randform

According to world-nuclear-news.org today -on French President Nicholas Sarkozy`s state visit to China- a deal was signed which ensures that

France’s national nuclear champion Areva will build two power reactors at Taishan, China and undertake a feasibility study for a used nuclear fuel reprocessing plant as part of an Eur8 billion deal ($12 billion).

Areva are also to provide “all the materials and services required to operate” the forthcoming 1600 MWe EPR units, to be sited at Taishan, 100 km southwest of Guangzhou and 150 km west of Hong Kong in Guangdong province.

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The communicative aspect of fashion had interested us already previously (like in our project d-room). In particular in this old post I was fascinated by the possibility to convey messages via fashion (here in form of the accessory fan). Buttons are also a popular method for conveying messages, but the “interactivity” potential which is given by the fan can’t be resumed by the buttons. The new possibilities of e-textiles can certainly be extended from interactive camouflage to a fully fledged on-body messaging board (like e.g. with a flexible e-paper-fabric). I like electronics (and in particular everything which has to do with light and LEDs) and admittingly I have a soft spot for the works of Hussein Chalayan however given the recent IPCC reports on climate change it is may be better not to look at Hussein Chalayan (at least for the moment) but at simpler environmental friendly solutions.

The below images* display a suggestion of how one can e.g. convey messages via ribbons to which I attached a little piece of velcro (unfortunately plastic) so that they stick to a woolen sweater. Of course one could take ribbons in different colors and different shapes as well (a microeconomy entrepreneur could make almost a business!). You can make up your own messages to the images, there is no fixed code to them. The last gif animation displays how one can wobble with the ribbons like with a fan.

Last not least – this messaging solution will face problems in summer.

*thanks to Chrissii for modelling.
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I am back in Berlin. It is nice to be back again, but I will certainly miss the very english local peculiarities like e.g. discussions about discussing car races!

Unfortunately e.g. the recent headline in the Berliner Zeitung displays that there are much more serious issues than car races which need to be tackled. In particular the Berliner Zeitung article asserts that the polar Ice seems to melt faster than previously assumed. (some more images via realclimate). According to Berliner Zeitung the Arctis may well be free of ice by 2040 instead of the by the IPCC predicted 2070. There seems also to be evidence that the species in the soil of newly frost free regions like e.g. in Siberia may enforce the runaway effect, where I hope that this effect is not going as far as in the mars on earth experiment, where there was finally not enough oxygen left for breathing.

One of the major problems which leads to an even more dramatic rapid climate change is clearly the danger of overpopulation. So rethinking social conventions and dynamics may be necessary.

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It seems to be a London week here at randform.
sensity is an audio-visual artwork that lets you hear and see data collected by wireless sensors around in London.

Since I keep reporting from our bike trip, I thought it may be useful to report about the route itself.

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radiationsymbol from wikipedia

“This symbol is included in ISO 21482:2007. ISO International Standards are protected by copyright and may be purchased from ISO or its members (please visit www.iso.org for more information). ISO has not reviewed the accuracy or veracity of this information.”
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image source wikipedia

new scientist reported about tests performed on a recent conference in which radio networks are used for wireless communication, a feature commonly called cognitive radio.

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A link to a site which organizes art around the G8 summit in May in Heiligendamm.

From the website “art-goes-heiligendamm”:

The supporting institutions in Rostock hope that the art interventions will have a de-escalating effect. An alliance of around 30 NGO’s have called for an alternative summit. ■ ART GOES HEILIGENDAMM is cooperating, through lectures and Multitude e.V., with the G8 coordination group, who have invited many prominent speakers such as the Nobel prize winners Wangari Mathai and Vandana Shiva; Jean Ziegler; Étienne Balibar; Madjiguène Cissé – a speaker from the Sans-Papiers organisation in France; John Holloway, author of “Change the world without seizing the power” and many more.

signpost at FEZ
The FEZ Berlin a children, youth and family centre (actually the largest in Europe) is one of the jewels of Berlin. FEZ-Berlin is run as a non-profit organisation of the Land Berlin and is divided into three main components: the educational work with children, youth and families, the Berlin State Music Academy and the indoor and open air pools.
It was originally founded in 1950 as the Pionierrepublik „Ernst Thälmann“.

For the educational work it hosts among others an ecology garden, a kids museum, a real kids train, which dates back to 1956 and the Orbitall -a space exploration centre for kids dating back to 1979. With various activities like e.g. the space camp mission kids get prepared for the future.

Important things need to be repeated. So this is the first repetition of the announcement of the 2010 initiative, an initiative for raising the awareness for the climate change in the architecture/engineering and design community. As of today the organizers say:

First, a big thank you to everyone who has registered – you are making this an amazing event! As you can see below, people, schools, firms, companies and organizations from all over the world will be tuning in on February 20! This is no small thing, since Noon to 3:30pm EST is very late or very early in many of these countries.

Unfortunately the european response has not been so overwhelming yet, in particular if I look under the letter’s F and G on the participants list then I see for France that the University of Nantes registered and a brave student from the University of Paris (super!) – that is at least something. I was also amazed to see Ghana and even New Zealand on the list! However, as one can see, the german contribution to the climate initiative has been sofar autotally unconvincing – in every respect!