[Terrapreta] Fwd: mechabolic in cnet / nyt today

[jim mason]

the art project i am using as the platform for developing and presenting
publically the potentials of gasification, pyrolysis and terra preta, was
written up in cnet and nytimes today.  the details of gasification and terra
preta didn't get name mention in this round, but they will as we progress.

the article is mostly about the odd collision of an event based mainly on
fire arts, with a new concern for engaging green issues.  i find this
collison a most curious opportunity for richly presenting the integrated
potentials of pyrolysis, gasification and terra preta.

50,000 people will be in attendance to consider the possibilities.

jim





---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: jim mason <jimmason at whatiamupto.com>
Date: May 7, 2007 3:50 PM
Subject: mechabolic in cnet / nyt today
To: Icp <icp at spaceship.com>



http://www.nytimes.com/cnet/CNET_2100-11392_3-6181680.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

here is a nice article considering how burning man might do the impossible:
become a compelling venue for exploring participatory alt energy solutions.
but everyone asks, "can an event primary founded on fire, really be anything
other than wildly consumptive and destructive"?  or does it just get a free
pass because it is about something other than our everyday living.

either way, burning man trying to be green is really confusing.  none of us
are really sure what to do with it.  the disjunct is too great on so many
fronts, which i think is great.  finally, a theme and event scenario that is
not already obvious.  things unknown are going to happen.  the roll out is
not just sitting on the shelf waiting to go.

all the easy environmental and luddite platitudes do not work when trying to
discuss green and burning man in the same sentence.  being green is nearly
always about being/doing less.  smaller, lighter, gentler.  in its most
ambitious forms, the best way to be green and self-righteous about it is to
agree to do nothing.  go back to the land and sit, physically or
symbolically.

but what if you want to live in a world of creativity and innovation.  a
world of technology expanding our abilities, understandings, interactions
and pleasures.  what if you want to manifest and play, mix and stir; make
ideas, things and experiences be where they weren't, but not make a disaster
for the planet in the process.

if there ever was a concentrated crucible in which to ask this question, the
question of whether we can have profoundly more existence and profoundly
less impact at the same time, it is burning man.

burning man and green sets up a vast assembly of creative manifestors, with
the imperative to create bigger, better, faster than they ever have before.
but now adds to it, the imperative to rethink the entire process so we don't
make a mess in all the many ways we are currently concerned about messes
globally.  not the little messes on the playa.  but the messes in the larger
systems in which we participate and play, while we orchestrate the
creativity and innovation that has proven so compelling on so many fronts.


towards this end, the mechabolic is going to be gasifying trash at the
event.  we are going to be gasifying event trash to create gaseous and
liquid fuels for fire effects, mobility and electricity.  the byproducts of
the gasifiation are charcoal and ash, which becomes a terra preta soil
amendment, returning the biomass nutrients in the event trash back to the
soil, while sequestering carbon as charcoal in the process.  free carbon
sequestration through plow agriculture.  all energy of decomposing biomass
mined and used for energy, instead of lost through slow decoposition.
nothing left to rot and off gas methane to the atmosphere (a la
composting).  all of which, oddly, requires the thoughtful use of fire.

who would have thought that there was a way to burn things to a more healthy
planetary carbon cycle?  but such is the promise of an integrated
application of gasification, pyrolysis and terra preta.

the mechabolic project will be rerolling these three most curious
technologies into art.  so come join us as we make a trash scavenging, land
speed streamliner banana slug, bio-machine hybrid, walk through burlesque of
the synthetic metabolic processes of our mechanical animals, all of which
will hopefully reveal the odd and wonderful ways we have based nearly all
our industrial energy processes on the carbon/hydrogen based energy
transport system of the natural world

i think that's what daniel was trying to get at the in the cnet/nyt article
. . . http://www.nytimes.com/cnet/CNET_2100-11392_3-6181680.html?_r=1&oref=slogin


j




--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
jim mason
website: www.whatiamupto.com
email: jimmason at whatiamupto.com
announce list: http://lists.spaceship.com/listinfo.cgi/icp-spaceship.com
current project: mechabolic (http://whatiamupto.com/mechabolic/index.html)




-- 
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
jim mason
website: www.whatiamupto.com
email: jimmason at whatiamupto.com
announce list: http://lists.spaceship.com/listinfo.cgi/icp-spaceship.com
current project: mechabolic (http://whatiamupto.com/mechabolic/index.html)
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