Due to the environmental pollution tampering our mother Earth that is spreading across the world nowadays, team TAPOK (Tinguha Alang sa Pagpalapnag sa Obligasyong pang Kalikupan) have come up with an idea of spreading environmental awareness with the use of theater and arts in expressing perspectives. Furthermore, conjoining technology as a tool in redeeming our mother Earth into a more satisfying environment and a nourishing habitat, and the arts became a challenge and a necessity. Team TAPOK decided to present a theater play entitled LISO NI LAUM wherein the concerns in our community regarding water, land and air pollution is given an emphasis.

The team's project of promoting awareness through a creative performance will highlight on how we abused and misused our natural resources and on how we can reduce the environmental impacts from our day to day activities from simple ways to bigger actions. In the same manner, team TAPOK will be using costumes, sets, and props from scraps to illustrate our passion and advocacy.

In the first five days of our rehearsal, we felt the challenge that says “we cannot do it” because most of the members of the project are first timers when it comes to theater arts and we all have different ideas, that makes everything change from time to time.

However, as we go along the process and met people with theater arts experiences, we grew in mind and in spirit that inspires us to finish and bring this project on stage and to people that will definitely give the ribbon for our project’s success — spreading awareness to the community.

What do we like most in this project? Through team work, we have experienced how fun it is to co-work with young and artistic minds for our story. And how we creatively turned trash into costumes with Andrew Quitmeyer’s shared knowledge. Just as people should act with our Earth’s intensifying cry.

Team TAPOK took only two (2) weeks to prepare for our play entitled “Liso ni Laum” (Seed of Hope). Each of the individuals did their best during their rehearsals. Will the given two weeks be enough for them to present a jaw-dropping output?

During the project making, team TAPOK have been busy mounting our script. Our script was actually already composed during the workshop conducted by YATTA (Youth Advocates Through Theater Arts) but it became one of their struggles because of the often changes and additional ideas of some individuals are added. In the end, the script was finally made. Even though the actors for the play were first timers in acting they were good at it. The performers of this production were very excited because everyone contributed during the script making and some of them will perform on the beach for the first time.

The performers were in charge to their own costumes and props. To lessen the expenses, they borrowed from the YATTA’s properties like some of the props and costumes of the past plays. They also used recycle materials like disks, leaves, ribbons and bottle caps for their headdresses.

The team encountered some problems with time management, because some of the performers were often late during practices and sometimes they also do things not related to the play. We also struggled with movements, levels, blocking and dialogue, because they often forget their parts.

In regards with the sound effects, Liza Marie Ragusta was the stage manager at the same time that she was the sound technician. The sound effects were cool and hilarious. It made the audience guffaw and it added essence to the play.

Rojan Talita, their amateur director did a great job in directing and guiding the performers during the rehearsals.

Team TAPOK also have a song and dance number for the finale of the play. Some of their kapatids (siblings) from YATTA helped them with the vocalization for their song.

Team TAPOK had our technical/dress rehearsal last May 6, 2016 at Banilad Marine Sanctuary specifically on the BOAT Lab. Andrew Quitmeyer did a great job suggesting to Team TAPOK what they have to do to enhance their production. Right after the technical/dress rehearsal, Team TAPOK proceeded to their practice area (Consuelo Multi-Purpose Center) and there they applied the suggestions of Sir Andrew.

Before the final exhibit the casts of the play prepared theirselves for the presentation. All of them looked good especially Basmuk (The Garbage Monster) who looked terrifying and perilous. Before the performance, the team prayed together for God’s blessings and guidance of their final exhibit.

During the Exhibition Day, May 7, 2016, Team TAPOK presented their play at Banilad Marine Sanctuary. Team TAPOK’s crew were excited and nervous at the same time on how the play would go. There were difficulties before the play started, one was the stage is too small, another was the lights. The stage during the exhibition day was too small than the one they practiced with, so as performers they have no choice but to go on with the show and adjust with changes. The lights used were of the same color. Those were just minor issues but the show must go on.

The play went well, but there were minor issues. First was a microphone always falls down, every time a huge bang occurs in the stage. Second was the cast was having a hard time adjusting on the small stage, they are afraid to move around because the stage’s floor isn’t level. Third was on their final act where they sang with a guitar but the guitar was late making the song lousy, but after a few lines the guitarist caught up with the singers.  Besides all that, the show went on like it didn’t happened. They had impromptu make-ups for their casts, which turned out awesome.

Team TAPOK received a well sounded ovation from crowd. With all the difficulties they had, and having 2 weeks to prepare for a play, Team TAPOK did a good job. A lot of people appreciated their work. All the time and effort spent to make play was indeed worth it. Showing people the effects of their actions to nature, and the consequences it brings. Sharing knowledge of the environment with people and giving them ideas on how to care for it. The cast had a great time with the show and so did the crowd. With every member of team TAPOK working together and some other support from other teams, everything in the plan was made to be. To sum everything up all of the teams did a very good job on that day. Everyone had fun, with the exhibits and the play. Everyone enjoyed the snacks served. Together with Team Viz, Sea Sense, F.U.P.P.I., and TAPOK the exhibit day ended well. Smiles were everywhere because of the great things they’ve done for the environment.

Team TAPOK will have their second show on 26th of May 2016. This will be held at Dumaguete City’s dumpsite, situated at Barangay Candau-ay.

The play "Liso ni Laum" (Courtesy of Team Tapok)

Team TAPOK took no rest in creating and spreading environmental awareness to the people of Dumaguete City as they staged their second performance of the play “Liso ni Laum”.

Last May 26, 2016 at exactly three in the afternoon, Team Tapok performed in the Dumaguete dumpsite, Candau-ay Dumaguete City, a place where all the garbage in the city are being delivered and deposited to decompose, with relatively a handful of locals residing in the area, some of them were scavengers in the site. The performance was part of the KAMPBATAAN 2016, a camp organized by the Youth Council of the Consuelo Foundation Life Skills plus Program through the Youth Advocates Through Theater Arts. The Project Manager of the program coordinated with the barangay’s councilor for the venue and other logistical needs.

As part of the team’s goal to spread awareness, the performance’ venue makes it more appropriate as it was surrounded by mountains of garbage, as some were already occupying the near vacant lot. The people who watched were so eager to see what will happen next as was observed on their faces as they were educated to the morals of the story. The play also fits the audience as most of them were scavengers and some were government officials who implements the law.

The Barangay Councilor was so touched by the story that the team was once again invited to perform on the feast of barangay Candau-ay.

Today, the team seeks for more partnerships of the LGU’s and NGO’s to create and spread awareness to more people, within or outside the city.

With increasing pollution levels, it is essential for our team to find new ways to psychologically approach a new medium pertaining to self awareness in relation to the environment. The aim for this project is, (1) to get people involved by sparking their interest, (2) to relay data from all the information we have regarding the environment and (3) to introduce technology and art as a way of emotionally connecting with people.

Our project has 3 different approaches and designs. The main project is to create a 3D projection screen that gives out a hologram like output with the use of fog and, of course, for that we need a machine that creates a fog. It's basically much more convenient to just buy a fog machine but locally we can’t find one and It’s much more “fun” and we get to experience and encounter different problems in building one which gives us more insight in the world of technology. We also needed to build a platform to direct the airflow of the fog in order to make the projection screen.

There is only one problem with the main project and that is the wind factor that might blow away the projection screen so came up with some backup plans which also serve as an output to give out data to people.

Two of the side projects is (1) to manipulate addressable LED strips that functions as an output from the inputs of the different sensors that we have and creating a fun and amazing concepts to how it would blink or like what colors to show.and also (2) the making the of the waterfall curtain that can also serve as a projection screen. We also attach an LED strip into the top of the curtain’s pipe to give out beautiful light reflections.

We hope our approach can attract people to see for themselves and spark the interest of the local people. Some might find it new and very intriguing, and at the same time we would also be letting them know what is happening in the environment with the use of the projection screen. This may convince them to get involved in making a difference and make the world a better place for generations to come.

Week 2 of the Waterspace project (courtesy  of  Team Viz) 

The 3 projects have been initiated, (1) The water projection screen was mounted into the BOAT Lab using bamboo as the material, (2) The LED Strips were stapled on the BOAT Lab and (3) The fog machine was already built and so is the fog projection screen device.

PVC pipe (or water screen) installation (courtesy  of  Team Viz)

Minimal problems were encountered in mounting the water projection screen. When mounted we observed that the BOAT Lab was not leveled properly, having the water flow only to one side. Our solution to that was to add another component in the PVC Pipe establishing another one in the middle, the intersection point between the current of the water was placed in the middle of the new established PVC pipe, distributing the water equally between two sides.

Although the water projection screen was okay, a lot of problems was again encountered in the fog machine. The unexpected thing was the ceramic around the heating element was broken due to excessive moisture from the fog. So we tried to figure out another alternative to prevent that but due to a small timeframe we just decided to buy another tea kettle. And just to be safe we bought two.

Week 2 of the Waterspace Project

May 7, 2016, Exhibition day for the Waterspace teams. There is a huge pressure on us (Team Viz) because we had to setup everything on the exhibition day. We started setting up our projects at around 9 am, and we have 10 hours to set everything up. On the last minute our fog machine broke but with Team Viz’s magic they fixed it right away. We made everything work on that day.

Before the end of May, our team coordinated with Dolf Andringa a marine biologist and we thought of expanding the community to get as many students involved since it would be the start of class soon, and since all of this is about learning to collaborate each and every one’s ideas. The Team Viz Initiative does not only mean visualizing all the creative ideas that comes to mind but to actually implement it. We do not only envision a community of greater and rich culture but we would also like to make that happen, and personally I plan to do so.

In regards with the projects, Team Viz has already initiated the Glowing Buoy project and we actually experimented in mixing the silicone with neodymium powder and applied it with an expendable styrofoam ball and waited for the night to see if it would work. After the experiment we concluded that though it still glows in the dark, due to its transparent attribute of the silicone and because of the neodymium powder doesn’t highlight it colorful property at day, it seems like it's just an ordinary styrofoam ball.

So we are planning to use acrylic paint or any paint that is not toxic and collaborate with artists to paint using the buoy as the canvas and afterwards apply glowing silicone to make it look awesome at night.

Glowing Buoy experimentation (Courtesy  of  Team Viz)

Foundation University Precious Plastics Initiative (FUPPI) is a project based on the Precious Plastics program of Dave Hakkens. He has posted blueprints of a shredding machine, extrusion machine, compression machine, and an injection machine. The idea is that we can collect plastics and transform them into something; be it a pot, a top, a vase, a plate, or make it into a thread of plastic which you can manipulate into whatever you want. Foundation University, being national champions for best eco-friendly school in the Philippines, our team feels that this is a logical step forward. This is our small contribution to our school’s thrust in creating a cleaner, more livable community. The community in Banilad can benefit from this project because they will see how these machines are built and they can create something from an otherwise wasted material.

The Challenges

Having access to the blueprints made our team very excited, we were confident that we could build a shredder and an extrusion machine. We got what needed for building the framework from metal cut offs from the construction site in our north campus. Then came the question of the electric motor, shredding blades, and heating elements. It turns out that low RPM motors cost a lot of money… too much money for our budget. An alternative was to to get a 2-3 horsepower high speed motor and connect that to a reducer/converter to get it to turn at 40-60 RPM. This would cost us 1/3 of the price of a low speed motor. Then, we had to find suppliers for the blades and heating elements. As it turns out, there isn't one in Dumaguete. We had to find them in Manila or Cebu. Unfortunately, quotations took several days to come. We started to worry. At first we were afraid, we were petrified, thinking how we could ever build without blades and heating elements by our side. But then we spent so many moments thinking how it all went wrong, then Clint grew strong, and decided how to move along. So now we're back, we got quotes for the shredder and the heating elements. Only worry is if they can arrive in time for us to install and test before the big day in May 7.

The Fallback Plan

In case the blades, heating elements and motor will not arrive in time, we have two fallback plants. The first is we will make a plastic bottle stripper; this makes a long, narrow, strip of plastic from plastic bottles. The second fallback is to melt plastic bags and mix it with sand to make “bricks”. Plastic bags and sand are two things that are quite abundant.

So, May 7th has passed. All the groups were able to show their respective projects to the community and the guests. The great thing about that event was that we got to meet with people were interested in our project. There was a couple that was very glad that we were doing the Precious Plastics. They were glad to see this project because they are also planning to do a similar project. This was great for us because this means we can share experiences and learn from each other, especially from each other’s mistakes.

Now, let us go back to reality; back to our reality that we are still missing crucial components for our machines. First, the bad news; the parts for the shredder are expensive. We mentioned that already but as it turns out, it is even more expensive that what we originally thought. We are now looking for other sources of funds so we can get those parts. But, there is some good news; our heating elements are coming in this week. When (and if…fingers crossed) that arrives, we can assemble our extrusion machine and test it.

Barrels and Plungers (Courtesy of the FUPPI community project members)

Finally, our heating elements have arrived. Now what? As it turns out, the electrical part is a bit tricky. As a result of this mind boggling gadget, we have asked for help from one of our colleagues. We are waiting on him when he becomes available. In the meantime, we have made mock-ups of our barrel and plunger. A detail we missed earlier is that these pipes are welded. We need a smooth surface to the injection machine to work. Therefore, we have a guy going around the city to ask whether there is a shop that can smoothen the pipe out for us. We have also made arrangements with our metal working shop to lend us some tools. Things are starting to look up.

Heating Elements (Courtesy of the FUPPI community project members)

Heating Elements (Courtesy of the FUPPI community project members)

Heating Elements (Courtesy of the Team FUPPI community project members)

Before we talk about our Precious Plastics injection machine, I would like to share another project that a member of team FUPPI was involved in. It is called a bio-mechanical goat. The concept is simple, have a plastic barrel where you put biodegradable materials in, turn it, put some water, after a few weeks, you have compost. Well, a member of team FUPPI, Clint Absin, worked on a version which has a stationary bike attached to it. This way, you cycle to turn the barrels; you cycle to recycle… Catchy.

Bio-Mechanical Goat (Courtesy of the Team FUPPI community project members)

Bio-Mechanical Goat(Courtesy of the FUPPI community project members)

Going back to our injection machine; it is taking shape, in fact, we lack a hopper and…. Well, that’s it basically.  However, we still have issues, as always. Our extrusion bit is too short, we are looking for a longer one to buy or to fabricate, whichever comes first. Another concern, our axle for our shredder, we are still waiting on the machine shops whether they will make one or if we have to buy it ourselves. If we have to buy it, good luck, we couldn’t find it in the city. We are looking once again, outside the island.

Making of Extrusion machine, Compression machine, and an Injection machine (Courtesy of the FUPPI community project members)

Making of Extrusion machine, Compression machine, and an Injection machine (Courtesy of the FUPPI community project members)

Making of Extrusion machine, Compression machine, and an Injection machine (Courtesy of the FUPPI community project members)

ZERO1 and the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs are pleased to announce the artists selected to participate in the 2016-17 American Arts Incubator (AAI), an international new media and digital arts exchange program developed by ZERO1 to support American artists and underserved populations working together to create impactful community-driven public art projects that address local social challenges. The accomplished hybrid artists and the locations chosen for this next exchange cycle are Elaine Cheung (Russia), Scott Kildall (Thailand), Michael Kuetemeyer (Cambodia), Nathan Ober (Colombia), and Balam Soto (Guatemala).

Each of the selected artists will lead a training workshop, production lab, and public exhibition addressing a social challenge during a month-long exchange to each country. Through AAI’s experience-based learning methodology, participants will engage in discussions, activities, and experiments around a social challenge of local importance. Small grants will be awarded to participant groups from the local community, creating new opportunities for collaborative innovation. By applying creative practices to social challenges, community participants will develop their own arts-based solutions to bolster local economies, influence public policy, and further social change.

The five American artists will act as cultural envoys, using artistic collaboration to foster new relationships built upon common social values and the collective exploration of differences. They will share their technological skills and aesthetic sensibilities with international creative explorers working in the burgeoning fields of social entrepreneurship and arts-based community engagement.

ZERO1 is proud to welcome this year’s AAI artists into our ever-expanding network of hybrid explorers in art, science, and technology. In the year to come, we will be working together to provoke and explore new ideas that build more inclusive, engaged, and vibrant communities around the world.

Meet the Artists

Elaine Cheung

Location:

Moscow, Russia

Elaine Miu Cheung works at the intersection of art, design, computing, and technology. Originally from Los Angeles, she explores themes relating to our embodiment of tech, future systems, and experiential interactions. As a Chinese-American, she bridges ideologies from Eastern and Western perspectives and practices, which feeds into her most recent work on the nature of consciousness through wearable technologies. In 2013, she completed her BFA at University of California, San Diego majoring in Interdisciplinary Computing and the Arts and has just completed an MFA in Media Design Practices from Art Center College of Design. Her work has been exhibited in San Diego, Los Angeles, and Grinnell, Iowa. Most recently, she traveled to Myanmar as a summer researcher and UX designer at Proximity Designs, developing strategies for brand identity and joining a collaborative research team exploring betel farms and the potential for technological and smart systems in rural farming.

Scott Kildall

Location:

Bangkok, Thailand

Scott Kildall is a cross-disciplinary artist who writes algorithms that transform various datasets into 3D sculptures and installations. The resulting artworks often invite public participation through direct interaction. His work has been exhibited internationally at venues including the New York Hall of Science, Transmediale, the Venice Biennale and the San Jose Museum of Art. He has received fellowships, awards and residencies from organizations including Impakt Works, Autodesk, Recology San Francisco, Turbulence.org, Eyebeam Art +Technology Center, Kala Art Institute and The Banff Centre for the Arts.

Michael Kuetemeyer

Location:

Phnom Penh, Cambodia

Michael Kuetemeyer is an award winning media artist and teacher of experimental and documentary media. He received his MFA from Temple University and BS from University of Wisconsin - Madison. He is a recipient of a Fulbright Scholar Award and a founder of Termite TV Collective. His work has been broadcast on PBS and screened at festivals and museums worldwide, including the Museum of Modern Art, the Flaherty Film Seminar & the Museum of Television and Radio, New York. As part of SPACES, a social practice artist residency funded by ArtPlace America, he is currently an Artist in Residence at the Village of Arts & Humanities in Philadelphia. He is committed to creating innovative, socially engaged participatory media art projects with communities. He was awarded a Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation, Artist and Communities Grant to conduct a youth filmmaking residency at the Reichhold Art Center in the U.S. Virgin Islands. Michael currently teaches in the Film & Media Arts department at Temple University.

Nathan Ober

Location:

Colombia

Nathaniel Ober is an artist whose work crosses disciplines from installation and performance, to video and sound. His interdisciplinary works examine concepts of human perception and natural phenomena. Nathaniel’s current research is focused on astronomy and astrophysics, which deal with techniques of sonification and processes that attempt to expose our innate connection with the universe. Nathaniel’s work has been exhibited nationally and internationally with over 40 solo and group shows. In 2009 he moved to New Delhi, India to serve as Program Director of Visual Communication and Interactive Media Design at Raffles Millennium International, later transferring to the Raffles Design Institute in Colombo, Sri Lanka. He is currently working as a hybrid artist and educator in the Bay Area. He earned a Master of Fine Arts from the Digital Arts and New Media program at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Columbus College of Art and Design.

Balam Soto

Location:

Guatemala City, Guatemala

Balam Soto creates contemporary, exploratory artworks that fuse low tech with high tech, including interactive art installations, public artworks and video. Balam works independently on the artistic and technical sides of his pieces. An award winning, internationally acclaimed new media artist, Balam has exhibited in fine art venues worldwide including: the AluCine Latin Media Festival in Toronto, Canada; World Maker Faire at the New York Hall of Science Museum in Queens, NY; El Museo del Barrio in Manhattan, NY; Gallery of Oi  Futuro in Brazil; Queens Museum of Art  in Queens, NY; Everhart Museum of Natural History, Science & Art in Scranton,  PA; the Centre Cultural in Brussels, Belgium; the National Library of Cameroon in  West Africa; and the Art and Technology Corridor at the Three Rivers Arts Festival  in Pittsburgh, PA among numerous others. Balam has received four Editor’s Choice awards from the World Maker Faire held at the New York Hall of Science Museum in 2010, 2012 and 2014. Balam is the owner of Balam Soto Studio and co-owner of Open Wire Lab, both located in Hartford, Connecticut.

Balloon mapping, using a tethered red weather balloon with a small time lapse camera attached, was a great way to meet curious walkers along the water’s edge. It was also an amazing way to explore and document areas along Dunedin’s coastline that are vulnerable to sea level rise. Thanks to the toolkit from Public Lab, helium from the Otago Museum, and an unusually sunny day, we documented 7 coastal locations.

The ZERO1 New Zealand Arts Incubator program was a rare opportunity to learn and explore climate change issues on the South Island of New Zealand with amazing community partners and participants. Many of the ecological challenges facing the South Island, such as sea level rise, rivers polluted by industry, drought, a warming ocean, ocean acidification, and endangered animals, are issues shared across the globe.

Next Steps

The local New Zealand incubator participant artists are working on prototype 2 of their projects to be featured at Dunedin’s Vogel Street Party and the Art and Futures conference at the Dunedin School of Art this October. We are looking forward to seeing these great projects evolve and create more community dialog about art, climate change and resiliency planning in New Zealand.

The Climate Kit exhibition is planning a show in collaboration with the California College of Art and the University of California at Davis in the future. We will be launching our global project submissions on the climatekit.org website soon.

Hear more about Climate Kit on the radio!

• "Climate Kit: When Technology meets Climate Action" — Radio New Zealand
• Sustainable Lens: Resilience on Radio — Otago Access Radio

The Climate Kit: Field Tools from the Anthropocene exhibition at the Otago Museum was a big success with a great turn out on opening night, despite the morning ice storm. Check out this interview we gave during the final hours of the installation process with 39 Dunedin TV.

The Living Map

Bridie Lonie, Luke Easterbrook, Beth Ferguson, Sara Dean

The Living Map adds three-dimensionality to the projections often used in modeling the effects of climate change. Historical, present and future geological projections provide important data for the resiliency planning regarding coastal sea level inundation. The digital map layers are from Surging Seas, the Dunedin City Council, the Otago Regional Council, and the National Library. This project was led by Bridie Lonie from the Dunedin School of Art along with Sara Dean and Beth Ferguson from the ZERO1 New Zealand Arts Incubator with the help of Luke Easterbrook from the University of Otago, the Otago Museum, and Workspace and Andrew Early at Otago Polytechnic.

Dunedin Youth Map

Karen Parker, Jen Smith, Tahuna Normal Intermediate School 7th grade class

The Dunedin Youth Map was led by 7th grade teacher, Karen Parker, of the Tahuna Normal Intermediate School. She developed civic icons with her students and then created a community participatory map for the Otago Museum Climate Kit exhibition. The public was invited to interact using a combination of the icons, emoji, and eco icons from the Green Map System. Karen’s 7th grade class joined us for a day of balloon mapping to document their sports field, a site that is vulnerable to flooding due to saltwater inundation with sea levels rising on the coast of South Dunedin. The class plans to continue to develop the Dunedin Youth Map project this year.

Stones and Bones: A Geological and Paleontological look at New Zealand

Amy Smith, Katherina Marino, Rebecca John

Most people do not think about climate change on a geological scale. The Stones and Bones exhibit is meant to show visitors that the rocks and fossils beneath our feet tell a story. We can learn about paleoclimates and see how vastly different our surroundings used to be. The Stones and Bones project shows a rock core columns and a panel engaging geological history and human engagement with rocks and fossils, with particular emphasis around the Otago region.

Shedding Some Light: Dunedin’s Dark Skies Initiative

Emma Hanisch, Conor Feehly, Ravitesh Ratnam, Colin Smillie

This project relates to the Dark Skies Initiative proposed by the Dunedin City Council. They are considering the implementation of shielded LED street lighting to replace the current sodium models. While this is a council vote, the public is involved in the decision-making process. Therefore, our aim was to create an exhibit which will initiate interest in light pollution and solutions. We provided information on the different options the council are considering along with examples of lighting solutions currently being implemented across the globe. Elements of the exhibit include information panels on doors covering many different topics related to the Dark Skies Initiative, and a box containing alternate street light models and images of the night sky from Dunedin.

This past weekend marked the end of our workshops and the distribution of our community small grants. On Saturday, at the Otago Museum, we heard from community groups about local issues ranging from sea level rise, to erosion, to neighborhood resiliency, to light pollution, to geologic time scales of climate change.

Four project proposals were selected to receive small grants and be developed further in the next two weeks. All project concepts are relevant to climate issues facing Dunedin and the surrounding Otago region. All four of the projects have larger communities and experts that they are drawing on for resources, ideas, and longevity plans. We were impressed with their grasp of the short- and long-term plans for the project. We’re excited to see the projects take shape for the exhibition. The four projects are:

• Bones and Stones: a “field guide” for New Zealand geology, including two enlarged “core samples” showing the geologic long-view of the environment.

• Shedding Some Light: a project that examines the proposed lighting solutions for high-efficiency street lighting and “dark skies” proposals for the town to be able to enjoy the Aurora Australis by limiting light pollution.

• Youth Community Map: focusing on climate change resiliency and vulnerable sites near the Tahuna School in South Dunedin.

• Living Map: a data-enabled relief map of the Dunedin area for community conversation about the past, present, and future geography of this vulnerable coastal city.

The projects will be exhibited, along with the work we produced during our time in Dunedin, at the Otago Museum August 5-22.

This weekend we started a series of community workshops at Otago Museum. Yesterday we kicked things off by discussing and mapping the various climate resources and threats in the Dunedin area. We learned a lot from the community about the bay, its estuaries, and mining history as we located areas of preservation and vulnerability. Dunedin is a fascinating convergence of urban and natural forces, in a picturesque setting. It was exciting for us to learn more about the historical context of a city that has taken shape over the last 200 years.

We will continue to conduct public workshops over the next six days with community members, university students, and museum guests that will look at the city through various climate lenses, including environmental sensing, aerial photography, coastal mapping, and iconography.

Meanwhile, we are learning so much about the local animal life and natural setting from the staff of the museum. We were given a tour of their collection of New Zealand land birds, including the extinct Moa, during which they explained the changing understanding of the bird’s stature over the last hundred years, from that of an upright ostrich to that of a kiwi with a low stance. Discussing science as an evolving understanding of the past is helpful for us as we think about how to work in the changing environmental conditions of the present.

To learn more, we recommend checking out the New Zealand Ministry of Environment’s Climate Change Projections for the Otago Region.

We are headed to New Zealand and have a huge week of events ahead of us in the wonderful South Island city of Dunedin. We are joining the Dunedin community in the midst of the country’s annual science festival (SciFest), in which we will be participating through two presentations and our ZERO1 American Arts Incubator workshop series. The festival this year is appropriately focused on Climate Change and Women in Technology. It’ll be a great way for us to learn about the local community's interests and concerns in climate science. We are looking forward to an educational and fun week as we hit the ground for our month-long cultural exchange.

Wednesday, July 13th we will be presenting an introduction to our work at a PechaKucha-style event, “What Inspires Me: Women in Science”. And Thursday we are giving a public artist talk “Tools and Fieldwork in the face of Climate Change." These two presentations, along with our access to other talks and events through SciFest, will be invaluable tools for us as we head into our community workshop this weekend.

Alongside the SciFest, we are also busy this week setting up our studio space in Gallery 1877 in Otago Museum, where we will be conducting our workshops and working this month in preparation for our Climate Kit exhibit. The staff of the museum already have been invaluable in orienting us to the community and region. We are thrilled to settle-in there.

We are honored to be included in this festival, to learn from so many scientists and educators working on these topics, and to be hosted by such an amazing institution as the Otago Museum. And we can't wait to update you on how it's all developing in coming days!

ZERO1 is going through an exciting transformation. We’ve seen some dramatic shifts in the Silicon Valley arts and technology scene and are making bold moves to take advantage of these changes in unique and powerful ways. With the closure of the Garage in July 2015, we officially moved away from producing the ZERO1 Biennial and will be launching a set of new programs. As a result of these adjustments to our focus and direction, we will be redefining our current mission statement in the coming months. Stay tuned. Our goal is to more fully nurture the rich art and technology network we’ve built over the years, focusing that collective power on our society’s biggest challenges. Ultimately, we aim to build more engaged and vibrant communities, not only here in Silicon Valley, but across the nation and around the world. As you are all keenly aware, when art, technology, and science collide, we see provocative and powerful possibilities emerge. We’re excited about the possibilities that will take shape as we continue to promote, inspire and connect a wide array of the creative explorers in art, science and technology. It’s an exciting time and we’re glad to count you as a member of the ZERO1 family that will take this journey with us.

As the recently appointed interim executive director, I’d like to take this opportunity to share some my background as it relates to my current work at ZERO1. I first started working with ZERO1 in January 2016 as an Encore Executive Fellow after retiring from a 41-year career at Hewlett-Packard, leading some of the company’s most innovative and technologically advanced businesses. Throughout that career, I came to understand the power of innovation and the essential role artists play in helping us to reimagine the world and the impacts our innovations might have. After this exciting career, ZERO1 was exactly the type of art and technology organization I wanted to be a part of. I am thrilled to be supporting its continued success. Since taking on the role of interim executive director earlier this year, I’ve worked with ZERO1’s board, staff, and strong network of community partners to take stock of the organization’s rich capabilities and assets, the program successes it enjoys, and the emerging needs and opportunities that lie ahead. I’ve drawn from my financial and business leadership experience at HP, as well as my work in social entrepreneurship. For many years, I worked to advocate, incubate, and support creativity and innovation that serves our community’s most pressing social needs and challenges. It’s been an honor to apply myself in service of ZERO1, carrying forward the leadership of an organization that is known for its innovative approach to bridging the worlds of art, science and technology. We have a strong foundation to build upon with ZERO1’s rich history of community-building Biennials, awe-inspiring public art installations, boundary-pushing Garage exhibits, and culturally rich American Arts Incubator exchanges.

The future is looking more and more promising as we expand our work with the U.S. State Department’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs to extend the reach of our ZERO1 American Arts Incubator program. As we embark on the third year of the program, we’ll be sending American artists abroad to 5 countries where they will lead community-engaged new media and digital art projects. We’re also designing a local component of the program that will allow us to invite international collaborators back to the Bay Area for professional development and cross-pollination with their American peers. Our local programming will grow to include a range of collaborative Creative Communities Exhibits produced with our key Silicon Valley partners to showcase the thought-provoking and inspirational works of ZERO1 artists. There will be new opportunities for knowledge sharing with the launch of our Creative Explorers Summits, a program that will convene a broad, cross-sector group of creators in arts and technology to discuss global and local shifts underway in hybrid arts. Each of these programs will activate the many branches of our artist network to accelerate the building of more engaged and vibrant communities. We continue to develop internal strategy and are actively collaborating with our program partners, so you can expect more details to be coming your way in future blog updates.

As you can see, these are exciting times at ZERO1. Despite the rapid pace of change and the many moving parts of this evolving organization, transformation has energized us. ZERO1 is at its core, dynamic and adaptable. It's now more important than ever for us to walk the walk associated with risk-taking, creativity, incubation, and innovation. We are thrilled to have had the opportunity to present innovative year-round art programs at the ZERO1 Garage and now look forward to continuing to work with arts and technology communities to enhance the capacity of our programming as a premiere Silicon Valley and Bay Area arts organization.

Regards,

Brad Maihack

P.S. Feel free to send us updates from your own unique creative explorations, adventures, and new works. We value your accomplishments and would like to share them with the community.

The Protected Land

Jack is a big dude and an equally big nerd for nature. The man is a machine-gun rattling off bullets of knowledge about everything he sees. “This bird is named Coleto, it eats insects, and has a white patch on its head- that’s why in Filipino we can call the bald people, "Hey Coleto!"

“This flower stays in bloom for six months.”

“This lake turned purple once a couple years ago because of the volcanic activity. They were worried it might release poison gas and kill everyone like at a lake that turned purple in another country.”

Jack is taking us on a scouting trip with Pong, our coordinator from the US Embassy. We are searching for places to build a new Art and Technology Laboratory with a focus on environmental health. He took us to a new nature preserve in a spellbinding site. Two 'twin-lakes' nestled against each other, perched atop a volcano, and surrounded by lush forest.

“The lake on the left of the ridge is actually 10 meters higher than the other next to it, so we know there is no hole in this narrow ridge dividing them.”

This amazing spot blew up 10,000 years ago. Its deep dark craters filled in with fresh water. The volcanic mound was overtaken by thick forest. Only about 10 years ago, the site was officially protected.

“It’s now illegal to pick even a single flower.”

Tree Poachers

On the drive up the mountain, we pass through fancy new real-estate developments owned by the rich, or foreigners, or just those aiming to cash in on future eco-tourism in this developing spot.

We come to a dead stop every fifty feet or so. When we met Jack at the tourism office, he laughed with us saying that if he had gone out with us, he would guarantee that we see at least 30 birds that we had never seen in our entire life (“lifers”). It turns out he was 100% serious about this. As soon as he got in the car that afternoon he said, “I thought we would be leaving much earlier… this changes my guarantee, but I think we will still get 30.” He uses his uncannily sharp eyes to pick out and identify birds on distant branches and trees. He can ID them based on just the subtlest of features. The technical birding term for this is 'jizz' (No, seriously, check Wikipedia). He gets the driver to constantly stop the car on our way up the mountain and slowly creep up on our prey.

We sneak out of the car over and over again as he guides our vision with a high-powered green laser-pen. The birds are true lifers for both of us with the Embassy. Strange features, long tails, bright gaudy colors, weird songs. Looking past the birds though, one starts noticing a pattern in the distance. Featureless bald patches infecting the mountain like a flea-ridden dog. While the volcano we're heading towards and the thin strip of road leading up to it are lush and green, the surrounding forest seem mangy. Tree poachers.

“There is a bird that is supposed to be extinct here on Negros Island, but I have seen this bird three times.”

Jack explains, “After the first two sightings, I got a cameraman to find it and get good proof with me.” We climbed up the ridge over there. Got up early, some coffee, some bread. Took all morning to get up and we waited. Suddenly we heard a strange sound, and the bird lands right behind me. It’s huge. The camera guy is all surprised and drops his camera. He picks it up to get a picture but then this other sound. CRACK. And a huge rustle of a tree falling down nearby scares it off. Tree poachers."

It’s hard to tell where they are stealing trees. Jack explains they build cases around their chainsaws which connect to tubes that pass through big drums of water. Chainsaw silencers. That’s how they could be so close to him on the mountain-side and only be detected when the tree actually starts falling.

After missing out on this special bird, Jack went to confront these tree poachers. “I tell them that this is protected land and it’s illegal to cut down trees. Then I notice the two M16’s they have laying out, and I shut up, and just walk away.”

Hemp Poachers

We go down into the crater and hop on a small catamaran. The lake is smooth and peaceful. Floating in the lake we are surrounded by a ring of wild greenery filled with hidden birds. There’s mist moving between nooks in the encompassing mountain, and everything looks like Jurassic Park. Pong and I continue our routine of sitting patiently, admiring the mist moving in and out of the trees and ridges, while Jack scans the sights and sounds for fresh birds.

We pull up to a waterfall and Jack gets excited. There are two shirtless guys working in a clearing right next to the park’s path. “Oh wow, this is very interesting to see, these are hemp-poachers!” Jack invites himself (and us) into their clearing where long silky hairs cover a fallen log. He smiles and gets them to (obligingly) show off the tools of their craft: simple blades embedded in logs, mechanisms for shredding trees into soft fiber.

“They come from about a day’s journey away. They hike here, camp for several days, then bring hundreds of pounds of the fiber to sell in the city. They can get about 10 times as much from this as shredding fiber in other places.” The poachers gave a quick smile pointing to how their tools worked, but their focus immediately returned to their labor. They shredded these trees, feverishly, non-stop. “On a good day, they can make 100 pounds of this material. They can sell it on the market for about 200 pesos.” This is $4 USD.

We keep walking down the path. We see the waterfall. We take pictures of it. It is pretty.

Bird Poachers

Driving back down the mountain, we pass a boy working at the gate. “You see him? His father was just killed by poachers a couple months ago.” Jack’s cheery, fast-paced demeanor drops a bit. “His father saw some people cutting down trees, so he got his radio and reported it. Actually it doesn’t matter if he actually reported it or not. People said he was the one who reported it. Well, one night the poachers came to his house and shot him. Now his son still works here at the park.” We sat and he continued, “You see it makes it very tricky to do this job. We want to protect the park and stop the poachers, but often it is too dangerous to do anything.”

Some moments pass. We were tired from the adventure, and this final story made the sadness of this environmental destruction real. After a bit of quiet traveling, Pong tries to lighten the mood with a question, “When did you become a birder? Have you always just liked birds?” Jack responds, “No, I used to poach them.”

This took us both by surprise. “What?” Pong asks to clarify. “Yeah, I would go out on hunts and kill many of these birds I am showing you…like those hornbills we saw.”  “Why wouldn’t you just eat chicken instead of these endangered birds?” she replies, still quite puzzled by this revelation. “Oh, if I found a chicken, I wouldn’t even eat it. I could take that down to the market and sell it! I poached these birds for food. You can’t sell an endangered animal, but you can eat it if that’s all you have.” We sat there shocked for a while. He gave us a short moment for all this to sink in, and then went right ahead, matter-of-factly, into the technology behind such poaching. “You see we could get a small PVC tube, some alcohol, and some marbles for ammo, and then you would have a silent gun for hunting in protected areas.”

NOTE: I take full responsibility for butchering any of the facts, spellings, or parts of the story throughout this essay. My post is written from memory.

***

The writing above was the first journal entry I started writing for this Philippines art and environmental health project. This happened during the initial scouting trip, but it was such a strong experience, it took me time to assemble it coherently. The trip, the poachers, their technology, and Jack. These elements resonated with me during the entire Waterspace project here in the Philippines. People were destroying the reef. People were destroying the beach. People were destroying the mountain. They were coming up with clever ways to do so, and even maintain pride in the sophisticated ways they found to do it.

Jack had 9 children, two with severe cerebral palsy. He only stopped poaching because he was given the opportunity to use his brilliance to help protect the land and get paid for these abilities. He would have no qualms with going back to poaching if that was his only option to feed his family.

And that there is the problem. I used to think poachers were inherently evil people. Captain Planet would go fight piggish-looking villains with simple, deranged motivations like “I WANT TO CHOP DOWN ALL THE TREES!” But these were not villains. They are a result of what happens when we push people to the edges of society. They have to make decisions - choosing themselves or the environment. They aren’t normally destructive or violent unless they are pushed into it. People become animals when we make them that way.

The other problem is that nature dies slowly. The rest of us, having a nice time reaping the spoils of life within society, don’t get immediate feedback from the blight of a clear-cut mountaintop. We can’t feel the infinitesimal rise of the ocean, until it starts surrounding our house 20 years after burning the carbon we released into the atmosphere. Instead, we need to find ways to make people care about natural diversity for its own sake.

So there are two things we need to do:

1. Make people within society care about what they are losing.
2. Create opportunities for those at the fringes to preserve these priceless artifacts of our earth.

We can’t just slap down basic rules saying, “Don’t do this. This is protected area,” when there is a much louder voice saying, “Do this, you need money, you need food.” And this louder voice comes from us. It comes from our families needing nourishment. It comes from our communities demanding new consumer goods. It comes from us telling poor people that the reason they are poor is because they are not working hard enough.

We are killing off our own life support system. We need to protect our environment, and the way to do that is to first protect the poor and underserved humans.

I hope the BOAT Lab is able to do this, and can shine a light on these intermeshed economic and environmental problems.

More Than Love on the Horizon

After four weeks, lots of conversations and translations, hard work, and even some tears, we installed the More Than Love on the Horizon exhibition. We opened the show featuring my hologram project and the work of six community artists at Nha San Collective to an enthusiastic audience of over 200 people.

Among our honored guests, Michele Peregrin from U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, Shamsher Virk from ZERO1, and U.S. Ambassador to Vietnam, Ted Osius.

We even had an Asian American Queer delegation from Los Angeles. Well, not an official delegation, but I was thrilled that my friends flew in from Los Angeles to show support.

But honestly, the most distinguished guest at our opening event was my mom. I’m sure when I came out to her 22 years ago, she had no idea what the future would hold for me. I can only hope I have made her proud with this opportunity to come back to her country and work with local LGBTQ community to tell their stories.

I loved that my mom came to help out. She cooked for the community artists while they were installing and even helped with the art installation.

When she met the Ambassador, her words were particularly evocative for me. My mom, the wife of a career Foreign Service Officer and mother of an openly queer daughter, leaned over and said to Ambassador Osius, one of only five openly gay Ambassadors in the U.S. State Department, "We have been waiting a long time for you."

In my remarks, my first thank you went out to the U.S Department of State. Thanks to the U.S. Department of State, my parents met, married, and made me. Years later, as a Fulbright Fellow, I was afforded the opportunity to meet many of the contemporary artists in Vietnam, a crucial step for my development as an artist post graduate school. The connections I made during my Fulbright were vital in the production of this project. Now, as an American Arts Incubator artist, I was able to return to Vietnam to complete this project that for me, as a Queer Mixed Race Vietnamese American woman, is so close to my heart. I was able to take my experience as an artist and community organizer and engage in social practice — facilitating workshops with LGBTQ community members to incubate creative strategies that address LGBTQ visibility and equality in Vietnam. Everything has come full circle for me.

I’m so proud of the work our community artists contributed to exploring LGBTQ visibility. Here are the projects and some photos from the opening party.

Community Artists Project Installations in the Gallery 

Bùi Hoàng Long – Hanoi LoveHANOI LOVE

 is a video series depicting stories of love and acceptance from the LGBTQ community and their families, friends, and lovers. The series shows that people identifying as LGBTQ are children, friends, and family members, who are the same as everybody else and should not be excluded from society.

READ MORE about Hanoi Love

Follow Long's work on Humans of Hanoi.

Check out some of these powerful videos:

Đinh Nhung - Mapping Queer Hanoi

Nhung has mapped queer spaces in Hanoi that are personal but also communal, especially of the older generation living in Hanoi. By making this map, Nhung wanted to learn more about hidden personal histories and create an opportunities for those stories and histories to be shared and made visible. Ultimately, sharing the connections and memory maps of different special places in Hanoi, she hopes we expand our love to each other and to the city.

READ MORE about Mapping Queer Hanoi

You can find a deeper interactive experience of Nhung's maps with "then and now" photos of some of the spaces she has mapped around the city. She is continuing to add content.

Ian Quee and Quyên Quyên - Ế

Ian and Quyên make “Ế”, a queer art and literary zine. As queers, they reject the notion that a straight relationship and its trappings (marriage, nuclear family, male-female roles, etc.) are the “default." They convey this message through original and curated art, photography, short stories, poetry, and pop culture reviews.

READ MORE about “Ế”

Check out the entire zine 

and download your own copy.

Vũ Kiều Oanh – Shelter of LGBTQ

"Vùng an toàn rộng mở - Shelter of LGBTQ," initiated by Vu Kieu Oanh and Group 6+ is collecting stories waiting to be heard. Stories by members of the LGBTQ community who suffered abuse and encountered prejudice in the past but still respect and love themselves. The stories are presented as audio files and Oanh has built a “safe shelter” which resembles a public booth in which members of the audience to recount and record their own stories.

READ MORE about Shelter of LGBTQ

People can record written or audio stories. Photo courtesy of Nha San Collective.

Keep up to date with LGBTQ events in Hanoi by following 6+ on Facebook.

Nguyễn Quang Duy - #VNLGBTQ247

#VNLGBTQ247 uses photos taken and provided by the Vietnamese LGBTQ to tell stories about their everyday life. The project utilizes digital tools, cameras, and smart phones, which most people have these days to record the moments and social media including Facebook and Instagram to spread the word.

READ MORE about #VNLGBTQ247

Even Ambassador Osius and his husband Clayton Bond hop in on the hashtag action. Photo by Duy Quang Nguyen.

Keep tabs on this campign to show LGBTQ life in Vietnam by liking the page and following #VNLGBTQ247 on Facebook and Instagram.

Lê Đức Anh - Điểm Chạm Cầu Vồng

“Touched by the Rainbow” is an action campaign to increase the visibility of the LGBTQ community in Vietnam to eliminate the gap between the LGBTQ community and mainstream society. By creating the hashtag #diemchamcauvong (“touched by the rainbow”) Anh hopes members of the LGBTQ community and their supporters can share spaces where they feel free and comfortable.

READ MORE about #diemchamcauvong

Find #diemchamcauvong on Facebook and Instagram.

Yen Nguyen - Documentation of the Process

We are so fortunate to have had the indomitable Yen Nguyen documenting our whole process from beginning to end. She was integral to our workshop process, holgram film shoot, work with community artists. Her photos of the incubator and process frame the entire project.

More Than Love on the Horizon: Queer Projections.

And last but not least my own project, More Than Love on the Horizon: Queer Projections. In thinking about how to project an image of Queer Vietnamese to increase visibility and further Vietnamese LGBTQ equality, I thought about ways that images are projected. I thought about holograms. Holograms have both optical presence and special quality as they mix reflections with the scene beyond. Holograms are a “window with memory." Holograms are visually complex and multidimensional and challenge our perceptions. Holograms illustrate the Queer space-time continuum in that they are a projection of how the past imagined the future, but in the present time. Princess Leia and her hologram message inspired me, and to be honest, Princess Leia was one of my first crushes. In the past, Star Wars projected in idea of what the future would look like. I chose to use the past’s version of the future’s technology, holograms, to record the present and imagine what an LGBTQ future for Vietnam might look like. The holograms operate as a way to telegraph and transmit an image of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Queer Vietnamese. Holograms also serve as a metaphor for queer desire. These holograms also make these images of LGBTQ Vietnamese accessible to those who may not see this community in a critical mass and highlight those who get to participate in a glittery ghostly presence.

Using DIY holograms, I project the future while figuring the past and centering LGBTQ Vietnamese in the present. Selections of the holograms were installed in the gallery space. The collection of hologram videos can be accessed via the website and here are the instructions to make your own DIY hologram projector.

I was humbled to hear these stories of everyday life of LGBTQ Vietnamese. I was honored to be able to share their dreams, and their own projections of what Queer Vietnamese future would look like. I was moved to bear witness to these narratives of courage and resistance. One participant spoke of her experience as a transgender woman. To build community and create visibility, she and a few other trans women started a group -- Ruby Girls -- and started doing fashion shows at cafes. One time, during one of the Ruby Girls fashion shows, the police raided. Out of concern for her friend, the café owner, who she knew was not out, she offered herself instead. When the police loaded her into the paddywagon they insisted that she sit down. She shared that, in an act of resistance, she refused their orders. She stood in all her glamour in the back of the truck refusing to sit. She knew they weren’t doing anything wrong or illegal by having these fashion shows. She also wanted to there to be some public accountability, so that people would see that she was being arrested and they would know where she was in the event she was “disappeared” a fate that has befallen numerous bloggers and advocates for democracy in Vietnam.

The centerpiece of my project was an upbeat dance piece featuring LGBTQ Vietnamese community dancing along to the song Amazing by Hi Fashion. The song really spoke to me as a queer Vietnamese American woman. That no matter what judgements others may hold about us, as Queer, gender queer, transgender people we are “amazing.” With that spirit we can be courageous and bold and fabulous.

Indeed, we may have been too fabulous for Vietnam, our show was shut down by the Cultural Police the very next morning. Maybe they were mad they didn't get an invitation to the partay. But, seriously, censorship is still a major issue in Vietnam and, in the shadow of the 30/4 Liberation holiday, the goverment often extends its net of power as widely as possible. Most unconventional ideas, resistance to the status quo, democracy activists and bloggers get caught in the party net - an illustration of the well deserved scrutiny of Vietnam's government for Human Rights abuses. But we remain courageous and bold and, well, everything is online! All the projects and videos are housed on the website: www.vietnammorethanlove.com.

The hashtag campaigns continue.The Vietnamese LGBTQ community is gaining visibility and hopefully equality follows suit. Because we know we’re amazing.

Thanks and Glittering Gratitude

This whole project could not have been possible without the help of many people, most of whom are not self-identified LGBTQ. These people took time to dedicate to the success of not just our workshops, my hologram project, the community artist projects and opening night, but to invest in the future of LGBTQ Vietnamese. We are so grateful to our allies in the movement.

A great big thank you to all those who helped pull this project together. A complete list of those we owe deep gratitude is on our site.

I am still astounded that we managed to actually build the portal, both the physical structure and its virtual realities in the space of a month.

Here is a short video documenting the entire project:

One of the most important features of the ZERO1 American Arts Incubator model is the notion of sustainability. Each of the four small grant recipient teams were asked to develop sustainability plans to assure the work we started during the program would continue once I left Wuhan. In fact, the panel chose those proposals which held the most promise to become sustained projects.

I, too, have been busy developing a sustainability plan. I have been proposing a counterpart portal, somewhere in the United States, so that people could look through the portal and see China, and vice versa.

Throughout the twenty-eight days of the exchange, I was very busy running the program. Beyond the locations chosen by the small grant recipient finalist teams, I didn't get much of a chance to get out into the city to those locations which best represented my sense of the changing city of Wuhan. 

However, once the portal was unveiled to the public, and just a couple of days before I left for Hong Kong to present the results of the project at the International Symposium on Electronic Art, I managed to squeeze in an entire day with Yang Fan, Director of the China Endangered Culture Protector. I burned through all of the SD cards and batteries I had with me.

I can now spend the rest of my summer research time processing this material into high quality, high resolution virtual and augmented reality scenes.

​We managed to get the full BOAT Lab built and fully operational in the two short weeks before the big exhibition! To celebrate this achievement, we held a grand gala opening ceremony for the BOAT Lab and all the Waterspace projects.

This new video describes the whole project leading up to the ceremony.

In spite of the fact that high profile national elections were occurring this weekend, we had a huge turnout with representatives from all over the Banilad neighborhood, Dumaguete, the Negros Island, and even an embassy representative from Manila. Marine biologists, artists, engineers, kids, adults, all came together to experience our projects.

We started the day with open tours of the BOAT Lab and demos from all the teams. People got to ride around on the BOAT Lab, see how our different sensors functioned, create useful items out of garbage plastic bottles, and experience a semi-3D fog-projection room.

As the open tours and demos wound down, we moved into the official opening ceremony. We had talks from locals, formally introduced all the projects, and discussed positive actions to promote education and environmental health.

The ceremony closed out with a thrilling (and hilarious) new play from Team Tapok. Their play dramatized local political events in which large companies exploited poor communities to destroy the environment. It resounded deeply with all involved.

And finally, like all Filipino events, I've learned, the party ended with plenty of food!

The teams will continue working throughout the summer (and hopefully over the whole next year) building amazing water displays, environmental sensors, and holding electronics workshops on the ocean. Perhaps the BOAT Lab’s most important role is simply this — facilitating a cool place for folks to learn in direct contact with technology and nature.

Simply put, this is how the whole program works: we try to complete 5 big projects in just 3 weeks!

There’s a main project led by myself as the ZERO1 American Arts Incubator lead artist, which will be the BOAT Lab, a floating art and technology laboratory focusing on improving environmental health.

Site

Our target site for these projects is the beach of the Banilad community. Banilad is a small neighborhood (or, barangay) south of Dumaguete. It generally consists of poorer fisherfolk, who make their livings catching, drying, and selling fish. It is also home to a beautiful coral reef, but (like most reefs in the Pacific now) this natural treasure is on the brink of destruction. In an effort to save this natural resource, it was recently designated a “Marine Protected Area.” The central tenet of the protection is that fisherpeople are no longer allowed to fish within the area because it hurts the reef. There is even a set of guards from the local community who are paid to watch the reef (the “Bantay Dagat” or “Watch the Sea”). At the end of the exchange, we will be turning the BOAT Lab over to these Marine Guards so they can use the floating lab as a guard station.

PROJECTS

BOAT Lab

The BOAT Lab stands for "Building Open Art and Technology." It’s also a boat! This will serve as a sort of community science center. It's a floating raft equipped with all sorts of equipment, not only displaying art and technology, but also allowing people to build it on the spot. It’s a makerspace floating in the sea that also collects data through sensors and robotic submarines. It then serves as a public art display of this data via LED strips that change color and patterns to let the public know and appreciate what is happening in the sea.

BOAT Lab Team Members:

• Andrew Quitmeyer
• Andrew Mores
• Zorich Guia
• Oliver
• Daryll

Team Sea Sense

The Sea Sense group will develop an automated multi-sensor technology to monitor sea water quality parameters (pH, temperature, dissolved oxygen, and turbidity). A pumping machine will be utilized to extract seawater samples from between 10ft to 15ft depth. The data gathered can be translated into meaningful information for the fishermen to monitor the fish productivity in Banilad Marine Sanctuary. Further, this project is useful for researchers to monitor climate change effects to prepare the community for the potential impacts of climate change.

Sea Sense Team Members:

• Alberto Diego Jr.
• Dae Habalo
• Geraldine Quiñones
• Jeffrey Rivera
• Andrew Mores
• Andrew Quitmeyer

The Viz Initiative

Team Viz works to interpret the data from the Sea Sense Team's outputs. They're creating a 3D-like projection screen that uses mist/fog (figure 1) to display what’s happening underwater or other relevant videos. The LED strips (figure 2) send information through a series of creative light designs and patterns. This visualization will entice people to get involved and try to make a difference themselves.

Viz Initiative Team Members:

• Carl Matheous Simpao
• Alamein Tabunda
• Darren Melon
• Loreto Frallon
• Jessebel Nemenzo
• Neil Villamil

Team TAPOK

Team TAPOK is a performing arts crew. Their goal is to inject a message of environmentalism and good uses of technology to the public by hosting a series of theatrical plays in Banilad and the surrounding community. Team TAPOK focuses on performing theatrical presentations to spread awareness of what is happening in our society today and how the humankind has greatly affected our only home, the earth, as well as providing necessary informations on how we could cope up with the damages that we humans have injected.

TAPOK Team memberS:

• Diane Young (Leader)
• Mary Joy
• Al Anth Siplon
• Japsy Grey
• Mellard Manogura
• The YATTA Performing Arts Group

Team FUPPI (Foundation University Precious Plastics Initiative)

This group is made up of faculty and students of Foundation University. Their project is based on an idea of Dave Hakkens. The group will make machines that shred and turn plastic into other objects. By showing the community the products these machines can make, they will give people another reason to collect their plastic bottles instead of throwing them away.

FUPPI Team Members:

• Clint Absin
• Christian Bungcasan
• Floramae Sioco
• Marlon Tanilon
• Jobert Kleine Koerkamp
• Cristina Calisang
• Arc Vincent Quisel
• Dexter Merced
• Razil Binondo

After much anticipation, Portal to an Alternative Reality was launched last night at the Arts Incubator program's Closing Ceremony and Reception at K11 art village.

Despite the rain, we had a strong turnout for the event. Joseph Zadrozny, U.S. Consul General in Wuhan, acted as Master of Ceremony.

Jamie Dragon (Public Affairs Officer at the U.S. Consulate) and I handed out awards to the teams.

Webcast star Lian Lian 连连 returned to webcast live on Douyu.com at the Portal to an Alternative Reality reception. She had an impressive 6,092 live viewers.

In his seminal short story from 1982 "Burning Chrome," William Gibson notably coined the term "cyberspace.” The concept was later popularized in his acclaimed debut novel, Neuromancer in 1984. I happened to be rereading Count Zero, the second entry of the Sprawl trilogy, Neuromancer being the first.

Another less written about concept that Gibson introduced in these books is the idea of sim-stem stars. Twenty years before anything like reality TV appeared, Gibson imagined people who would become famous by simply living their lives and broadcasting it. In Gibson’s world, the post-apocalyptic, the one-two combination of lowlife and high-tech shanties of the Sprawl, people don’t watch TV, they don’t even wear VR headsets. The sim-stem stars’ broadcast was wired directly into the audiences brainstem through a cybernetic port implanted just behind the ear, like a USB or SD card reader. Gibson uses the term “jacking in.”

Anyone can become a sim-stem, but having your eyes removed and replaced with a set of Zeiss Ikon implants, a combination of camera and live streaming device, is expensive. Thankfully Lian Lian is able to broadcast her life using a comparatively accessible and less intrusive bit of technology — a cell phone on a selfie stick.

Lian Lian's cell phone was just one of the many mobile devices in the room. Other attendees used their smart phones and tablets to view the community artist teams' augmented reality creations. In addition to plenty of iPads circulating within the crowd, we had a large plasma screen attached to an iPhone.

Here are some screen recordings of the teams' work:

Team 1, A Crow Drinking Water.

Team 2, Wuhan Dazhimen Railway Station.

Team 3, The Vanished Nanhu Airport.

Team 4, Through Gate.

Chinese social media is amazing and way different than what we're used to in the U.S. I am still getting a handle on it, but it feels like a great start to have 82 friends in Wuhan!

I still am utterly astounded that we managed to actually build the portal as planned, both its physical structure and its many virtual realities. It was a big idea which took the collaborative efforts of an entire city. Well, at least hundreds of people from across Wuhan - not exaggerating. I am very grateful and profoundly honored by everyone's hard work and commitment, and for welcoming me and the ZERO1 American Arts Incubator to the city. I will miss all of my new friends, but hope to return one day to this remarkable city. I shot this video of Kristy Shang and Bond Zhu on my last day at the K11 studio.