Monday, December 5, 2011

Week 13

my contribution:

- I got my parents to help us bring the plexi-boxes to school and gave marie-joelle a lift to help her with all the equipement
- I brought dolls, e-waste, my camera to take pictures of the process and other objects that would be useful for building the project
- I helped collect garbage around the school to put in the 'landfill' box
- I went out to get wire to hang the balls on the ceiling, to buy more batteries and find more dolls to put in the biggest box
- I took pictures during the process of building the project

Week 12

My contribution:

- Katherine and I bought went out to buy a pack of 100 christmas lights and individual batteries as well as telephone wire
- we ended up buying the wrong wire and not enough batteries
- nonetheless, I went back to buy more batteries and we will not be using the wire

Week 11

my contribution:

- gathering up some of the e-waste in my basement
- picked up a scanner that my dad was throwing away
- I tried to find as many dolls as I could but not enough to fill the box since it is bigger than was intended
- started discussing with the groups how the lights will be placed and what exactly I need to buy to have enough

Week 10

my contribution to the project:

- Katherine and I bought 14 plastic transparent balls that will be hung from the ceiling
- we bought a few large ones and a few smaller ones
- meanwhile marie-joelle was growing the grass for the landfill box and growing mold in another one of the boxes in her garage

Week 9

The group and my contribution to the project:

- this week we received the plexiglass and noticed that they were not cut properly, therefore, the sides are not going to be perfect
- we are going to have to change the placing of the boxes and marie-joelle we'll be putting them together in her garage.
- the cost for LED lights is a lot more than expected so that as well will have to change which is why I thought of using Christmas lights.
- we decided to add balls to hang from the top of the boxes that will almost look like stars.

Week 8

What I contributed for the project during that week:

- not much was done during that week
- simple discussions about the project while waiting for the plexiglass
- establishing how we will each help collect material for each plexi-box that needs to be filled
- I was to take care of the lights and bring some e-waste and some dolls.

Week 7

Right after midterm, what I contributed to in our project:

- writing down and restating what exactly will be in every single box
- coming up with a new environmental issue because the ocean 'deoxygenation' resembled too much the 'poor air quality' plexi-box
- came up with the idea of water pollution

Sunday, October 16, 2011

"The Predators of New Orleans" by Mike Davis

Response:

Facts about Katrina:
- started as a tropical depression, turned into category 1 hurricane
- recharged itself by extracting the heat from the warm waters which caused it to morph in to a category 5
- rarely seen hurricane recharge itself, link to global warning
- missed city center of New Orleans by 55 km
- levees not as high as in more wealthy areas, damage approx. 90 of levee systems
- nicknamed area that flooded "Lake George" (aka george bush who failed to respond)

- ridiculousness of entrusting life and death mandates with unqualified bureaucrats
- mayor is responsible for city
- catastrophe orchestrated by class inequalities
- most accurately predicted disaster
- 80% of New Orleans is below sea level

- priorities focused on tax cut for rich, financing war in Iraq and costs of homeland security
- Bush built maginot line against Al-Kaida instead of paying attention to building storm walls, pumps and levee
- when water flooded New Orleans, hard to reach someone on phone for help, even rescue workers could not help.
- Fema, instead of helping, prevented rescue teams to enter, aircrafts from evacuating hospitals.
- City Halls business elites and allies would like to push the poorest population outside of the city.
- debate about transforming poorest neighborhoods into water retention ponds.

- failure of government: unrealizable, unsustainable, economic promises

"Imagine That: What the World Needs Now is Art, Sweet Art" by Bill McKibben


Response:


Project Brainstorming:

- how over population is the center of all other problems such as landfill, e-waste, etc.

- image is an example of what project may look like

Monday, October 3, 2011

"Remaking Social Practices" by Felix Latour

Reponse + Oral:

"A Plea for the Earthly Sciences" by Bruno Latour

Response:

Keystone Pipeline

Response:

- difficult to pick a side when both sides have valid arguments
- since people are well aware of this pipeline, they will obviously object yet never complained about other pipelines
- i think there are a few things the government should have thought of before building the pipeline, for example in the documentary we watched in class where they killed small businesses like the water supply