa agrobots by Vision Robotics.)

Hypertechnological innovation has always underpin American agriculture. In the later half of the 1800s, for instance, flotillas of proto-steampunk dredge boats plowed through the Illinois landscape, as their their lived-in land-sailors carved canals, straightened rivers and re-knitted its embryonic, post-glacial hydrology, draining and transforming the weedy, swampy, supposedly pestilential swat of the American prairie into the most productive landscape in the world.

More recently, a new form of agricultural practice has been developed. Called precision farming, it entails using some of the most advanced remote sensing technology and analytical tools out there. These include aerial and satellite imagery, global positioning systems (GPS), sensors and information management tools (GIS). It isn't quite clear yet, however, if blogging, RSS feeds, Twitter and MySpace are involved.

But armed with actual precision farming gears, farmers can tell which part of their croplands need more water and fertilizer and are then guided precisely to these troubled spots. In this way, less resources is used and what gets used is applied more efficiently.

Now we learn, from an article published by Wired and another by the Associated Press, that troops of robotic harvesters are being readied to invade America's industrial orchards and vegetable fields.


(Image by Vision Robotics.)


(Image by Vision Robotics.)

On these mechano-hydras, the AP writes:

Mechanized picking wouldn't be new for some California crops such as canning tomatoes, low-grade wine grapes and nuts.

But the fresh produce that dominates the state's agricultural output - and that consumers expect to find unblemished in supermarkets - is too fragile to be picked by the machines now in use.

The new pickers rely on advances in computing power and hydraulics that can make robotic limbs and digits operate with near-human sensitivity. Modern imaging technology also enables the machines to recognize and sort fruits and vegetables of varying qualities.

Wired goes into more details. At an orange orchard, we read, “two robots would work as a team: one an eagle-eyed scout, the other a metallic octopus with a gentle touch. The first robot will scan the tree and build a 3-D map,” after which “it has to evaluate each piece of fruit. What size is the orange? What color is it? Does it have black spots on it?”

After the fruits have been digitized and evaluated, the scout robot will then determine “the best order in which to pick them. It sends that information to the second robot, a harvester that will pick the tree clean, following a planned sequence that keeps its eight long arms from bumping into each other.”


(Image by Vision Robotics.)

If we forgo the important issues of migrant labor, illegal immigration, social justice, food security and even globalization, which the creation and deployment of these machines do touch upon, we are left to wonder what would happen, assuming they are networked to the interweb, if they were hacked?

What if China, fresh from infiltrating computers in the Pentagon, were to take control of a platoon of these fruit-picking robots? What if the People's Liberation Army, instead of killing our dear Mister Snagglepuss and cuddly Lady Grizabella by exporting tainted pet foods, they do it by injecting neurotoxins into our locally grown produce?

Or what if an installation artist who's been rejected by one too many Manhattan art galleries decides to take his work to a different direction and takes full control of an entire division of pneumatic farmhands? Onto the flat terrain of Kansas he grafts a sort of anti-Jeffersonian grid, whatever that may be. He then carves out a second Double Negative, a homage, right next to the original. And having decided to try his hand on performance art, the artist terrorizes James Turrell at Roden Crater, Turrell's maniacal screams reverberating through the stellar tunnels of his unfinished volcanic observatory; the recording of this will be phoned in to +1 (206) 337-1474.

Will Agnes Denes be tempted to make another tree mountain?

What will landscape architects make?


(One of the fine illustrations found in Taking Measures Across the American Landscape by James Corner and Alex S. MacLean.)

Even more interesting, what will happen if they become self-aware and go out to pasture? Fitted with solar panels, grazing from one oil well to another, domiciling in abandoned gold mines, what new ecologies will they terraform?

Related:
Our Daily Bread
Pharmland™

(Icelandic glacial drawing. Photo by Cathlyn Newell.)

On things, del.icio.us.ly linked:

1) On the American Southwest. During the summer, CNET News.com reporter Daniel Terdiman went on a “gadget-laden journey”, sending dispatches from places such as the storm drainage tunnels underneath Las Vegas; the Very Large Array in New Mexico; the Grand Canyon Skywalk, where his body and mind were “in rebellion because standing on a glass bridge through which you can see thousands of feet down into the Grand Canyon is simply wrong”; the Earthship World Community, a testing ground for off-the-grid, fully sustainable houses that can maintain comfortable interior temperatures even if the temperature outside is swelteringly hot or far below zero; and Hoover Dam, where he reports that “Lake Mead is 108 feet below its traditional level, the result of the many years of low rainfall, and these dry years could soon have some serious effects on the region.”

2) On Shrub U, where apparently landscape architects go to learn how to trim better topiaries. Very infuriating characterization of our profession. (See second ad; via topophilia.)

3) On France in China, at Super Colossal, wherein Marcus Trimble wonders whether a residential development in Hangzhou, China is evidence that “France is making a backup copy of itself” and that China is the “USB external hard-drive of the French built environment.” The territoire replicated in stratospheric Tibet and in the arid west.

4) On APEC in Sydney, at City of Sound, wherein the recently transplanted Dan Hill muses on The Fence encircling parts of the city and separating all the Pacific Rim world leaders from terrorists, protesters and Dan Hill. The situation there reminds us of the urban stratification and anxious terrain of London in Alfonso Cuarón's Children of Men and Pittsburgh in George Romero's Land of the Dead, both films we recommend highly. (See also this post at Super Colossal.)

5) On destitute Uganda gold miners, WHO globetrotters, some bats and the Marburg virus. Put them all deep underground, and you've got yourself the making of a riveting Busby Berkeley musical.

6) On Superfund365, one toxic site a day. Or one possible design competition a day. (Via Nicholas Senn of Critical Spatial Practice.)

(The waters held back to reveal Seuthopolis.)

In the 1940s, archaeologists discovered the ancient city of Seuthopolis, the capital seat of the Odrysian Kingdom beginning in the 4th century BCE.

Unfortunately, the discovery came too late, because under construction nearby was a reservoir dam, which would soon flood the valley and drown “the best preserved Thracian city in modern Bulgaria.”


(The plan of the city and the surrounding structure.)

Now over half a century later, a project proposed by Bulgarian architect Zheko Tilev would uncover and preserve the ruins using “a circular dam wall, resembling a well on the bottom of which, as on a stage, is presented the historical epic of Seuthopolis.”

Indeed, most everything about the project is theatrical: “Approaching the surrounding ring by boat from the shore Seuthopolis is completely hidden for the eye. But the view from the wall is breathtaking - with its scale, comprehensiveness and unique point of view; from the boundary between past and present. The possibility to see the city from the height of 20 meters allows the perception of its entirety.”





Once there, and if your interest in exploring archaeological sites wanes considerably faster than expected, there are other things to do on the ring-wall. For instance, there will be restaurants, cafes, shops, bike rental facilities, and also other facilities for various recreational sports and fishing.

Programmed as “a unique modern tourist complex,” the ring-wall will also house a museum, a hotel complex, open-air exhibitions, concert and festival halls, conference centers, and hanging gardens.

It's a classic case of horror vacui, in other words.


(At night the complex will be lit, a “shining aureole”.)

There are three sites where this should be done as well:

1) New Orleans (i.e., having abandoned the city, its inhabitants now live and work and die on grossly heightened and fattened levees; everyone will laugh at them, but when the deluge comes, they will have the last laugh)

2) Alexandria

3) Yonaguni (i.e., if it's actually manmade)


POSTSCRIPT #1: For a different strategy than the one planned to uncover and preserve the ancient city of Seuthopolis, see the planned underwater museum of Alexandria. (23 September 2008)

(Photo by Seong Kwon.)

Parked right now till 28 October 2007 at the Doris C. Freeman Plaza in Central Park is Damián Ortega's Obelisco Transportable, a 20-foot-tall “'mobile landmark' that one could potentially move anywhere to commemorate anything.”


(Photo by Seong Kwon.)

Is is “a nod to the ways in which public sculptures and monuments have historically been moved from one city to another. Ortega describes this as the 'Napoleonic gesture,' in which the wartime victor plunders the monuments of captured cities and brings them back home to be installed in public there as a symbol of victory. Such transfers were meant to signal the rise of a new power and the demise of an older one, as well as an exchange of central and peripheral positions. Cleopatra's Needle in Central Park, for example, was originally created in Heliopolis, the ancient Egyptian city, more than 3,000 years ago. During the time of the Roman Empire, it was moved to Alexandria, where it remained for almost two millennia before being offered to the United States as a gift in the 19th century.”


(Photo by Seong Kwon.)

We can't help here suggesting that Ortega should give Ikea permission to mass produce and sell his reusable memorials, because, firstly, we like to imagine them multiplying exponentially in public spaces everywhere (and no, there is still not nearly enough memorials), and, secondly, we also like the image of people scouring the city—a sort of pre-funerary cortege mixed in with some urban sightseeing—for an abandoned obelisk, one commemorating something already forgotten in the collective memory and thus can now be reused.

Other scenarios abound. For instance, one day of the year, those obelisks-on-wheels commemorating soldiers killed in the Global War on Terror are paraded through the city, like an Easter Procession. Before they are returned to their original sites, they would all be collected in the a central plaza, a formation reminiscent of Eisenman's Memorial to the Murdered Jews in Europe. Alternatively, they could be arranged less formally, more crowded, as haphazard as a favela. In any case, the sight of it all would be quite dramatic, a powerful statement on the consequences of war.

Another day might be set aside for victims of natural disasters and another for bicyclists killed by lunatic motorists.

Roadside memorials will similarly be made mobile, traveling the same route which the unfortunate souls they're memorializing may have taken. (Or seeking revenge?) But then they themselves will be involved in an accident.

In the Archives:
Moving the Vatican Obelisk

(Spotted at designboom weblog.)

(A Crowd Farm in Torino, Italy.)

Given the opportunity for yet more indiscriminate self-linking, which undoubtedly is a favorite past-time here on Pruned, we'll take it, even though Crowd Farm, an interesting, albeit less than original, proposal to “harvest the energy of human movement in urban settings” by James Graham and Thaddeus Jusczyk, has been rightly covered by just about everyone during our recent hiatus.

But firstly, in the press release linked to above, you'll read that “a Crowd Farm in Boston's South Station railway terminal would work like this: A responsive sub-flooring system made up of blocks that depress slightly under the force of human steps would be installed beneath the station's main lobby. The slippage of the blocks against one another as people walked would generate power through the principle of the dynamo, a device that converts the energy of motion into that of an electric current.”

And some incredible bits of number crunching: “One step, for instance, can power two 60W light bulbs for one second. But multiply that step by 28,527 and you have enough energy to power a moving train for one second. And if you multiply a single step by 84,162,203? Enough energy to power the launch of a space shuttle.”

We say incredible, because it sounds too good to be true (or perhaps not even good enough?). Did they, for instance, consider energy loss and storage? Will the amount of energy be even enough to offset the cost maintenance, let alone the initial cost? But in any case, we'd truly love to finally see a feasibility test of this technology.

And now to some awesomely indiscriminate self-linking.

In the Archives:
Wave Garden by Yusuke Obuchi
The Kumbh Mela Array
The Piezo Array
Airborne-Diving in the Southern Ocean
Modeling Urban Panic

(How to navigate Rilib and Kaelib, from “On sea charts formerly used in the Marshall Islands” by Captain Winkler. For more on these ocean-faring tools, read these spectacularly awesome posts from Varieties of Unreligious Experience and The Nonist.)

On blogs discovered recently or otherwise.

All-Terrain, “an occasional journal at the intersection of National Geographic and the kitchen sink.”

Private Islands Blog, for those wanting to buy their own islands.

Robotic Ecologies Lab. This, “an experimental energy-harvesting robotic glass house,” is interesting. Can it be turned nomadic? Moving, topsy-turvy-like, across the Illinois plains (or a super-mega Wal-Mart parking lot) like tumbleweeds? Or scurrying through Floridian wetlands in advance of hurricanes or through the Public Lands of the West to flee from wildfires?

Super Colossal Blog, formerly gravestmor. This post, on the perpetual traffic of New New York as imagined in Gridlock, a third series episode of the rejuvenated Doctor Who, is a recent great.

Virtual Sustainability, by Quilian Riano.

Waterblogged. On water!

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