[Terrapreta] Fwd: mechabolic in cnet / nyt today

[peter]

If anyone on this list is interested the Burning Man event (and hopefully as a presenter in the Paviliion area) I will work with you to hook you up with the folks in your area who go to help make this journey an easier one for you.   
   
  >curious opportunity for richly presenting the integrated potentials of pyrolysis, gasification and terra preta.<
   
  I'd also add it can be unique opportunity to get the concepts of terra preta exposed to a group of folks that will highly open to exploring the ideas of it as well as to those who might be willing to finance some experiments in it.  
   
  Peter 

jim mason <jimmason at whatiamupto.com> wrote:
     
   
  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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