{"id":687,"date":"2009-05-26T19:29:23","date_gmt":"2009-05-26T15:29:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.journalarabia.net\/?p=687"},"modified":"2009-05-26T19:48:59","modified_gmt":"2009-05-26T15:48:59","slug":"pecha-kucha","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.journalarabia.net\/?p=687","title":{"rendered":"Pecha Kucha"},"content":{"rendered":"

Pecha Kucha<\/a> night is tomorrow night at Shelter<\/a> and Elizabeth and I are presenting the Land Art Generator Initiative<\/a> there. Per the standard protocol of Pecha Kucha we’ve put together a slide show of 20 slides that we can present for 20 seconds each for a total of 6 minutes and 40 seconds for the presentation:<\/p>\n


<\/object><\/p>\n

I’ve sped up the slideshow here so that it’s not too boring.<\/p>\n

SLIDE 1
\nThe goal of the Land Art Generator Initiative (LAGI) is to design and construct Environmental Art installations in the UAE that have the added benefit of large scale clean energy generation. The sites will be tourist destinations that will draw people from around the world to experience the beauty of the
\ncollaborative art creations here in the UAE. The art itself will continuously distribute clean energy into the UAE electrical grid.<\/p>\n

SLIDE 2
\nOver 40 different methods of harnessing energy in a renewable and non-polluting way exist and many more are in the process of being developed. We\u2019re going to show you three examples of some common
\napproaches that are proven and being implemented around the world.<\/p>\n

SLIDE 3
\nFor each example we will be listing megawatts and how many households they power for an equal comparison. to give you a sense, the entire UAE currently consumes 10,000 megawatts and it is estimated that we will need 40,000 megawatts capacity here by 2020. A solar power tower has the capacity to provide 10 – 40 megawatts. That\u2019s 5,000 to 20,000 households.<\/p>\n

SLIDE 4
\nConcentrated solar power is where parabolic mirrors focus energy onto a water pipe thus generating steam to run a turbine. It\u2019s the technology that is being used at MASDAR\u2019s Shams 1 project in Abu Dhabi. This will be a 100 megawatt plant which is equal to about 1% of the UAE\u2019s current needs. 100 of these would run the entire country. We have the land and we have the sun.<\/p>\n

SLIDE 5
\nThis is the Agucadoura wave park off the coast of Portugal. Wave parks like this can generate about 40 megawatts per kilometer stretch and the further off shore they are located the more efficient they
\noperate. So the technology is there and there are so many other ways to generate clean energy. What we need is a way to stimulate and inspire support for it.<\/p>\n

SLIDE 6
\nLand Art can be described as installation art in the open environment where the landscape acts as a complex canvas for the sculpure. They work together. They are linked. We are now going to show you a few slides of historic examples. While you look at these, think about how they might inspire works of art that are as captivating and at the same time harness the energy of the environment in which they are placed.<\/p>\n

SLIDE 7
\nWalter De Maria, The Lightning Field is comprised of 400 polished stainless steel poles installed in a grid measuring one mile by one kilometer. The poles\u2014two inches in diameter and averaging 20 feet and 7 inches in height\u2014are spaced 220 feet apart and have solid pointed tips that define a horizontal plane.<\/p>\n

SLIDE 8
\nRobert Smithson created a coil 1,500 feet long and 15 feet wide which uses black basalt rocks and earth from the site that stretches out counter-clockwise into the translucent red water. One could imagine a similar work that has the added benefit of harnessing the energy of currents or collecting the inherent electronic impulses of salt water.<\/p>\n

SLIDE 9
\nMichael Heizer\u2019s City attempts to synthesize ancient monuments, Minimalism and industrial technology. The work derives inspiration from Mississippian mounds, Mesoamerican ball courts and Pre-Columbian sites. Covering a space approximately one and a quarter miles long and more than a quarter of a mile wide, City is one of the largest sculptures ever created.<\/p>\n

SLIDE 10
\nJames Turrell\u2019s Roden Crater is an extinct volcano crater northeast of Flagstaff, Arizona. Turrell purchased the 400,000 year old, 3km wide crater in 1979 and has been transforming it into a massive naked-eye observatory. Rooms within the work have pools of water which capture the sound energy of distant stars.<\/p>\n

SLIDE 11
\nCurrently the 10,000 megawatt energy needs of the UAE are handled with 60% gas fired and 40% oil fired power plants. MASDAR\u2019s Shams 1 will take 1% of that and place it in the green piece of the pie. But the era of fossil fuels is nearly over and the pace really needs to be much faster. So what can we as artists do in order to stimulate the action that is so desperately required?<\/p>\n

SLIDE 12
\nThe time is now for artists to take an active role in solving this problem through their own work. Through an open call to international interdiciplinary teams we intend to generate ideas as the first step in the process. Since we have yet to hold this competion and exhibit, the slides you are about to see are sketches of example pieces.<\/p>\n

SLIDE 13 & 14
\nThis renewable energy media sculpture is a video projection, with live streaming video footage of Glacier Bay National Park in Alaska visible 24 hours a day on Sheikh Zayed Road on your way from Abu Dhabi to Dubai. The imagery will be ever changing as the wild landscape shifts minute by minute. The camera in Alaska will be powered by a Wind Turbine. This piece could potentially power itself as well as the petrol stations and street lights along the highway.<\/p>\n

SLIDE 15 & 16
\nThe Korfakhan Necklace consists of 832 wave energy collecting devices that resemble in their above water sculptural form the individual ornaments of a necklace. The long tendril shapes that they form follow the flow of the water to the shore and are ever-changing as the movement of the water. It is this movement of water that creates the energy inside the body of each amulet where fluid is pressurized to run a turbine generator. The energy is then transmitted along to the outermost band and to the shore where it is fed into the energy grid where it has the potential to power the approximately 15,000 households of this East coast city.<\/p>\n

SLIDE 17 & 18
\nShwaib Radiometers is an orchard of glass spheres 36 meters in diameter, each housing a light mill which spins when heated by the sunlight. This energy is captured by turbine generators below the ground at the root level end of the narrow shaft-housing trunk. The light passing through the spheres would be further utilized by photovoltaic panels located at ground level. All together the installation would roughly satisfy the electricity demand of the nearby town of Shwaib.<\/p>\n

SLIDE 19 & 20
\nWe need support in order for the initiative to have pragmatic site\/art proposals that come out of an open competition where artists, scientists, engineers, and architects are encouraged to submit ideas.
\nTogether we can create a system where the monumental task of shifting our approach to energy generation and consumption becomes a shared one. It is an effort that can be seen as being borne through collective and necessary interests. By approaching clean energy generation in this way, The Land Art Generator Initiative will have the effect of broadening the audience that will become engaged in the long-term solution.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Pecha Kucha night is tomorrow night at Shelter and Elizabeth and I are presenting the Land Art Generator Initiative there. Per the standard protocol of Pecha Kucha we’ve put together a slide show of 20 slides that we can present for 20 seconds each for a total of 6 minutes and 40 seconds for the … Continue reading “Pecha Kucha”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":244,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-687","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-diary"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.journalarabia.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/687","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.journalarabia.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.journalarabia.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.journalarabia.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/244"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.journalarabia.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=687"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.journalarabia.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/687\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":696,"href":"https:\/\/www.journalarabia.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/687\/revisions\/696"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.journalarabia.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=687"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.journalarabia.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=687"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.journalarabia.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=687"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}