advocating an autographic practice

how to make this idea respond and reference our current extractive nature towards ecology

how to look at nature as an informer not a resource – biocentric not anthropocentric

the power of language – robin wall kimmerer

Gaia – interconnected, self regulated systems – ‘interdependency’

holobiont – donna haraway – when you are interested in symbiosis / sympoetic assemblages 

also good to read on how humans are hyper keystone species and understanding the keystone species effect – to frame what is native, or invasive, and understand the relations between species and time’evolution

The air is polluted. you might think it’s not any more, but it is. the images of Londons great smog (1952) is as visually harrowing today as it we can imagine it was to witness in real time, yet we need not imagine as such dark clouds still engulf assembles of beings across the globe.

In this metropolis we rarely see these particles but they are there. They avade human sensory receptors, but our lungs see them. The plants and the water sees them. They linger in the noise and the dust, in the capillaries of soil and bodies.

(IQAir analyzed average air quality from 131 countries and territories, and found that just six countries met the WHO air quality guidelines, which call for an average air pollution level of 5 micrograms per cubic meter or less)

FRAME MY RESEARCH QUESTION

How is London’s air pollution expressed in the urban landscape?

Cyanobacteria are thought to be first photosynthetic plants. Eutrophication is deemed ‘toxic’ and dangerous yet it is an autographic trace of air pollution (namely nitrogen deposition from NO2) and global rising climate temperatures (the unprecedented algae blooms of 2022 cause by hotter summers). If climate trends / agro-industrial practices / sewage infrastructures remain as they are, London urban aquatic ecosystems may become consumed by eutrophication and we may begin to see this organisms as an abundant resource and respected carbon sink.

• this idea could lead to outcomes about futures of prevelant algae blooms across urban lakes and canals, designing tools that help to harvest wild algae, kits and recipe to make wild algae digestable, sachets of flavour additives that go with it, tools to scoop it and to detect its content and type, maps that have green in the places of all water subversive imagery about tasty blooms instead of toxic ones…
• eutrophication is from the greek ‘well nourished’…

……

this project is not advocating the use of algae blooms as resource, but instead reacting to trends that will ultimatly lead to nature reclaiming and self regulate

Although there is a diversity of phyto- plankton groups that can produce water blooms, those that can cause the most severe negative effects in terms of freshwater quality are dino- flagelates, diatoms, and cyanobacteria.

YET they are also the oldest photosynthetic organisms that produce the most oxygen out of all organisms

“The release of oxygen by cyanobacteria was thus responsible for changes in the earth’s atmospheric composition, the rise of aerobic metabolism and, ultimately, the evolution of multicellularity. Oxygen is the primary molecule that makes Earth what it is today, far more hospitable and beautiful than the early earth”

The Great Oxidation Event: How Cyanobacteria Changed Life

American Society for Microbiologyhttps://asm.org › articles › february › the-great-oxidation…

14.11.23 Experiment right up:

• I cut my plastic bags to chair and heats divided the sections, labelling each compartment with the amount of nitrogen + my name, the date and the strain of algae 
• I measuring out the different sodium nitrate amounts in 6 little bottles (choosing sodium nitrate because it’s the nitrogen source in grow medium)
• I took the ratio of nitrogen within the BBM grow medium as my point of reference – 25g per litre – and used this as the degree to increase by. (1.25g in my 50ml mixture)
• I added 10ml of water to the bottles to dissolve the sodium nitrate salt before putting them all in the autoclave (with slightly unscrewed lids) along with 400ml of water and my measuring 50ml beaker – all intended to be sterilised for 40 mins
• Got the algae from the drive and the BBM grow medium in the flow hood. I used a mechanic pipet where you could control the exact amount of liquid – so that I could add 1ml (1000) of the BBM into the measuring beaker, then poorer the first container (always go from least strong to most to avoid fucking up milder quantities) and then fill the beaker up to the 50ml mark with the sterile water and add mixture to the first compartment using funnel
• Repeat with the rest
• Then use the larger, pistol pipet to get 6ml of algae and add to each compartment

after one week:

Currently I have these three directions:

1. try make speculative (and mostly unpractical) devices that can perch in corners that gather particulate matter (using algae/Cyanobacteria as an urban ‘pet’ that eats the nitrogen in dust/PM10 etc):

• narrative: this idea is giving sense to the way the shape of the urban environment will effect where pollution accumulates and can therefore be visually identified, helping citizens understand the invisible threats from anthropogenic pollutions.

2. Try find a way to harvest the real time hourly data from the monitoring stations ( but is this even within my reach/ability?). How could this sensing infrastructure be creatively interpreted? could the data make a device play certain music / frequencies back to the plants in the park, could the information make a device feed an indoor algae farm more nitrogen… the algae blooms within this ‘exhibited bio reactor’ imply external conditions of the old kent road…

• narrative: there is technically an abundance of data available on air pollution but people aren’t able to meaningfully reacting to it.

• in addition to the above idea I could produce map how atmospheric climate data could influence the movement of people and the economy of better seen and registered – could housing prices be affected, would people change the time they walk their dog etc
• reach out to kings collage london about the monitoring station on Burgess park

3. Try to make pigment from burgess park algae in order to create education / workshop for locals about Cyanobacteria and it’s role in evolution and deep time and it’s ‘toxicity’ as a side story to what it can do and help

• narrative: the park at burgess park has signs everywhere about the toxic algae and its dangers yet its the first photosynthetic organism. Re-frame this organism through a creative ecology and diy workshop…
• contact ‘friends of burgess park’ again

2 potential framings of the project:

1.FRAME MY RESEARCH QUESTION: What is the subject, and what is interesting about it for you?

How is London’s air pollution expressed in the urban landscape?

Cyanobacteria are thought to be first photosynthetic plants. Eutrophication is deemed ‘toxic’ and dangerous yet it is an autographic trace of air pollution (namely nitrogen deposition from NO2) and global rising climate temperatures. If climate trends / agro-industrial practices / sewage infrastructures remain as they are, London urban aquatic ecosystems may become consumed by eutrophication and we may begin to see this organisms as an abundant resource and respected carbon sink.

• this idea could lead to outcomes about futures of prevelant algae blooms across urban lakes and canals, designing tools that help to harvest wild algae, kits and recipe to make wild algae digestable, sachets of flavour additives that go with it, tools to scoop it and to detect its content and type, maps that have green in the places of all water subversive imagery about tasty blooms instead of toxic ones…
• eutrophication is from the greek ‘well nourished’…

2. FRAME MY RESEARCH QUESTION: What is the subject, and what is interesting about it for you?

How can we make invisible ‘data’ on atmospheric pollution more available and effective in order to understand it?

It is interesting that there is an abundance of regular data on atmospheric air yet this remains largely un-accessed by those living in these locals. How could this data be used more effectively?

• I think it would be interesting to access the monitoring site / websites that log the data in order to create a kinetic art work that makes a sound for each type of pollutant when it goes above a certain level, or a smell is released on a road side, or a indoor plant is fed an ingredient that makes it wilt, or an algae bio reactor is fed more nitrogen causing an indoor mini bloom.

‘sensing the toxic with toxic’ – ‘toxicilary plants’

The air is polluted. you might think it’s not any more, but it is. the images of Londons great smog (1952) is as visually harrowing today as it we can imagine it was to witness in real time, yet we need not imagine as such dark clouds still engulf assembles of beings across the globe.

In this metropolis we rarely see these particles but they are there. They avade human sensory receptors, but our lungs see them. The plants and the water sees them. They linger in the noise and the dust, in the capillaries of soil and bodies.

London is a map. A map of materials that burn and rub and disintegrate. They are deposited and made to floated, melted and absorbed.

Cyanobacteria is thought to be the first ever photosynthetic orgainsm – insert bit from the podcast about how it did this – and can cause some organisms harm, such as humans. For this reason their blooms are deemed ‘toxic’. although being defined as poisonous the word “toxic” has gained significant cultural connotations beyond its original chemical meaning. In contemporary culture, it is often used metaphorically to describe unhealthy relationships, behaviours, environments, and aspects of society.

cynaonbacteria are in fact great air cleaners, sequestering … more CO2 than terrestrial plants and they bloom when nitrogen dioxide fixation is at a ‘critical load’, responding to high levels of atmospheric and land pollutions from carious agricultural and industrial activities.

‘eat your boroughs air pollution’

eutrophication is a bio indiction of polluted atmosphere, land and water. It also has many uses such as food, biofuel and products. I have used the live availability of digital monitoring systems to ‘feed’ these collaborating green pets.

It is interesting that there is an abundance of regular data on atmospheric air yet this remains largely un-accessed by those living in these locals. How could this data be used more effectively?

THE Great greening on london

(make map of ariel image with green ponds on every available roof – make action map of how to maintain these ponds – what to use to make them regeneratively. Make one on my roof???????)

‘eat our dust’

framings:

we don’t readily access digital data so how do we make this more effective?…. (link them with an autographic indicator ?)

cyanobacteria is the original photsynthesiser – the reason it blooms is becuase we throw it out of balance with pollution – toxic implies bad but we are the one toxifying it

I could introduce with a more emotion part like the above – and then say ‘the project is a reaction to a future where we do not rally against harmful anthropgenic, cultural pollution and these blooms continue beyond out contril

‘green nourishing’

algae blooms are a bioindication of pollution and rising annual temperature. they are only going to increase under current climate predictions.

• create a tool kit for eutrophication. it could be funny a dry and go into how to harvest it for food (cleaning it from the other pollutants and dangerous things in the water bodies).
• Eutrophication, which comes from the Greek eutrophos, “well-nourished”!!!
• could make algae calandar, recipes through the seasons – using the daily mail images

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S027869151830509X

it could be a very situated outcomes to do a workshop… does cyanobacteria have pigment and is there a way to do art with them? is there some pigment that can be stimulated with a certain light or some way to get the bacteria to create imagery. could plan/proof of concept if I was able to extract a typeof blue green algae from the lake that could aid in a creative workshop that intended to reframe the concept of ‘toxic’… could include history lesson about cynaobactia being the first organism to photosynthesis and vernally be an ecology lesson. 

skull and cross bones symbol for ‘toxicity’ could be part of a visual language

this narrative is an effort to de-center the human… defiantly something that could be colt talk to James Briddle about………

Could ‘toxic’ algae be reframed as ‘Phycoremediation’ ….

Phycoremediation is a technique used for treating chemically contaminated water using algae [9]. This technique also ensures no transportation of toxic compounds to the treatment sites via adsorption by the algae [10]. Phycoremediation technique is now successfully replacing physiochemical methods in the remediation of the environment due to the unique characteristics of algae in assimilating various toxic pollutants in aromatic hydrocarbon, phenols, heavy metal and organochlorine [11,12]. Algae have been effectively used for wastewater treatment owing to their intrinsic property for removing nutrient, metal and organic compounds [13,14]. Besides, algae could utilise phenol as a single carbon source [15,16,17]. At present, algae from the genus Chlorella, Spirulina, Scenedesmus and Chlamydomonas are the notable non-pathogenic representatives of microalgae that have been employed in phycoremediation of phenolic compounds [18]. Ubiquitous distribution and production of in situ oxygen are desirable factors for algae in wastewater treatment [19,20,21]. Interestingly, algae can be used for the long-term protection of the environment from toxic compounds. This review will cover topic pertaining to mechanisms involved in phenol degradation by algae.