NATALIE JEREMIJENKO
Fish ‘n microChips: A workshop with Natalie Jeremijenko at the site of the Amphibious Architecture project – a collaborative project with xClinic, The Living and other intelligent creatures
Date: Saturday 9.19
Start Time: 12:00pm
Starting Location: Commons Gallery, Barney building – participants will move to the site of the Amphibious Architecture project – a collaborative project with xClinic, The Living, and other intelligent creatures (map)
r la fish n d east rivA?
w@ r dey doin la? watz la 4 em 2 e@?
hw do dey cope w d H2O conditions? hu nos?
hws d H2O, nyway?
watz hi or lo dissolved O2 mean n d aquatic ecosys?
hw dz dz d terrestrial ecosystem – us, crs, bldg, sidewalks, litter, sewage sys – effct r fish nAbors?
Translation: Are there fish in the east river? What are they doing there? What is there for them to eat? How do they cope with the water conditions? Who knows? How is the water, anyway? What is high or low dissolved oxygen mean in the aquatic ecosystem? How does does the terrestrial ecosystem – us, cars, building, sidewalks, litter, sewage system – effect our fish neighbors?
Workshop Description:
Participants in this session will enjoy a lunch of cross-species foods at the site of the amphibious architecture project – a collaborative project between xClinic, The Living, and other intelligent creatures on the East River. They will also discuss the xClinic water project ladder, including: amphibious architecture, fish restaurant, and fishfood, and have the opportunity to text message with fish in the East River.
Image: Toward the Sentient City
Amphibious Architecture is a visual interface floating on the water’s surface, a veritable looking glass into the aquatic ecosystem. This manufactured point of connection submerges ubiquitous computing into the one element that covers 90% of the Earth’s inhabitable volume and which envelops New York City but remains under-explored and under-engaged.
Installed at two sites along the East and the Bronx Rivers, this project is a network of floating interactive buoys housing a range of sensors below water and an array of light emitting diodes (LEDs) above water. The sensors monitor water quality, the presence of fish, and human interest in the river’s ecosystem, while the lights respond to the sensors, creating feedback loops between humans, fish in their shared environment. Additionally an SMS interface allows homo-citizens to text-message the fish and receive real-time information about the river, contributing towards the collective display of human interest in the aquatic environment. The aim of which is to simultaneously spark a larger public interest and dialogue about our local waterways.
Image: Toward the Sentient City
Distinctly moving away from the pervasive ‘do-not-disturb’ approach to urban environmentalism, the project encourages curiosity and engagement. Treating the river water as a reflective surface to mirror our own homo-image and architecture, establishing a two-way interface between the terrestrial and the aquatic. The project thus creates a dynamic and captivating layer of light above the surface of the river, making visible the invisible through real-time mapping of the new ecology of people, marine life, buildings, and public space.
www.amphibiousarchitecture.net
www.environmentalhealthclinic.net/ooz
Natalie Jeremijenko is Associate Professor at NYU in the Visual Art Dept., and has affiliated faculty appointments in Computer Science and Environmental Studies. She directs the xdesign Environmental Health Clinic. Previously she was on the Visual Arts faculty at UCSD, and Faculty of Engineering at Yale. Her work was included in the 2006 Whitney Biennial of American Art (also in 1997) and the Cooper Hewit Smithsonian Design Triennial 2006-7. She has a permanently installed Model Urban Development on the roof of Postmasters Gallery in Chelsea, featuring 7 residential housing developments, concert hall, and other public amenities, powered by human food waste where it continues to toy with new conceptions of urban futures, and re-imagine our relationship to nonhuman organisms. Her work is described as experimental design, hence xDesign, as it explores the opportunity new technologies present for non violent social change. Her research centers on structures of participation in the production of knowledge, and information and the political and social possibilities (and limitations) of information and emerging technologies — mostly through public experiments. In this vein, her work spans a range of media from statistical indices (such as the Despondency Index, which linked the Dow Jones to the suicide rate at San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge) to biological substrates (such as the installations of cloned trees in pairs in various urban micro-climates) to robotics (such as the development of feral robotic dog packs to investigate environmental hazards). The Environmental Health Clinic develops and prescribes locally optimized and often playful strategies to effect remediation of environmental systems, producing measurable and mediagenic evidence, and coordination diverse projects to effective material change.
