eco.Rt

Underground farm in Japanese office building

2007-11-22T15:29:00.000+01:00

An underground rice and vegetable field has been planted beneath an office building in Tokyo's Otemachi business district. This urban farm - in what used to be the vault of a major bank - is maintained using computer-controlled artificial light and temperature management. It was brought into being by a personnel company as a means of providing agricultural training to young people who are having trouble finding employment and middle-aged people in search of a second career.
via: Make

Power Generating Wind Dam

2007-11-17T23:15:00.000+01:00

"As part of our ongoing investigation of viable and sustainable solutions to generating alternative power, our heads really turned when we came across this proposal for a power-generating “wind dam” by UK architects Chetwoods Associates."

via Inhabitat

reverse graffitti

2007-11-17T23:09:00.000+01:00

Brazilian artist Alexandre Orion turned a São Paulo transport tunnel into a kind of graphic charnel house, lined with skulls.
He created the images, the project's website explains, "by selectively scraping off layers of black soot deposited on those walls in the short life of this orifice of modernity."

via BLDGBLOG

(quite old, i know. but it fits in here perfectly, doesn't it?)

ecoarttech

2007-10-26T11:28:00.000+02:00

Ecology, Art, and Technology (aka ecoarttech) formed in 2005 with the aim of working with digital and sustainable technologies and contemporary environments to create art about the environmentality of modern life.

Link: http://ecoarttech.net/

The Seed Project

2007-10-22T11:20:00.000+02:00

The Seed Project is a global environmental installation where people all over the world are planting seeds, creating individual art projects creating a new world.

Link: http://the-seed-project.org/

econvention

2007-10-14T18:05:00.000+02:00

Coined in 1999, the term ecovention (ecology + invention) describes an artist initiated project that employs an inventive strategy to physically transform an ecosystem. This exciting publication has been designed and written to attract a diverse audience. Ecovention juxtaposes interesting ecological facts alongside case studies of projects artists have realized, in tandem with scientists and community members. [from: amazon]

Online Version: http://greenmuseum.org/c/ecovention/

CoHabit: Cooperative Networks and Ecologies

2007-10-13T22:49:00.000+02:00

What kind of practices will motivate environmental concern, and how will this concern then reduce instances of environmental salience in American society? What events can urge one to adopt an ecological/environmental worldview, and then to act according to this worldview? How is physical space manipulated to fulfill the needs of human endeavors and also to ensure the ability of the land to regenerate itself and also allow the regeneration of other species that rely on that land for habitation? How do we cohabit this space? How is art involved in this conversation? [...]

Link: http://megrimm.net/entry/30/cohabit_cooperative_networks_a/projects#body

Superfund365

2007-10-13T22:40:00.000+02:00

Superfund365, A Site-A-Day, is an online data visualization application with an accompanying RSS-feed and email alert system. Each day for a year, starting on September 1, 2007, Superfund365 will visit one toxic site currently active in the Superfund program run by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). We begin the journey in the New York City area and work our way across the country, ending the year in Hawaii. (We will need a beach vacation by then!) In the end, the archive will consist of 365 visualizations of some of the worst toxic sites in the U.S., roughly a quarter of the total number on the Superfund's National Priorities List (NPL). Along the way, we will conduct video interviews with people involved with or impacted by Superfund. [...]

Link: http://transition.turbulence.org/Works/superfund

AIR :: Area's Immediate Reading

2007-10-13T22:00:00.000+02:00

AIR is a public, social experiment in which people are invited to use Preemptive Media's portable air monitoring devices to explore their neighborhoods and urban environments for pollution and fossil fuel burning hotspots. [...]

Link: http://pm-air.net

chris jordan photography

2007-10-13T21:55:00.001+02:00

Intolerable Beauty: Portraits of American Mass Consumption

Exploring around our country’s shipping ports and industrial yards, where the accumulated detritus of our consumption is exposed to view like eroded layers in the Grand Canyon, I find evidence of a slow-motion apocalypse in progress. I am appalled by these scenes, and yet also drawn into them with awe and fascination. The immense scale of our consumption can appear desolate, macabre, oddly comical and ironic, and even darkly beautiful; for me its consistent feature is a staggering complexity. The pervasiveness of our consumerism holds a seductive kind of mob mentality. Collectively we are committing a vast and unsustainable act of taking, but we each are anonymous and no one is in charge or accountable for the consequences. I fear that in this process we are doing irreparable harm to our planet and to our individual spirits. [...]

Link: http://www.chrisjordan.com/

Free Soil

2007-10-13T21:51:00.000+02:00

Free Soil is an international hybrid collaboration of artists, activists, researchers and gardeners who take a participatory role in the transformation of our environment. Free Soil fosters discourse, develops projects and gives support for critical art practices that reflect and change the urban and natural environment. We believe art can be a catalyst for social awareness and positive change.

Link: http://www.free-soil.org

Hot Summer of Urban Farming

2007-10-13T21:38:00.001+02:00

8 visual artists in the city and on the web
2.- 26. September 2006, Outer Nørrebro, Copenhagen

Over the summer, 8 artists from Denmark and abroad have made temporary works, gardens and plantations in outer Nørrebro. The projects serve as starting points for exploring informal and temporary uses of spaces that are undetermined.
The artists have been dealing with issues of inclusion and exclusion, the use of public space, the origin and history of plant life and the relation between the city and its surrounding. For each project a poster is made expanding on the project or dealing with more Utopian aspects.
[...]

Link: http://www.publik.dk/hotsummer

breathing earth

2007-10-13T21:00:00.000+02:00

BreathingEarth displays the carbon dioxide emission levels of every country in the world, as well as their birth and death rates - all in real time.
Link: http://www.breathingearth.net/