What are the dreams of an Architectural office? Shimizu Corporation gives us some examples. The dreams mainly in the category of XL projects, include. Lunar Bases, Moon as a solar cell and some ideas on colonies as well. The green Float http://www.shimz.co.jp/english/theme/dream/greenfloat.html idea brings similar initiatives of the seasteding institute http://seasteading.org/ into mind.
Revolutionary-era Americans had the “Join or Die” snake. Second World war had William of Orange, a pigeon, (honoured for his role in Operation Market Garden in 1945). Narnia had Aslan.
In a Greece struggling another symbol of revolution is rising. They call him either “Riot-Dog” or “Rebel-Dog”, depending on the source.
From pictures it could also be interpreted that Riot dog is trying to mediate between rioters and police: which shows a true utopian instinct.
Ok, utopias are back on the menu. For YKON they always where! And so is Walking, plodding and so on. At least for YKON (more on this soon). Check this beautiful initiative.
http://www.utopias.eu/
“Utopia is on the horizon: When I walk two steps, it takes two steps back. I walk ten steps, and it is ten steps further away. What is Utopia for? It is for this, for walking.”
Eduardo Galeano
Paths Through Utopias takes us on a 6 month journey through Europe in search of ways of living despite capitalism. Out of the journey will arise a blog, a book, a Utopian Road movie (more fiction than documentary) and a series of workshops & performances.utopa
New (at least for me) discoveries in terms of diplomatic bioforms. Alan Donovan and others in the radioprogram Home Planet http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006sdz0, ask questions about our relation to the organisms living inside us. WE ARE A HABITAT! Cool, I am a micronation, the Leviathan, for the organisms living inside me! – Hope you citizens inside me and on my skin, on my eyes… Are happy !?
Buckminster Fuller one of the inspirations for YKON game seems to be a source of inspiration for Tomas Saraceno as well. Nice interview on http://www.sr.se/sida/default.aspx?programid=3049. – Beautiful work Tomas, Bucky and Sara A and the rest of the crew at Bonniers!
“This mega village houses half a million people. With a very small footprint and the majority of travel in and out done by air, this building has very little negative impact in the surrounding environment.” check http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?t=606846
Great Picture, and isolating the city in the air is a logical solution if you do not wan’t the human race to touch the ground (earth).
But maybe we should veer more
sharply away from thinking in terms of a “trade-off” between people and the environment? The solution seems teribly closed, terribly oriented to local, place-specific, closed system.
Worst case scenarios and apocalypse are hot right now. For some our society is so dark that only an immediate end of it is enough.
But do not worry there are already space colonies. Visit Snaiad!
“Snaiad is one of Humanity’s first off-world colonies, the jewel in the sky, the realm of the sublime. ”
Interesting field this Speculative zoology. Next I will research Yeti’s.
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Strange Skies Directed and Produced by Jonathon Keats In order to let flora encounter distant realms vicariously, conceptual artist Jonathon Keats presents a series of travel documentaries specifically targeted to the plant kingdom. According to Keats “given their ability to perform photosynthesis, plants are a fit audience for cinema.These travel documentaries exploit that affinity, screening onto plants’ leaves a selection of skies – the ultimate botanical tourist attraction – filmed in the United States and Europe. Since plants do not have human eyesight, and perceive light only in aggregate, footage is projected onto a scrim which diffuses the picture, streaming subtly changing tints of blue onto the foliage below.” Strange Skies will be screened for a select botanical audience at the AC Institute from February 4th through March 13th, 2010. People are also invited to visit. But of course, human experience will be second-hand: Strange Skies is presented for the entertainment of plants. |
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http://www.inhabitat.com/2010/01/24/turbine-city-combines-wind-power-with-tourism/turbine-city-2/#
Future Ecotourists are according to this plan travelling to scandinavia … but why? Serious questions arise since this tourist attractionstrategy builds on the fact that the rest of the world has to be a mess. So we better pollute at lot (elsewhere) in order for this to work. Ignoring this detail, the designs are actually not that bad.
Zeitgeist movement which Zday is in approaching (March 13.3) and whose online documentaries have been watched, according to the organization, by 50 million people around the world. Is quite a collage of classical utopian thoughts and designs. Their headquoters draws inspiration (unconsciously?) from Matti Suuronens Futurohouse, of which an greek alternative hosted an event in which YKON participated in Athens Biennale last year.
The Venus Project presents itself a a a bold, new direction for humanity that entails nothing less than the total redesign of our culture.
The initiative is good, even admirable, and if the project would not ignore its historical utopian sources it would even be something of a credible alternative. Because now the impulse to create a new culture, a society (a new human?) -a new form of organization outside the logic of Capitalism is dangereously close to replacing one nihilism with another nihilism. A utopian impulse can and maybe should also be reviewed in its opposite, in this case the Venus project can also be seen as a negative phenomenon, as a radical closure of social space? What kind of social space is being then proposed? Well reading the Zeitgeist Future Design guide, the society is very much in line with William Morris writings from the beginning of last century.
And the designs… hey please, Look closer to what is being created today. This is future design from the 90’s and backward!?
