AA Inter 3

A friend of mine gave me this nice website with architectural drawings that its blogger collects: Drawing Architecture

An interesting theoretical/commentary political book that I gained reference recently: Combined and Uneven Apocalypse by Evan Calder Williams.

Here’s a brief introduction to the book:

From the repurposed rubble of salvagepunk to undead hordes banging on shopping mall doors, from empty waste zones to teeming plagued cities, Combined and Uneven Apocalypse grapples with the apocalyptic fantasies of our collapsing era. Moving through the films, political tendencies, and recurrent crises of late capitalism, Evan Calder Williams paints a black toned portrait of the dream  and nightmare  images of a global order gone very, very wrong. Situating itself in the defaulting financial markets of the present, Combined and Uneven Apocalypse glances back toward a messy history of zombies, car wrecks, tidal waves, extinction, trash heaps, labour, pandemics, wolves, cannibalism, and general nastiness that populate the underside of our cultural imagination. Every age may dream the end of the world to follow, but these scattered nightmare figures are a skewed refraction of the normal hell of capitalism. The apocalypse isn’t something that will happen one day: it’s just the slow unveiling of the catastrophe we’ve been living through for centuries. Against any fantasies of progress, return, or reconciliation, Williams launches a loathing critique of the bleak present and offers a graveside smile for our necessary battles to come.

This author is also writing his blog “Socialism and/or Babarism“, which he wrote on in parallel prior to the publication of this book (he posts new blogs in commenting on current events as well), also interesting to take a look at.

“The robots built by Swedish company Husqvarna are remote-controlled  demolition vehicles capable of ascending stairs and operating and  heavily radiated areas. Both models involved, the DXR-140 and DXR-310  (pictured above) are to be used in the prolonged clean up in the fourth  reactor.”

link

The Design Museum is currently running 3 exhibitions including the:

- Terrence Coran (habitat furniture shop) on first floor;

- the Happiness and Other Survival Techniques on the second and;

- the Design of Year 2012 on the top floor.

The Happiness and Other Survival Techniques features guides to many peculiar things such as how to dress yourself as a chair in order to smuggle yourself, how to laugh, information about turning bio-waste into energy… Full of D.I.Y. gadgets and interesting ideas. You may find it very familiar visiting this exhibition for its presentation style is also quite AA.

Exhibition link: http://designmuseum.org/exhibitions/2012/happiness-and-other-survival-techniques

(I just realized this one ends this Friday 13th of April, sorry for posting late)

It is a very happy video as you may find…

A film by the same hacker group who created the radiation map.

http://blog.safecast.org/

A follow-up on Nannette’s post on December 19, regarding to Cory Doctorow’s report on hackers going to Japan(PBS interview with Mile O’Brien) and getting data of radiation using DIY technologies (self developed device with “Geiger” detectors, “iGeiger” with iPhones, and some of arduino).

This group of hackers are mapping radiation of Japan based on hundreds of small sensors that were plotted in many spots in the country. They firstly conceived the project within the range of Fukushima, then they realized that it is even more important to track the radiation levels at a bigger scale in order to understand the future development/movement of the radiation emancipation pattern. They are now trying to expand the data input map.

You can find the updated comprehensive and interactive radiation map under their recent post “New Safecast Global Map” that was updated last week. (http://blog.safecast.org/worldmap/)

Unlike their inert appearance, plants are indeed extremely sensitive. Many scientific experiments were conducted to measure their “emotions”: they can sense an approach of a person and perform “fear” (measured via electromagnetic graphs or other ways); they can even detect things as small as the intention of an approaching spider. The documentary above only shows a small fragment of the world of plants that can be interpretted as inputs and outputs dependent on their surrounding context (objects, climate, animals, intentions, etc.)

Suggestive reading: “The Secret Life of Plants” by Peter Tompkins and Christopher Bird (sorry I don’t have a link for text, just posting for anybody who has potential interest~)