Das Symposion EcoConference2 am 9. und 10. April wird auf folgende Themen fokusieren: Wahrnehmung von Zeit, Erinnerungskonzepte und -modelle, Bedeutung und Definition von Zeit.
The symposion /EcoConference 2 on 9th and 10th of april will focus on the following topics: perception of time, concepts and modells of memory, meaning and definition of time.
Konferenzsprache/conference language: english.
all info on: http://esc.mur.at/index.html


Sunday, 10th of april / 11am – 4pm / Annemie Maes: OpenGreens
OpenGreensGraz: wasteland research and mapping session
OpenGreensTik: introducing the Tübinger mix monitoring project

Version 2 of the windclock describes the OpenGreen rooftop garden in the center of Brussels. The wind-values, registrated by the photosensor, are linked to the description of the plants in the rooftop garden. The stronger the wind blows, the more present the plantnames are – expressed in fontsize.
The overall movie gets a voice-over by the bees of the garden: they comment on their foraging area and add another layer to the wind movie.
More on padma.okno.be …

Seed Sovereignity: International Days of Action, Brussels, 17-18 April 2011.
Tens of thousands of people throughout Europe are actively demanding that the right to produce seeds remains in the hands of small farmers and gardeners. A diversity of crops has nourished mankind for thousands of years. Seeds that we have inherited from past generations are the basis of life and are essential for food sovereignty.
more on: http://www.seed-sovereignty.org/EN/index.html

Video on the Navdanya Seedbank of Vandana Shiva:
http://padma.okno.be/Vt332bqm/info
and http://padma.okno.be/Vt332bqm/00:00:00.000-00:11:46.561

and Vandana Shiva on The Future of Food:
http://padma.okno.be/Vhm6jxoh/info
http://padma.okno.be/Vhm6jxoh/00:00:00.000-00:07:04.891
This video gives a summary of an interview I conducted with Vandana Shiva during the workshop and seminar ‘The Future of Food’ on the Navdanya-farm in Dehradun, India – early october 2008.
https://so-on.annemariemaes.net/SO-ON/articles/Shiva_V_The_Future_of_Food.pdf
https://so-on.annemariemaes.net/SO-ON/articles/future_of_food.pdf

See also: how to make seedballs
http://opengreens.archive.okno.be/2010/03/25/tubinger-seedballs-for-diversity-graz/

Since last year, the OKNO’s are setting up bee-monitoring systems. Last year, the bees were faster than us, and the technology was half ready when the bees started to swarm and went into their new home (not yet equipped with sensors and other stuff …).

This year, whe hope to be on schedule. We’ve set up 2 bee-monitoring workshops, in which we gather and exchange the experience of beekeepers, bee-technologists, bee-monitors, or just people interested in bees and their behaviour. We will be 8 people to work during 2 days in a very concentrated way on new bee-houses (see below) and enhanced beehives. Some of you have already experimented with specific parts of the technology (sensors). let’s see how we can make the best out of it by putting construction, hardware, software and bee-behaviour knowledge together.

The purpose is to develop a device that can serve for bee-monitoring in an extended network (local & international). We want to offer the observation-data online in realtime via a dedicated server, and we want to be able to compare the data forthcoming from different beehives. Will we end up with a stand-alone bee-monitoring device to add to the hive, or will it be a manual on how to augment your own beehive to fit into the network. Time will tell!

Some nice manuals to start from for building hives:
micro dwellings for bees:
http://www.n55.dk/manuals/micro_dwellings/micro_dwellings.html

Continue reading →

How sustainable is the city?
Can we provide for our own food, our own energy, our own media ecology?
Can we grow a selection of fruits and vegetables in rooftop gardens or collect wild edible plants in wastelands and on building sites – enough to live on?
Are you interested to start your own OpenGreen, on your balcony, your rooftop or your window sill?
Come and talk to us, we can advise you on how to set up green patches in unusual places … and get the best out of it.
You can find all information on OpenGreens in the first edition of our OpenGreens catalog, download the catalog here: https://so-on.annemariemaes.net/SO-ON/OpenGreen/COG-catalog/v.1.0-smallspread.pdf

And on the flickr page below you can visit an overview of the participation of okno’s OpenGreens in the Changing Tents Village of the Burning Ice#4 festival – rehearsals for a changing world.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/souon/sets/72157625894603306/

Good Afternoon!
We are in 2025. We know by now that there has been a one week settlement here, at the Quay des Péniches 2, 14 years ago.
After 7 days, everybody was gone. We know by now that on the 6th day, on saturday 22 of january 2011, a big crisis appeared which caused a moment of panic and despair. Short after, people were recognizing that the alarm were false. There was a party whole night long.
We don’t know what happened the next morning and early afternoon. We only know that everybody and everything was gone by sunday 23 january 16:00 in the afternoon.
We invite you to now have a look together with us on what was going on.
Feel welcome to the future!
Step in, and please note: you will enter a recorded situation as soon as you step into CHANGING TENTS.
[radical_hope, Brussels – january 2011]

Read here the collapse text, written by Jacob Wren and read by Katja Dreyer.
More Changing Info: http://www.open-frames.net/changing-tents/

During Changing Tents, I’ve got from a visitor the link to this Avedon picture and the accompanying story in exchange for a pot of urban honey:

Ron Fischer was born and raised in Oak Park, Ill., and spent much of his adult life working as an accountant for various high-powered financial services companies.
But always in the background was the pull of his grandparents’ 1844 farm between Orion and Coal Valley, Ill., the fifth-oldest in Rock Island County.
He spent a lot of time there as a child, developing an interest in gardening, and as an adult he staked out a plot of his own where he planted an orchard and berry patches of all kinds. He worked in the Chicago area, but he returned to the farm for his hobby.
In 1970, he bought a honeybee hive because his berries and fruits needed bees for pollination and, having “no idea how to keep bees at all,” he took courses from the University of Illinois and Ohio State University.
Fischer’s life has now come full circle. In 2005, he bought 60 acres of the farm and moved there. Now he is the expert, teaching others about beekeeping.

Continue reading →

For all info: www.changingagenda.be

For even more info and the list of micro-sponsoring :
www.open-frames.net/projects/furnishing_means_moving_on

This fourth edition of Burning Ice will be built up around the theme of economy. Climate change confronts us with the consequences of our actions. It turns our world-view with its endless growth completely upside down. Our civilisation appears to be underpinned by waste, excess and fundamental inequality. The capitalist theory of progress believes in economic growth as the best measure of human well-being, in a market price in which all costs are contained and in money as the perfect indicator of value. We can understand the current crises as an inevitable result of the blind faith in this holy trinity: growth, price, money.
In Burning Ice #4 we will hear economists, philosophers and artists who criticise this blind faith, introduce new values and principles to economic reasoning, link growth and environmental impact, andtalk about the illusion of the correct market price and a repositioning of money.
Burning Ice #4 positions itself between the theoretical, practical and poetic views of economics. Thistri-pod is given concrete form by the three locations: the KBC auditorium, the Changing Tents and the Kaaitheater.

Six ‘hexayurts’ together form a temporary zone for social and economic change. At the invitation of Radical Hope, ten artists have spent two months preparing this ‘colony’. Artists, scientists and other visitors are invited first and foremost to come and help build the zone on Monday 17th January. Following this, and for one week, the hexayurts will be the setting for the study and practice of concrete change, a place where people themselves can take action and put forward ideas: ideas concerning other forms of organising work, urban food production, alternative energy management, innovative funding, new forms of knowledge production and so on.
Changing Tents is a social ritual which everyone, including visitors, can experience by makingsuggestions during the course of the week. From the beginning of January you can programme your own activities as part of Changing Tents by adding them to the Changing Agenda.

Workshop on electromagnetic arts. Interference-free Foraging Mobility in Brussels.

Results of December 12th walk (5 walkers, 5 devices) in the garden of okno (Again wide band high frequency intensity).
http://www.psychogeophysics.org

Electromagnetic fields can have adverse effects on living organisms – honeybees are especially sensitive.
Although urban environments provide beneficial habitats for bee colonies, the electromagnetic field concentrations can disturb the bees’ orientation and communication capabilities. To assist city bees with this issue, participants can work on an interference free foraging map.

workshop organised by foam,
december 10,11,12 – 2010 at foam, Koolmijnenkaai 30 – 1080 Brussels

some EMF – audiowalks, recorded by Alejo Duque during the workshop:
BeexlsEMF by planktum