exhibition and conference at ESC/Graz, in the context of the Time Inventors’ Kabinet project and the Actuelle Kunst im Graz-festival.
OpenGreens – Aktionen und Rezepte für eine nachhaltige Stadt
At ESC, Annemie Maes mounts a wall installation representing a virtual netwerk of OpenGreens. OpenGreens are grey city-zones, where culture and nature overlap and finally enter into a symbiotic relationship. 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.
http://esc.mur.at/opengreens-esc.html

Voronoi-Diagramme sind ein Symbol für die OpenGreens und zeigen Stadtstrukturen auf. In der Installation OpenGreens Graz I werden die für die Stadt interessanten Gebiete – Brachland, Baustellen, Gärten, Parks und andere Freiflächen erforscht und in den Stadtplan eingetragen, gekennzeichnet mit Post-its, Farben und anderen Markern.
Der Stadtplan wächst mit der Zeit, unter Beteiligung des Graz-Tik-Teams und interessierten BesucherInnen der Ausstellung. Die Information wird gleichzeitig in die OpenGreens Datenbank und den opengreens.net Blog eingetragen.
Swohl die Datenbank als auch der Blog sind Teil der Ausstellung, die gleichzeitig auch als Arbeitsort dient, an dem Menschen weitere Informationen eintragen können.
Continue reading →

Following the bee monitoring workshop, we have an Okno OpenGreens working day:we start to clean out the garden, compost last years’ herbs and make a design for the coming season, bring in the monitored hives and introduce new garden projects, e.g. ‘butterfly project’.

All sensors for the observationhive arrived and we got 4 webcams, so we’ll have a lot of toys to play with in our 2nd bee-monitoring workshop.We can start enhancing our glass observation hive! Bart Aertsen, professional designer carpenter, will make a shed to protect our new observation hive from hard sun and snow. He’ll also bring some working material and a dremel. I have an additional dremel to use.Please bring your additional electronics, your soldering iron (we have some at okno – 1 good one) and more stuff you think to be handy …

All previous research and work from the first bee monitoring workshop can be consulted here:
http://timeinventorskabinet.org/wiki/doku.php/bee_monitoring_workshops (general)
http://timeinventorskabinet.org/wiki/doku.php/beehives (beehive desings)
http://timeinventorskabinet.org/wiki/doku.php/data_harvesting (electronics)

Next week we have the first public presentation of our OpenGreens database. This will happen at ESC in Graz, Austria – our partner in the TIK/ EU project.

The Connected OpenGreens project is a collective OKNO project.
COG is a project around marginal zones [in the city] where culture and nature overlap and enter into a symbiotic relationship.
The project researches different bottom up approaches for designing green human environments that have the stability and diversity of natural ecosystems.
In the COG database we keep scrutinuously track of the monitoring of these ecosystems. We insert technology in the gardens and take a closer look on how the fusion of natural and artificial matter produces new natures.
The COG database is initiated by Annemie Maes spring 2010, the first public presentation took place in Graz, Austria, march 2011.

Credits:
Database concept & structure: Annemie Maes & Danielle Roberts
Database design: Annemie Maes and Danielle Roberts
Frontend design & code: Danielle Roberts
Backend design & code: Balthazar de Tonnac
Voronoi code: Lee Byron
Adaped by: Marcio Dominguez
Intern: Jozef Devos
Production: Annemie Maes for OKNO vzw
The Connected OpenGreens database is part of the ‘Time Inventors’ Kabinet’ – a transdisciplinary project setup in the framework of EU-culture, with the partners OKNO, ESC and Col-me.

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/

Monday february 8th, 14°C and all bees are flying out. They start their spring cleansing flights, and they pull all dead bees out of the hive. The temperature inside the hive is rising up towards 33°C – this means that the queen started ponding eggs again, and that there is young brood to be taken care off by the worker bees.
I wonder how it is perceived by the bee colony, to fly out and to find nothing: no pollen yet, no nectoar neither. The bee-flights are executed close to the hive. The bees stay low to the ground, as if they are looking for something …

The Stropharia Rugoso Annulata is a first experiment in a series to grow edible mushrooms in the so-on edible rooftop garden. We choose this specimen of mushrooms to start with, as it is relatively easy to grow on mulch, so one does not need the more complex and delicate method of working with spawn on logs.
Over the weekend, I spend a saturday afternoon by cutting willow-wood into woodchips. According Mycobois, the supplier of the mushroom-brood, this is an appropriate kind of wood to grow the King Stropharia. Early february, I spread the spawn over 2 square meters, on a wind-protected and relatively shady spot in the rooftop garden. Over the spawn I spread the willow woodchips in a layer of 10 cm. In the top layer of the woodchips I divided the rest of the spawn insmall holes, 20cm apart from each other. Along the information, the mycelium should start growing through the woodchips, and in a few months the whole surface of the chips should be covered by mycelium roots.
Around the months of may/june, I can expect the fruits, the Stropharia mushrooms. This should go on over a few months, till it becomes too cold in october.

Stropharia rugoso annulata, commonly known as the wine cap stropharia, “garden giant”, burgundy mushroom or king stropharia, is an agaric of the family Strophariaceae found in Europe.
Unlike many other members of the genus Stropharia, it is widely regarded as a choice edible and cultivated for food.
The king stropharia can grow to 20 cm high with a reddish-brown convex to flattening cap up to 30 cm across, the size leading to another colloquial name godzilla mushroom. The gills are initially pale, then grey, and finally dark purple-brown in colour. The firm flesh is white, as is the tall stem which bears a wrinkled ring. This is the origin of the specific name which means “wrinkled-ringed”.
It is found on wood chips and bark mulch across Europe in summer and autumn. Described as very tasty by some authors, king stropharia is easily cultivated on a medium similar to what it grows on naturally.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stropharia_rugosoannulata

Continue reading →

A workshop in which we try to understand the distributed intelligence of social insects (here a bee colony) : their behaviour, ecology and sociobiology. By monitoring the bees and beehives with all kinds of sensors, we study the colony as a community. We will document this research with all kind of media (photo, film, audio, text, code) and we will use the extracted data to make artworks based upon the bees behaviour over time. We try to connect nature and technology in a new relationship of interconnections.

To schedule our research and for purposes of documentation, we devide the work into 4 parts, which all will have their pages on the wiki where participants can add information:
1. The Theory + Reading List
2. The new BeeHives
3. The Data Harvesting (Technology)
4. The Artworks and Projects
You can find all info here:
http://timeinventorskabinet.org/wiki/doku.php/bee_monitoring_workshops

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 →

http://padma.okno.be/Vgduxoku/00:00:06.000-00:11:58.000
Watch the interview on the OpenGreens at Changing Tents by clicking the padma-link above.