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Saturday, February 16, 2008
We rather liked collecting our posts on agricultural landscapes into one, so we'd like to do the same with our posts on fountains, in reverse chronological order.
On Charles Goldman's Public Fountain, 2006.
On Nicolas de Larmessin's hydro-couture.
On the Trevi Fountain as a bloodied protest canvas.
On Super-Versailles.
On the gushing wounds in the geological bowels of extraterrestrial landscapes.
On Diller + Scofidio's Fountain, 1997.
On Michael Cross' Bridge, a sort of interactive reflecting pool from which an outbreak of messianic prophecies, marian visions and apocalyptic auguries will precipitate.
On trailing suction hopper dredgers, perhaps our favorite machines.
On the interactive kicking fountain.
On some selections from the Visual Images Database of the Mississippi Valley Division of the US Army Corps of Engineers. Because is not the heavily controlled Mississippi River really just a fountain writ-large?
On the leidenfrost fountain.
On the centerpiece of Landscape Architecture: The Musical.
On the “45.5 Meteorite Craters Made by Humans on Their 45.5 Hundred Million Year Old Planet” Fountain.
On the WTC Memorial, or at least ¼ of it.
On Geoff's Earth-Fountain: Part I and Part II.
On the Machine de Marly, the greatest engineering marvel of its era.
On the datafountain.
On Columbus Circle and Washington Square Park.
Giochi d'Aqua
“rising like alien plants on the terraformed lakebed”
Fountain Throwies
Poule mouillée!
Lago Navona
To Io
Friday, February 15, 2008
Some civil engineers from Purdue University apparently believe that the best way for Istanbul to lessen the humanitarian crisis and economic impact of a catastrophic earthquake striking the ancient city is to build a second Istanbul.
Istanbul v1.0, these engineers point out, won't be able to withstand a major seismic event as “many of the city's buildings were constructed with little regard for modern building standards.”
The city itself is not well designed for earthquakes. Many streets are narrow and winding and would quickly fill with debris after an earthquake, preventing aid from reaching those who are trapped or injured.
And if Istanbul goes, so goes the nation.
Istanbul v2.0, on the other hand, will be “earthquake resistant, with strong buildings and wide streets. The city would be designed to take advantage of building techniques used to minimize earthquake damage and incorporate modern technologies such as electronic locks and security, video communication and environmentally friendly technologies.”
More importantly, this “satellite city” would serve as a refugee camp and guarantee continuity of the nation's economic activity, 80 percent of which occurs in Istanbul.
Of course, the new city will not lay empty, gathering dust and weeds as it waits for the first influx of seismic refugees to arrive. It is “designed to be an economic hub,” with a business, residential and entertainment districts ready to be utilized in the meantime.
Oddly enough, we are reminded of the Japanese tradition of building exact copies of Shinto's holiest shrines at Ise every 20 years and then completely dismantling the current temples save for a central wooden pole. In another 20 years, a new set of replicas will be erected around this pole, thus completing and restarting the cycle over again.
Consequently, we are left to wonder what if a similar phenomenon were to happen to cities?
Let's say a new city is built, a fully functioning metropolis complete with homes, businesses, museums and infrastructure. For twenty years, people would live there, going about their lives, going to work, raising their children, tending to their gardens. Everyday they would hear news of another city under construction at an adjacent site. In fact, they will be reminded of this at every hour of the day, if not from the news, then from the distant but incessant machine noise and dust plumes emanating from the horizon. It becomes a major aspect of daily life, settling in nicely or not so nicely into the background, like radiation or an impending major earthquake or a Hurricane Katrina, oscillating between states of ambience and immediate critical concern.
When the new city is finished, everyone will have to migrate there, as the now older city will torn down, the sewers excavated and upturned. Everything else will be burnt to the ground. But in another 20 years, they will again be exiled, forced to a newer city constructed on the very same site from where they had fled from decades ago.
And so on and so on.
At each new city, then, will people replicate an exact copy of the old? Will their gardens, high rises and even the paintings in the museums be perfect reproductions of the originals, which are themselves copies of reproductions? Will the layout of the streets be an exact mirror image of the one they had walked on and driven through not too long ago?
Or will they gradually come to develop new cultural traditions favoring the values of impermanence, of continual change? Will their society be based on a culture of experimentation and radical innovation? In other words, will they stop designing buildings and landscapes exactly the same way as before, even if it's been proven to work time and time again, when failure can and will be erased in no more than 20 years' time?
For that matter, will there be such a thing as historic preservation when everything is understood to be temporary and concepts such as icons and authenticity are illusory?
What will the built environment look like when everything is conceived as planned waste?
How will you live your life in tenuous circumstances?
In any case, there is a 3D animation of Istanbul v2.0 for you to look at. You'll see, among other things, a cluster of earthquake-resistant buildings arranged in the shape of a star. This shape, we are told, is that of a Selcuk star, a classical Turkish symbol.
More importantly, you will see its overly segregated design and the absence of what some may describe as “charm,” that urban quality accumulated through centuries of successively being a Greek polis, a Roman outpost, the imperial seat of Byzantine emperors and Ottoman sultans, and the uncontested premier city of the modern Turkish state. Some urban planners and romantics will no doubt lambast it.
In which case, they'll design Istanbul v3.0.
Insurance companies have a definition of the term "high risk" driver. A "high risk" driver is a category of drivers who do not meet the eligibility requirements established preferred auto insurance companies. Auto accidents, multiple tickets (speeding and/or reckless driving) or serious offenses like DUI on your driving record signify to the auto insurance company that you are a high risk to insure. Additional risk factors include your credit history, lack of continuous auto insurance coverage, and personal profile.
If you have been involved in several accidents or have had multiple speeding tickets within two to three years, these incidents will negatively affect your record even if they were not at fault in the accidents. You can also be labeled a "high risk" driver just by the number of speeding tickets you have received. If you are designated a "high risk" driver, there are several steps you can take.
Get out of the "high risk" category
This seems like common sense, but unless you want to continue paying higher auto insurance premiums, you must work toward getting yourself reclassified. Most insurance companies only consider the last three years of your driving record to determine your status and premium. Avoid congested areas whenever possible, and be sure to slow down in reduced speed zones. You need to be aware of your surroundings and never speed, and you will be on your way to a successful reduction in your rates. It also helps to drive a domestic vehicle. If you are driving a sports car or luxury vehicle, you are paying much more than someone who drives a family sedan or compact hatchback plus adding on your high risk premium. Consider what you drive and how it relates to your auto insurance premiums.
"High risk" auto insurance coverage
Some insurance agents specialize in offering policies to those with active driving records and/or sports car enthusiasts. However, you should expect to pay much premiums to match your "high risk" status. Statistics have demonstrated that insurance companies lose more money insuring people with bad driving records or sports cars for the higher coverage pay outs. Be upfront with your insurance agent about your driving record. The agencies that work with "high risk" drivers know how to find you the best deal for what car insurance is available to you. Also compare as many quotes as you can, each insurance company will view your driving record differently.
State assigned risk
Even if the high risk insurance agents will not write you a policy, every state has some kind of program that helps the"High risk" drivers get insured by entering the states shared pool. Your "High risk" status is "shared" among all the auto insurance companies in this pooled market. If you are forced to buy auto insurance from the shared pool, the premiums are much higher than standard car insurance premiums and it typically covers only liability insurance. You must meet the laws requirement of having liability insurance. If you cannot find an insurance agent who can work with you through the state pooled market, each state has an insurance commission that can provide information.
Here's some basic advice, plus 22 tips to help you protect yourself and get the best value for the money you spend on automobile coverage.
Your car insurance rates are based on a few factors you can't readily change -- your sex, age, marital status and where you live -- and many that you can -- your credit scores, what you drive, how well you drive and how much coverage you buy.
Here's how to get the best deal.
First, let's review the basics. Details vary from state to state. (See "Shopping for auto insurance.")
* Liability insurance pays for injuries and property damage caused by a crash if an insurance adjuster determines you were at fault. It does not cover your injuries or those of other people on your policy, or damage to your vehicle. State minimum requirements provide inadequate protection. Buy no less than $100,000 per person, $300,000 per accident and $50,000 for property damage, or no less than $300,000 if your policy has a single limit. You are personally liable for claims that exceed your coverage, so buy even more if you can, and consider an umbrella policy.
* Uninsured/underinsured motorist protection covers injuries to the occupants of your car -- and property damage in some states -- if the other driver has no insurance or too little.
* Collision insurance pays for damage to your vehicle in an accident. If your car is totaled, you'll get what the insurer considers the pre-crash market value of your car, minus your deductible. To get a general idea of what that may be, check the Kelley Blue Book private-party price or visit the Web site of the National Automobile Dealers Association. You can pay extra for replacement-cost coverage for newer cars.
* Comprehensive insurance covers theft of your vehicle and noncollision damage to your car, as well as animal collisions. You may be eligible for lower rates if your vehicle has anti-theft and tracking devices.
* Medical or personal-injury protection provides coverage for you and your passengers, regardless of fault. You may not need this insurance if you have good health insurance.
* Twelve states have no-fault insurance, which generally covers the insured person's injuries and property damage no matter who is at fault.
* Consider gap insurance if you owe more on your car than it's worth.
Reduce your rates
The company you select and the coverage you buy can greatly reduce your rates.
* Shop around. Check rates online at InsWeb.com, call companies, and consult an agent through the Independent Insurance Agents & Brokers of America. Rates vary greatly depending on a company's operating expenses, history of claims and formulas for setting premiums. Check a company's financial status and consumer record. The last thing you need is to go cheap and then find it's all but impossible to file a claim.
* Increase your deductibles on comprehensive and collision coverage to an amount you can cover out of pocket.
* Consider dropping both if you own your vehicle outright and the combined annual cost for that coverage is more than 10% of what you would get if you car were totaled. (See "Dump the insurance on your clunker.")
* Ask your insurer about all available special discounts.
* If you're switching insurance companies, do it in writing. Your credit scores will suffer if you're canceled for nonpayment.
Control yourself
Your behavior on and off the road has a bearing on your rates.
* Pay all bills on time. Your premiums are based in part on your credit scores or an insurance risk score based on your credit reports. (See "The new math of car insurance.") TransUnion's TrueCredit will provide your auto insurance risk score for $9.95.
* Drive defensively, and avoid distractions such as text messaging or talking on a cell phone. One speeding ticket may not raise your rates, but an accident you caused probably would -- generally by 40% of the company's base rate.
* Don't drink and drive. (See "DUI: The $10,000 ride home.")
* Don't lend out your car. If your friend wrecks it, your rates will go up. If your uninsured friend wrecks your car, you'll be liable for claims exceeding your policy.
The type of vehicle you drive affects your rates.
* Check the cost of insuring that sports car before you buy it. You'll pay higher premiums for a vehicle with higher collision-damage costs or that's attractive to thieves. Use MSN Money's comparison tool. And no, it doesn't cost more to insure a red car.
* High-tech items are more expensive to replace after a crash. (See "High-tech cars mean high-priced repairs.")
The deal on discounts
Factors such as age, how much you drive, where you live and, sometimes, what you do for a living affect insurance premiums. You can take some steps to get a better rate.
* If you get married, you'll get a discount and benefit from combining policies. (See "Paying too much for car insurance?")
* People 55 and older get a discount for taking a driving class.
* Adding your newly licensed teen to your policy will increase your premiums 50% to 200%. One way to reduce costs: Buy a beater and list your child as the driver. Teen drivers can get discounts for drivers ed courses or good grades. (See "Cut the cost of insuring your teen driver.")
* You may get a discount if your child attends college away from home.
If you wreck your car
If you've been in a collision, tell your insurance company for your own protection, even if injuries are not readily apparent. Informing the company doesn't mean you're filing a claim.
* If you disagree with the value assigned to your totaled vehicle, provide quotes from local dealers and proof that your vehicle was well-maintained. (See "12 secrets your car insurer won't tell you.") Still unsatisfied? Your options are mediation, arbitration and, finally, a lawsuit.
* Twenty-eight states require insurance companies to pay the sales tax on a replacement vehicle, based on the settlement value of your totaled car. Request it, as well as registration and title fees, wherever you live.
* In 14 states you can get payment for the "diminished value" of your damaged car.
* If the driver at fault in a crash is uninsured, consider "stacking" or collecting on all of your policies that have uninsured/underinsured motorist coverage to fully cover the damage, unless state law prohibits it.
* Body shops may be tempted to cut corners to meet insurance companies' pricing requirements. Check Assured Performance Collision Care for qualified repair shops. (See "7 things auto-body shops won't tell you.")
* If you cause an accident, does your policy require you to pay the difference between generic and original-equipment manufacturer parts? If someone else caused the accident, request original-equipment parts for your repairs.
source
Well crafted conversion from the 2 seater Toyota MR2 and Ferrari 360 Spyder . Look for yourself the final touch of the conversion.
See for yourself which one is MR2 and which one is Ferrari 360 Spider
Some companies will cut your bill if you're an engineer or a teacher. Multi-vehicle and Web discounts are available, too, if you shop a little.
just when you thought you'd taken advantage of every discount and shrunk your auto insurance premium to its tiniest, auto insurers are offering more ways to make your bill smaller, and all you have to do is be yourself.
Almost every insurance company gives you a discount if you've had no accidents or tickets in the last three to five years, or if you buy a homeowners or renters insurance policy with the same company (multiline discount), insure more than one car on your auto insurance policy (multivehicle discount), or own a car that is equipped with air bags. But some companies will also reward you for your profession, your age, and using the Internet.
That college degree is worth something
21st Century Group has found that drivers with degrees in engineering are lower risks than other drivers. If you have a bachelor's degree in any number of engineering or science-related fields — biochemistry, mathematics, or mechanical engineering, for example — you can get a discount on your auto insurance premium if you buy from them.21st Century sells auto insurance in Arizona, California, Nevada, Oregon, and Washington, and offers the "engineering and scientist" discount in all of those states. If you're a scientist or an engineer with a good driving record, you can save between 10 and 30 percent on the company's base rate, according to Ric Hill, vice president of corporate relations.
A base rate is the average amount of claims paid plus the insurance company's claims-processing fee. For example, if the company's base rate is $400, you could save between $40 and $120.
"Our company's founder saw that educators, scientists, and engineers have lots of characteristics that seem to show that they're the best drivers," says Hill. "Engineers, for example, being accustomed to dealing with fine details, are somewhat meticulous, which means they take good care of their automobiles." 21st Century found that the same holds true for teachers and other scientists.
Teachers deserve a break
Horace Mann Insurance Co. (which sells auto insurance in every state except Hawaii and New Jersey) offers discounts to teachers who belong to state education associations or the National Education Association (NEA). Horace Mann's discounts start at around 8 percent, and are based on the assumptions the company has about teachers: They have a stable occupation, stable employment, and they understand they are under scrutiny by the community.The discounts are available through Horace Mann or one of its two subsidiaries — Allegiance Insurance Co. or Teachers Insurance Co. In addition to Hawaii, New Jersey, and New York, the discounts are not available in Georgia, Mississippi, Texas, and Washington D.C.
The discount program for teachers who are state association or NEA members started about 15 years ago. Although the auto insurance discounts aren't enough to cover annual association dues, Horace Mann estimates that the average household (two cars) and the average insurance discount will pay for about 50 percent of an association's average dues.
21st Century also offers teachers a break on car insurance premiums, but only if you're certified by the State of California Commission on Teacher Credentialing, or if you are a full-time college or university professor. Savings for this program range from 10 percent to 30 percent on the company's base rate.
Save all you can save in the Army
GEICO offers a 2 percent to 15 percent discount to active and retired members of the military. The military discount is available in all states except Georgia, Indiana, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Mississippi, New Jersey, New Mexico, Tennessee, and Texas. GEICO, which stands for, Government Employees Insurance COrporation, has always taken pride in serving U.S. military personnel and their families.Another benefit of buying your auto insurance with GEICO if you're in the military is your ability to drop all coverages but comprehensive if you're shipped overseas. "Most armed service personnel will put their vehicles in storage and we allow them to drop their liability and other coverages while they're out of the country," says Richard Kidd, a retired Sgt. Mjr. of the Army and assistant vice president for military services at GEICO. Additionally, if Uncle Sam sends you to a country in which the government offers hostile-fire pay, GEICO will knock 25 percent off your comprehensive bill while your car is in storage.
Drive toward the discounts in your golden years
Remember when a nickel was worth a dime? If so, you're probably eligible for some deep discounts on your auto insurance. The Hartford's AARP Auto Insurance Program offers AARP members the chance to chop their auto insurance bills by as much as 45 percent.The AARP program offers drivers a 20 to 25 percent (up to $300 per year) discount for insuring multiple cars on one policy, a 10 percent discount for holding both a homeowners and auto insurance policy with The Hartford, and 5 percent savings for staying with the company for more than five years and not having any violations on your driving record.
The Hartford also guarantees that drivers who buy auto insurance through the AARP program will never have their policies canceled except for nonpayment of premium, DUI conviction, or loss of license.
Have Internet, can save
Eligible drivers can save up to 10% on certain MetLife Auto policy coverages when they successfully complete courses, such as one offered by the National Safety Council (NSC).As a MetLife Auto & Home customer, you can purchase the NSC Driver Safety Course Kit, which includes a 54-minute training video or CD-ROM, a workbook, and an open-book test answer sheet, plus processing. Or, you can take the entire course and exam on the Internet for the same total cost, about $34.95, without ever leaving home. These VHS, CD-ROM and Internet home study Driver Safety Courses are adapted from NSC’s Defensive Driving Courses, arguably the world’s standard of excellence in driver improvement.
Other eligible drivers in your household, on your MetLife Auto policy, can also earn the discount by ordering additional certification workbooks and by successfully completing the course.
sourceWednesday, February 13, 2008
With our recent series of agriculturally-themed post at an end, and with original blogger Jorn Barger's sage advice for other bloggers to “re-post [their] favorite links from time to time, for people who missed them the first time” still very much worth taking, here then are some of our past dealings with agricultural landscapes, in chronological order.
On the vertical farm project.
On Edible Estates, which is now in book form.
On Not A Cornfield.
On some wheatfield gently rolling in the shadows of the still standing WTC towers.
On manuals for everyday living, by N55.
On extreme horticulture, as captured by John Pfahl.
On a patchwork of little Edens flourishing amidst the industrial landscape of South Central Los Angeles.
On the future farms of disembodied livestock.
On precision farming.
On Pharmland™, a favorite project.
On farming fish inside retro-futuristic flying saucers.
On Bolivia's Suprematist-inspired slash and burn farmers and loggers.
On grain elevators.
On Our Daily Bread, a feature-length documentary produced by Nikolaus Geyrhalter.
On the grid.
On retrofitting the Farnsworth House and other icons of Modern Architecture for the “coming survivalist era of radical sustainability.”
On hacking the American agricultural landscape with fruit-pickin' mechano-Hydras.
On dairy cows and their amazing gyroscopic whirligig adventures.
On cave pharming.
On Public Farm 1, a temporary installation for P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center in Queens.
On test plots.
On the subterranean farms of Tokyo.
On Agro Redux
Tuesday, February 12, 2008
While we're on the subject of things agricultural and of things covered by just about everyone long before today, there is Pasona O2, a subterranean farm cultivated inside a former bank vault beneath a high rise building in one of Tokyo's business districts.
Though walled in from sunlight, weather and geology, it's unbelievably verdant. Tomatoes, lettuces, strawberries, and other fruits and vegetables, as well as flowers and herbs, are grown in an area about 1,000 square meters. There is even a terraced rice paddy.
This is all done, by the way, in a very hi-tech fashion. Computers control the temperature and light, which in this case is artificially generated by LEDs, halide lamps and sodium vapor lamps.
Carbon dioxide, we read, is delivered by spraying.
Understandably, people have wondered what the energy requirement is for these “plant factories,” worried that a basement greenhouse might be too inefficient for a wider application.
Of course, any highly unsustainable demand for energy can easily be offset by drilling miles deep into Japan's tectonic landscape to generate hydrothermal energy.
But what exactly is the purpose of Pasona O2? Certainly it is not where cutting edge agritechnology and biotechnology research is being done. Nor does it grow its produce to sell on the market. It doesn't even pretend to be a model for future food production in Japan whose farming population continues to dwindle.
In actuality, it was built primarily as a demonstration and training facility for jobless young people who see a career in agriculture as a possibility. Though not really plugged in to the youth culture of Japan, we'll say that the presence of all that hi-tech equipment can do a long way to maintain interest.
In any case, all our sources are from over two and half years ago, and in searching for updates to use here, we didn't come across any that wasn't written in Japanese.
Perhaps you might know of some?
Cave Pharming
Monday, February 11, 2008
Having been covered apparently by everyone, the details of Robert Fidler's architectural cloak and dagger should by now be very familiar to all. But just in case some of our readers have yet to hear about it, the general narrative is as follows.
Six years ago, reports the Daily Mail, after failed attempts at getting a planning permission to build his dream house, Fidler erected a “40ft stack of hay bales covered by huge tarpaulins” so that he could secretly put it up — a mock-Tudor castle complete with ramparts, turrets and cannons. When it was finished two years later, the family moved in.
Their homestead still being very much illegal, the Fidlers kept their wall of hay standing, thinking that if they can keep their house a secret and no one complains about it to the local council for four years, it would automatically become legal. Unbelievably, it actually managed to hide the bulky structure from everybody. It even became a host to a transient microecosystem of birds, insects and vegetation, all as fugitive as the wall and the house themselves.
The ruse, however, was for naught. When the hay wall was taken down after the four years, officials ordered the Fidlers to destroy their castle after people discovered and expectedly complained about it.
While others may deplore the Fidlers for building what could understandably be described as a monstrosity, on the other hand, we take them to task for being unambitious.
We have always considered agricultural landscapes as ideal grounds for new and alternative theories of architecture and landscape architecture, contributing since time immemorial to significant developments in the history of landscape design. But what do we often hear?
We are told, for instance, that they are ideal sites for serial killers to lay undetected, whose barns and silos breed not a predilection for artistic avant-gardism but rather criminally deviant behaviors and the darkest of souls.
That they are the future landing sites of alien invasions and ground zero for a worldwide pandemic scourge.
That they are not potent territory for testing out new forms of landscape design and are instead the territory of demonic creatures with a penchant for body parts and experimental techniques in body modification.
You will not find François Nicolas Henri Racine de Monville pursuing new modes of engagements with rural landscapes, but you will likely encounter innocent looking country bumpkins experimenting with new forms of pseudo-Christian cults, converting cornfields into outdoor temples.
But what about hearing stories of, say, a couple getting stranded somewhere in the sun-drenched expanses of Kansas, and instead of stumbling into a farmer who wants to crucify them, they befriend a farmer who for decades has been tunneling a complex system of underground passages, which until recently have lain unused except for when the local freemasons rent them for their arcane rituals. He is using them now for experimental pharming.
Or it could be that the farmer isn't hiding from federal agents and endangering the world's food supply. Instead, he is formulating new designs and construction techniques for constructed wetlands, which will function as a park, a wildlife buffer zone and most importantly, a treatment plant for agricultural runoffs.
Or discover not mock-Tudor monstrosities but sentient homesteads, flexing and contorting and scampering about in response to the vagaries of weather, geology and maybe the extreme fluctuations of the price of corn.
Somewhere in the gridded vastness of the American agricultural landscape is a farmer who takes nightly field trips through his cornfields. He goes on these walks not because he's a little bit off kilter after years of living in near total isolation, a prisoner of his own cultivated hortus conclusus, but because it's part of his creative process. You see, he's writing a novel, the new Hypnerotomachia Poliphili for the 21st century, and believes that these agricultural immersions — through hypnotic formalities, altered vistas and tenuous dimensions — induce a Sibylline state of frenzied creativity necessary for tackling such a major literary undertaking.
We want to read about this guy.
Sunday, February 10, 2008
Could our house plants someday tell us just how much we suck at being a parent?
Adrià Bassaganyes and Ben Salem, of Eindhoven University of Technology, in co-operation with Singapore National University’s Mixed Reality Lab, are exploring that possibility — and more — with their investigative project called Ambient Biomedia.
Quoting a quote published in a recent post in Next Nature:
Ambient Biomedia is an investigative project about using living beings, in particular plants, to display human lifestyle problems information. The working principle of our systems is taking data about the lifestyle aspect that the user wants to monitor, such as time spent with somebody, health aspects or bad habits, and semantically couple it into an aspect of a living being. The user would merge the plant with his daily environment, following the evolution of his problem’s state in a non intrusive way. Thanks to the empathical link existing between human and other living beings, the user would see himself reflected on the plant, feeling sorry for herself, meditating about his problem and hopefully, taking measures to solve it.
In other words, cropping up soon all over the place will be gardens that can diagnose a whole range of existing medical and psychosocial problems and which actually then become part of a prescribed therapeutic regimen.
Indeed, the data-gathering component of this ambient system is quite feasible in light of the following two research projects.
1) The first project was the subject of a post we wrote last summer and involves the development of an early detection system for Alzheimer's disease. In that project, a house was rigged with motion detectors to monitor changes, however imperceptibly small and wildly erratic, in the day-to-day activity of its elderly volunteer.
The theory is that as Alzheimer's begins destroying brain cells, signals to nerves may become inconsistent - like static on a radio - well before memories become irretrievable. One day, signals to walk fire fine. The next, those signals are fuzzy and people hesitate, creating wildly varying activity patterns.
Spot the tiny wobbles and wiggles and you can spot the disease early.
2) The second one we read about in an article published last year in The Economist. There, we learned that Yoshiharu Yamamoto, of the University of Tokyo, and his colleagues have discovered that “depressed people move in a mathematically different way from other people.”
In their experiment, the researchers monitored changes in the daily movement of those that were diagnosed with clinical depression and those that were healthy. To no one's surprise, they observed a difference in activity between the two experimental groups. When they plotted their data out on graphs, however, they were surprised to see the results feature the characteristic curve of a power law distribution.
The curves produced by plotting the lengths of low-activity periods against their frequency were strikingly different in healthy and depressed people. This reflects not inactivity by the depressed (though they were, indeed, less active) but a difference in the way that the healthy and the depressed spread their resting periods over the day. Depressed people experience longer resting periods more frequently and shorter ones less frequently than healthy people do.
Spot the tell-tale curvature and you can spot the disease, the research suggests.
Gathering actuatable data of any aspects of lifestyle, then, seems to be just a matter of building an in-house or external surveillance system using GIS, CCTV, remote sensing, complex algorithms, motion-activated laser beams and other cool toys mostly geared for the security industry.
So the next question is: how will all those data get manifested in plants? This, too, has been explored before, for instance, in an art installation called Spore 1.1.
But despite all these real-world examples suggesting plausibility, a working ambient system might not ever be successfully produced. But no matter, we still want to know what landscape architects will do with it.
Will landscape architects, for instance, march up to the Department of Children and Family Services with the designs for a garden that can actuate the abusive behavior of foster parents towards kids placed under their ward so that underpaid, overworked and overstretched case workers need only to drive by their houses for an evaluation? If the lawn is green or the rose bushes are lusciously flowering, then all is well inside, physically and psychologically. But if the verdancy of the hedges doesn't quite meet visual standards, then a home inspection is warranted? The suburban landscape vernacular as a measuring stick of domestic and social harmony — which, of course, isn't unheard of.
Will they instead design neighborhood parks finely attuned to the pederastic behaviors of unregistered sex offenders in the area, orchestrating a genetically-encoded series of seismonastic movements when one is detected?
Will they file patents on a rose hybrid that can actuate how much sex you're getting? If it desiccates when you're not having any, what will you do about it?
Finding that the “empathical link existing between human and other living beings” cannot be reliably counted on to spur people to take corrective measures, will they then commission the services of genetic engineers to enable the plants to produce an antidote in pollen form and to release it when needed whether one wants to be cured or not?
The possibilities are endless.
