christopher robbins notes
Interactive and Reactive media environments, taught by Tad Hirsch at RISD Spring 2006. Course webpage here
Instrumentation
Nauru
- DirtForNauru
- SeventyPercentOfEverythingILove
Ghana
Salt-mapping in Sudan
in the end I could not find the doucmentation to merit this project, i.e. I am not sure the salting is actually happening as I have only one person still saying it does, and the situation in Sudan is obviously less than ideal for corroborating anything. Plus. I was still not comfortable with doing what I saw as exploitation of a terrible massacre for a project with dubious benefit to Sudan and likelier benefit to me. This blog post on the useless art object discusses these issues.
Statement of Intent
Since its independence in 1956, Sudan has been ravaged by conflict, including two long civil wars. In the past decade, over 30,000 people have been murdered, thousands of women raped, and hundreds of villages destroyed (US Department of State).
In addition to the looting and burning of villages, crops are often destroyed and fields salted, rendering these fields infertile. The agricultural situation is worsened by the natural processes of sahelization and soil salinification.
"In semi-arid and arid areas of the world, the scarcity, variability and unreliability of rainfall and high potential evapotranspiration affect the water and salt balance of the soil. Low atmospheric humidity, high temperature and wind velocity promote the upward movement of the soil solution and the precipitation and concentration of the salts in the surface horizons. In arid regions, various types of Na, Mg and Ca salts are concentrated, mainly chloride and sulphate: salinization." (
This project creates a community map that focuses on the dynamic process of salinification of fields in rural Sudan, developing an instrument to measure the salt-level of fields displayed in a central, easy-to-identify village map in order to encourage dynamic sharing of resources.
Technical Description
The Salt Map pack consists of a large white canvas, testing jars strung with wire, red and blue jarcovers, a black marker, and a custom mutlimeter.
The Salt Map
The Salt Map itself is simply a section of white canvas. On arrival at the village, a communal space is selected for display of the map (social centre, community hall, agricultural extension centre, etc.) and a map of the village's land is drawn onto the canvas. This map is divided into existing family, community and government plots, and one jar is then placed within each field.
The Testing Jars
The testing jars hold 600ml of fluid, and are marked at the 100ml level. Two metal strips, one colored red and one colored black, line the inside of the jar. Soil testing is conducted as per the Australian Soil Salinity Field Testing methodology:
- Obtain soil from a depth of 10 cm. Thoroughly mix the dry soil sample.
- Place soil in the bottle up to the 100ml mark, and tap gently to settle the soil.
- Add rainwater (NOT tapwater) up to the 600ml mark.
- Place the cap on the bottle and shake for one minute.
- Allow soil for settle for about another minute.
- Measure the conductivity of the clearer fluid at the top of the settled mixture using a conductivity meter. Units are expressed as deci-siemens per metre (dS/m).
The Multimeter
The customized multimeter is used to determine the conductivity of the soil-rainwater solution, which is an indication of soil salinity. It is marked for the three major soil types (clay, loam and sand) and is color coded for matching to the colored metal strips.
By touching the multimeter sensors to the appropriate metal strips, farmers can tell the salinity level of the soil in their plot, and plant or treat accordingly.
In essence, this multimeter is a simplified neumonic for the chart used in the field by the Australian government.
Bottle Caps
In order to encourage community-wide solutions to arability problems, the bottles are capped with color-coded covers and returned to their place on the map, creating a shared map of ever changing salinity levels.
Related work
- Mel Chin: Remediation Project
- John Sherry: industrial designer/ antrhopologist
- Kim Fortun, Advocacy after Bhopal
New York City Sunset
Imagine a sunset. What are you seeing? Probably something like this:
Now, imagine a sunset in New York City. What are you seeing? Probably something like this:
Of course, that's just your stupid imagination at work, because unless you are incredibly rich, New York City sunsets actually look more like this:
Statement of intent
This work measures how much blue sky you actually encounter in the city, and then superimposes the amount of sky the city blocks out from your view onto your experience of the internet.
This project is meant to help smug city folk notice what they are missing by blocking out portions of something they do notice, the computer screen that lures them into a false sense of varied experience.
Technical Description
This camera image was totally ripped off from domestic probes. All I did was add the Great Garbo Stamp.
Participants are given a disposable 12-photo camera integrated with a pager. Every day during a 12 day period, the pager will sound an alarm at some point during the sunset in the participant's city. The participant must photograph the sunset from wherever he or she is standing at that point.
At the end of the 12 day period, the participant drops the already addressed and stamped camera into a mailbox, filling in their email adress.
Back at the laboratory, the percentage of sky visible in the photos are averaged, and a customised "urban blocker" virus is sent to the email. Upon installation, this virus will cover up the alotted portion of the participant's browser window with an urban scene, transferring the amount of sunset they miss to the amount of internet they will miss.
Maybe then they'll notice what they're missing and stop being so smug.
Feedback on City Sunsets
- powered by AutomatedHumanSense
- how about a script sent to mobile phones with cameras saying "take a photo of the sunset from where you are standing NOW!"
- camera with timer in its own right is fascinating, encourages sunset watching regardless
- must hide my agenda
Simulation: homeless in Seoul
Bo told me that when it is cold, all the homeless in Seoul go sleep in the underground subway. In this simulation, the homeless people are represented by pieces of styrofoam floating in a tube of water. When the water freezes it expands into ice and the homeless are pushed into the shot glass, representing the subway. Unless the system fails them.
Observation: dead birds
What started as an inquiry into the reason for so many dead birds on one particular alley in Providence turned into a view of the city through the lens of bird detritus.
why are there so many dead birds in that alley?
is it because the alley gets too narrow and them sMASH?
is it because there are so many good nooks for living?
see, next alley has no nook and no dead birds
maybe its just because it is unkept, so no-one cleans up the dead birds
perhaps in the next alley they just clean up their dead birds, b/c it looks like a good place for a bird
or maybe they are dieing because they are smoking
in any case, here is a live version of those dead birds
