Live Food Café – Dhyana Beaumont

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Green smoothie preparations, step 1

Using bike pedal-powered smoothie blenders and various food-foraging expeditions, Dhyana creates a connecting device between the power of fresh nutrient-rich food, and the pragmatic politics of finding or growing sources of fresh food today. Expeditions to/from the local farmers markets, community gardens, enviroschools efforts and other local growing spots will be explored, as well as trips to seek out other local food sources, such as several council-tended gardens which are specifically grown to be foraged.

You are invited to participate:

Please keep an eye on this project page if you would be interested to join in with Dhyana project and either make yourself a bike blender, come for some biking excursions, or simply try out her best recipes. Below are some of the current opportunities where Dhyana will be out and about with her smoothies and bikes.

Participate as part of the Festival of Lights

23 January, 7-9pm – Band Rotunda

If you see a glowing bike blender it is Dhyana Beaumont and her fabulous green smoothies! Say hello and check out what green smoothies are and what the taste sensation is like. You might find your kids love vegetables after all.

109 Devon St W-  (SCANZ Central)

18-29 January

Make a green smoothie on a bike blender, view re-blended :: remixed video moments of previous LIVE FOOD CAFE ventures.  Check back for times for group foraging to the public orchards, times may vary according to need.  If you have an idea to discuss or are interested to join in on workshops, please let Dhyana know via the
workshop registration form or drop by SCANZ Central.

Farmers Markets

22-30 January, 9am-12pm – Sunday Farmers Markets
Dhyana will also be at the weekend Farmers Markets in New Plymouth on the 22nd and 30th of January.

VIDEOS
MAKING GREEN SMOOTHIES :: RAW FOOTAGE

LIVE FOOD CAFE (raw footage) from Dhyana Beaumont on Vimeo.

MAKING GREEN SMOOTHIES :: MIXED

LIVE FOOD CAFE from Dhyana Beaumont on Vimeo.

MAKING GREEN SMOOTHIES:: BIKE BLENDER :: MIXED

bike blender mashup 01 from Dhyana Beaumont on Vimeo.


LIVE FOOD CAFE :: presentation from Dhyana Beaumont on Vimeo.

 

LIVE FOOD CAFE FLYER:: call 4 participation

New LIVE FOOD CAFE promo

 

 

opening of the hive taranaki:: 5th Dec

opening of the hive taranaki:: 5th Dec:: bike blender in action


Dhyana Beaumont has exhibited nationally as a painter since 1992. Recent study involved Masters of Fine Arts investigating socially responsible art with an environmental edge, incorporating video installation in site-specific contexts.  Masters projects were a response to the Wellington Bypass cutting through the top of Tonks Ave and Cuba St. Projects were intervention or event based for projecting at street parties, projection nights to raise awareness about rebuilding community, voting strategy nights, installations on the streets, CBC film raising night pro sustainable communities peaking in a presentation at a Green Party Convention.

She later Collaborated in video installation project for the Fringe called “VanTV: Transforming Video on Wheels” involving projection in public spaces.

Blog

http://livefoodcafe.blogspot.com/

Refer to my blog for further information/inspiration
This blog is a thinking out loud space and involves my research to get this project alive.

http://vimeo.com/dhyana

link to my videos – recent videos will be titled as live food cafe
http://vimeo.com/18046744 (raw footage)

http://vimeo.com/18044675
(mixed video)

actual videos – raw footage is unmixed video
mixed video::  poetic doco using layers of transparent footage using Chaos Lab a VJ program being developed by Cameron Mckechnie

Pollinator Frocks – Update

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This update makes public a series of short experimental videos that develop the ‘Pollinator Frocks’ project (prototype clothing designed to attract and feed endangered pollinating insects). The three video shorts are works in progress and are representative of ‘process led’ research and practice currently in progress in New Plymouth, NZ as part of the SCANZ: Eco Sapiens 2011 residency, public events and exhibition. There are three shorts: Circular Pollinator Walkabout NZ and Chasing Moths and most recently Monarch on Pollinator Frock NZ. All of the videos have been shot in Pukekura Park as part of the Festival of Lights programme of events. For more on the Pollinator Frocks project see the other videos on Karen Ingham’s You Tube channel and visit the main project page on the Intercreate project website: http://www.intercreate.org/scanz-2011/residency-projects/pollinator-frocks-project-karen-ingham and see also http://www.kareningham.org.uk/pollinatorfrocks.html

PLUME – Raewyn Turner and Richard Newcomb

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Electron microscope image of olfactory sensors

In this project Raewyn Turner and Richard Newcomb focus on the unconscious perception of the human plume — the scents and particles we all shed behind us in the form of a wake. Research into plant/insect/animal/human sensing of the human plume, shows that the plume may include emotional state information. The many new synthetic flavours and fragrances being created may also be taken up into the human body and expressed in the human plume. We need to ask what impact these newly fabricated olfactory and gustatory molecules are having on our reading of the emotional signals of our everyday lives. What would be the consequences of being able to smell the full fragrance of life? And what trails of information are we leaving about our lives to those that follow?

Project Update: During the residency period, Raewyn will be joined by Brian Harris as her cooking collaborator at the 109 Devon Street working space. This edition of the project is called PLUME; 4,000 varieties of orange.

Project Research Phase — Crossing Wires

Crossing Wires - public dialogue

Crossing Wires - public dialogues

The ‘Crossing Wires’ installation provided a window into the seldom seen world of the science laboratory blended with performance exhibition art. The installation offered the public the opportunity to experience science experimentation and participate in active dialogues on the cultural, social and temporal constructions of our sensed reality.

Scientist, Dr Richard Newcomb has research interests in olfaction in both humans and insects, and in ways of comparing these different biological systems to address how they have evolved. Raewyn Turner is a practicing artist exploring sensory science through alternative expression, including the extrasensory and subsensory plant-animal-human communication. ‘Crossing Wires’ acted as a fusion of their two worlds where science meets art and the boundaries between each dissolve.

The project worked together with the public to categorise odours extracted from worn socks. Over the three week installation, raw material was collected and processed to obtain olfactory samples representative of the essence of humans currently walking on the earth.

Richard Newcomb and Raewyn Turner also decided to create a ‘fish-bowl’ environment for the ‘Crossing Wires’ working installation in order to allow them the time to learn more about art and science collaboration and to generate the first draft for their larger scale overall project.

For more information see:
http://crossingwireslab.tumblr.com/

Miniature Green Bikes (donate or pimp your old rides!)

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Green Bikes in action

Green Bikes is a community bike recycling (fixing, modding, reselling very cheap or giving away) scheme.

During SCANZ we will hold a miniature, two-week version of the scheme in order to try to get all our residency participants and local people on safe, self-propelled, low-carbon transport.

The different parts of the scheme that will be going on during the 2011 SCANZ event are as follows below, and we welcome your participation.

Bike refurbishment – donate your old bike:

Do you have an old bike going unloved or unused? The bikes will be refurbished for use during the residency, and then sold to the public, with all proceeds going to Hive Taranaki, our regional environment centre.

Three ways to donate your bike:

1. Drop off at WITT reception between January 5 and 10.
2. Drop off at New Plymouth District Council reception on Tuesday 11 January between 1-5pm.
3. Email benefieldn@npdc.govt.nz to arrange for your bike to be collected.

Participate in the workshops:

Mini Green Bikes will run from 10am–4pm each day at 109 Devon Street West, so that you can also bring in your bike to do any of the below.

  • Bike Fixin’ —  Get some fixin’ help and/or to just brush up on bi-pedal machine maintenance with Jonah’s experienced help.
  • Bike Crates — We invite people to get their bikes ‘crated’ which involves fitting a carrier to their bike if they don’t have one, then simply attaching a beer crate to their carrier using a cheap $3-5 ratchet strap.
  • Bike Trailors — Have a go at making a bamboo bike trailor with Jonah’s help, and make your bike that much handier for that little trip to the shops!
  • Bike Beautification Workshops — open workshops will be held where you can attempt whatever pimpification you might have in mind for your ride. Bring in the materials you will need, and Jonah can give you a hand putting it together.  Contact Jonah if you have any questions. Also have a look here for some crazier ideas to get your thinking moving… !

Green Bikes Schedule:

  • Detailed Schedule
    18-Jan 10am-4pm Bike crate
    19-Jan 10am-4pm Bike trailer
    20-Jan 10am-4pm Bike fix
    21-Jan 10am-4pm Bike beautification
    24-Jan 10am-4pm Bike crate
    25-Jan 10am-4pm Bike crate
    27-Jan 10am-4pm Bike trailer
    28-Jan 10am-4pm Bike beautification

All workshops take place at SCANZ Central, 109 Devon Street West (next to Kina). Workshops times may vary according to need, and you are welcome to stop by at any time.

If you have an idea to discuss or are interested to join in on workshops, please let Jonah know either via the workshop registration form, or by emailing him directly.

Captain Jonah Marinovich

Jonah Marinovich of Green Bikes, Whanganui is a long-time grass roots community activist. Almost single-handedly managing and operating the Green Bikes organisation which gathers, salvages and re-sells bikes. Jonah is also a collaborator on the Slow Flow project of Julian Priest, with at least 20 bikes supplied by Green Bikes, upon which one partakes in the slow bike ride journey from Jerusalem on the Whanganui River, down to where it reaches the ocean at the city of Whanganui.

This project is being supported by the Let’s Go sustainable transport project of the New Plymouth District Council. A package of works funded by NZTA and local partners to ‘fast track’ a community that can change travel behaviour through improved transport choices. More information about the Let’s Go project is available on the New Plymouth District Council site.

 

 

[NB: All registration and contact links have been removed, post-event]

light, sweet, cold, dark, crude – ÆLab

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light, sweet, cold, dark, crude (LSCDC) is a study of wastewater management systems, of water in various states of composition, decomposition and recomposition. The series of electronic art micro-events was created in conjunction with industrial and ecodesign groups, in order to reflect on two different systems. This work draws from Dr. John Todd’s Eco-Machines which work with plants, fish and algae, without the addition of human-made chemicals to create regenerative processes.

ÆLab is an artistic research unit with Gisèle Trudel and Stéphane Claude from Montreal, Quebec, Canada. The artists acknowledge support from the Canada Council for the Arts, the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec and PAFARC-UQAM.

www.aelab.com/flevoland/lscdc/index.html
www.toddecological.com

Participate as part of the Festival of Lights

January 19, 21, 26, 28 – 11am – meet at Band Rotunda.

During this workshop, participants will produce their own audiovisual work about the importance of water in the botanical garden, while reflecting on the possible reuse of wastewater. The focus is to work creatively with technology about ecological issues and to discuss each other’s projects, while being in direct contact with the production and (hopefully) presentation environment. Sound and image collection will happen on site at the garden, where we also hope to be able to present the works.

Workshop is open to residency participants and local residents.
Participants will work collaboratively in groups of 2-3 people.
Maximum of 9 participants.

Please note there will not be any technical support for the production of the collective works.
Each participant must be proficient in audio and video production techniques and bring their own production equipment (video camera, computer with editing software, mics, headphones, portable audio recording device, portable amplified speaker device).

A detailed outline will be distributed on the first day of the workshop.

LSCDC

Ælab, LSCDC, 2006-09. Stéphane Claude recording audio at the EcoMachines, Sharon, Vermont

LSCDC

Ælab, LSCDC, 2006-09. Gisèle Trudel recording video at the Station d

This is a test

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Read more

Screening Event: Areosphere and Atmosphere

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from 8:30pm – midnight, January 25th 2011 at New Plymouth Observatory

The debut launch of ‘Areosphere and Atmosphere’ will take place as a late night screening event at the New Plymouth observatory, Marsland Hill, New Plymouth. A double video projection and an experimental sound composition will be played on the dome.

While we wait for darkness to fall, an open panel discussion between the artists Nina Czegledy and Janine Randerson and astronomers John Calcott and Paul Moss will take place. We will focus on the polar regions of Mars and Earth, from Science fiction imaginings to ‘terraforming’.

This event is open to the public, as well as New Plymouth Astronomical Society members and SCANZ artists-in-residence. Come along!

Biomodd Workshop – Angelo Vermeulen

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Above a succinct summary of Angelo’s wider Biomodd work and concepts.

Workshop for 8-20 people
In the workshop participants will explore how to connect recycled and open source computer technology with the living environment. A series of second hand computers is disassembled, and new units and networks are being constructed in which diverse forms of small-scale biological life co-exist with the electronics. The participants are invited to come up with novel ways to make both worlds communicate through energy exchange, cooling mechanisms, simple sensors, etc. These hybrid systems are finally used for multiplayer gaming. Participants can learn how to graphically modify existing games, or bring their own software. The workshop draws upon the international Biomodd art project initiated in 2007. More info on the Biomodd community website.

Dates and times
18-21, 24, 25, 27, 28 January, 10am – 4pm, other times by arrangement.
Venue:  SCANZ Central – 109 Devon Street West (next to Kina).
You are welcome to drop by any time.

Tangible skills that participants will acquire: ecosystem building, computer recycling, case modding, open source software usage, game modification, energy management.

Want to participate?
Go to the registration page here [link removed post-event] and tick Biomodd under the ‘Workshops to be held Jan 17-29’ heading.

Result of the Biomodd Workshop at KIBLA in Maribor (Slovenia), 2010.

Testing and reconfiguring used computer parts during the Biomodd Workshop at KIBLA in Maribor (Slovenia), 2010.

Sampling local flora during the Biomodd (ATH1) project in Athens (Ohio), 2007.

Participant testimonies about the Biomodd (LBA2) project in the Philippines, 2009.

This is from an article that appeared on the Philippine ABS-CBN News website: “Leo Olivades, a student at UPOU, has been learning to grow plants with computers. He is part of a group of volunteers that built Biomodd, an art exhibit that uses recycled computers to power an ecosystem, on display at the Museum of Contemporary Art and Design in Manila. At its core, Biomodd is a network of computers, the excess heat from which has been harnessed to sustain an ecosystem that includes plants and fish. The computers have been equipped with a game that visitors can play. The more the game is played, the more the computers are used, and the more robust the ecosystem grows. For Olivades, Biomodd is not just an art exhibit; it is an experience. “It has some kind of dynamic characteristic,” said Olivades. It sort of encourages people to come out of themselves.” Although he does not consider himself a ‘team player’, usually preferring to work alone, Olivades said that Biomodd changed his perspective on group cooperation. In a personal statement posted on the project website, Olivades notes that the Biomodd experience reminded him of the Filipino concept of ‘bayanihan’, the traditional idea of a volunteer community project.” Continue reading here for the full article.

 

Angelo Vermeulen is a visual artist, filmmaker, biologist, author, and activist. His research in ecology, environmental pollution and teratology informs his art, which includes bio installations, experimental setups incorporating living organisms and sci-fi references. His projects include ‘Blue Shift’, a Darwinian art project in collaboration with biologist Prof. Luc De Meester, and ‘Biomodd’, a worldwide series of cross-cultural, symbiotic installations fusing game culture, ecology and social interaction. He is currently collaborating with the European Space Agency on the use of ecosystems in future space settlement. Vermeulen exhibits and lectures globally. In 2010 he was awarded a TED Fellowship.

Adapting the worldscape of modernity to climate change — Ruth Irwin

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It is well known that modern industrial “business as usual” is “very likely” (to use the IPCC’s technical term) to create a tipping point in the earth’s climate that will take us from the Holocene, through the Anthropocene and collapse to a new climatic Age altogether. This apocalyptic scenario is what Heidegger describes as the “proximity to the zone of nihilism”. Ironically, Heidegger regards this proximity as potentially the greatest possibility for transforming modernity towards a more authentic relation with the earth.

At present, enlightened knowledge is enframed by modern technology. Through mass production, storage, trade, and communication, the technological lens has both freed people from the constraints of their localised ecology, but also alienated us from the needs of the earth. The question to ask is whether all components of modern trade and its concurrent technologies are the problem. Trade, after all, has occurred for thousands of years without producing climate change. Is it the massive global population then, and the longevity made possible by modern medicine, that is overcoming the earth’s capacity for absorbing pollution and thus, exceeding the carrying capacity of the planet? Again, not necessarily, as several billion people manage to live on less than 2 tonnes of CO2e per annum. These people have access to some of the benefits of modernity; medicine for example, but not rampant consumerism. Herein lies the crux. Consumerism is based on the premise of profit and exponential economic growth. It is actively encouraged by nation states that have enshrined economic growth into their financial legislation. All of this is based on the “fractional” banking developed in the late 18th century.

Adaptation to climate change means rethinking the relationship between climate change, consumerism, the definition of wealth, and alienation from the earth. This cannot entail a return to some kind of romantic pastoralism, because the global population is too heavy for the horse and cart to manage. But embracing certain indigenous concepts of whenua, or the inextricable connection between the earth and the people, like a placenta or umbilical cord, could begin to dissolve the antithesis between the bulk of the global poor and the modern elite whose toxic emissions are causing calamity for us all.

Dr Ruth Irwin is a Senior Lecturer in ethics with the Centre for Interdisciplinary Business Studies. She did a double major in her undergraduate degree, in the History of culture contact, and Women’s Studies. Ruth has won the Commonwealth Scholarship, Bright Futures, Ryoichi Sasakawa, and William Georgetti Scholarships. Her research interests include Nietzsche, Heidegger, Deleuze and Guattari, and ecofeminism, modernity, and climate change. She engages with globalization, philosophy of economics, philosophy of education, and philosophy of technology. She is the author of three books and she has published journal articles and book chapters on Nietzsche, Heidegger, the critique of neoliberalism, philosophy of subjectivity, philosophy of education, philosophy of science and technology, globalisation, and the philosophical and cultural implications of climate change. Ruth Irwin is a foundational member of the Sustainability Research Group at AUT.

Thriving in a World of Complexity – using Living Systems Thinking

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In this workshop we will question long held assumptions and knowledge about how we make things happen in complex environments, communities and organisations where things are seldom black and white.  That will involve us better understanding the nature of complexity itself, its networks, dynamics, ambiguities, patterns and how the new emerges within in it.   In this domain we need to be prepared to replace our simple and complicated “problem solving” and “change management” processes with more effective ways involving networks,  inter-dependence,  win-win alliances and telling new stories that lead us towards the long term outcomes we all seek – far beyond just today’s sustainability practices.

Living Systems Thinking is about taking lessons from nature and applying them (sometimes called Biomimicry).   The Tipu Ake ki te Ora Organic Leadership model (www.tipuake.org.nz), the Cynefin Framework, a range of other participative exercises and fun will be used to help us do that.    Its all about growing team behaviours and organic  leadership that can exploit our collective wisdom and co-creative power.

Andree Mathieu and Peter Goldsbury – Educator, University of Sherbrooke, Quebec, Canada and Learning Facilitator, Strategic Expertise Ltd, NZ