Pollutant absorbing buildings

The International Herald Tribune posted an article online last Wednesday that sounds too futuristic to be true, but it apparently is.
Architects in Italy are using a new type of concrete which is not only able to clean itself, it also can reduce pollutants in the air by a considerable amount in close range around the material.



image is property of International Herald Tribune

Extensive testing, sponsored in part by a European Union research project into "smart" antipollution materials, has since determined that construction products containing titanium dioxide help to destroy air pollutants found in car exhaust and heating emissions, scientists say.
Several companies are now developing "smog-eating" products that can be used not just for the facades of buildings, but also in paint, plaster, and paving materials for roads. The new environment- friendly substances are quietly being tried out in buildings, squares and highways in Europe as well as Japan.
(...)
Titanium dioxide had been used in self-cleaning coatings before because of its photocatalytic properties: sunlight touching the compound triggers a chemical reaction that accelerates natural oxidation.

Upon testing its new cement, however, Italcementi realized that the material also had the ability to break down nitrogen oxides emitted in the burning of fossil fuels.
(...)
The reduction of pollutants is greatest within 2.5 meters, or 8.2 feet, of a surface that has been treated, the company said. This means that a pedestrian walking down a street with traffic would inhale fewer pollutants while walking past buildings treated with the substance.

In one test, paving material using photocatalytic cement was used to cover the asphalt surface of a 230-meter- long stretch of road outside Milan with an average traffic flow of 1,000 vehicles per hour. Tests showed a reduction in nitrogen oxides at street level of about 60 percent, according to Italcementi.

Acid Mother's Temple / Duracell at Corsica Studios

Just wanted to share some pictures of the Acid Mother's Temple and Duracell gig last Sunday at Corsica Studios at Elephant and Castle.
Since some of you might know AMT, Duracell is probably known less although I think he deserves almost equal credit for his efforts. Hooking up a Nord Modular to his drumkit, he covers tunes from oldskool videogames as a one-man-band and does one hell of a job. Find a low-res video I shot here. (nb that the video takes a while to load (9 MB), so for the impatient ones among you I suggest that you do a "save target as...")

Some pictures of the show:



It was so packed when AMT played that I only managed to take one halfway decent picture. Enjoy anyway!


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Scotch Egg Band, Bardens Boudoir, Fri / Nov 10th

I was more than delighted to find out that the lovely nutters from Adaadat Records are putting together yet another stunning performance with lots of people for insanely good ticket value.



Coming up this Friday, the gabba-kids, gameboy mutilators, breakcore-heads and anybody else who is interested in silly, hands-on indie-electronica cum gabba-that-sounds-like-broken-toys-mayhem will all find their way to Bardens Boudoir in Dalston, London. The ticket features infamous DJ Scotch Egg (yes, that's right) and his band with three drummers (sic!). Um, well not that he needs them since his usual outfit consisting of a gameboy orchestra ensemble and a megaphone is usually enough aural abrasion already, this bill sure is a treat!

THE SCOTCH EGG BAND
For the first time ever, Shigeru Ishihara, aka DJ SCOTCH EGG (Adaadat / Wrong Music), the chiptune genius and KFC core maestro forms the screaming nucleus of a band with three drummers. Featured percussionists include members of grind merchants Trencher, Brighton indie-math-rock legends I'm Being Good and some other guy, not quite sure who, think it might be one of the guys from the Boredoms. Anyway, expect noisy gameboy gabba beats and maybe a bit of projectile scotch egg abuse. Should be proper wicked.

The band consists of ATOM TRUCK (Adaadat), LOZ KOLESZKO (One Man Army),THE STRANGE LIGHTS COLLECTIVE (feat. UM, ASCOLTARE & MAN FROM URANUS)

DOORS: 8.30pm - 2am
PRICE: £5
Order here.

ATOM TRUCK (Adaadat)
Adaadat Records co-founder, musical genius, Scottish gentleman, part-time chef and electronic musician. A rare gig, Truck has neglected his laptop of late - but he now returns to support Scotch Egg brandishing songs called things like "ShitStick."

LOZ KOLESZKO (One Man Army)
Another rare London outing from One Man Army's finest, expect some exceptionally executed Aphex-esque acid techno mixed with some dark ambience.

THE STRANGE LIGHTS COLLECTIVE
featuring...

UM
Experimental musician / performer from Cambridge. Part Bowie, part Baby Bird, part 23rd century court jester on a George Formby trip. The future of DIY singer-songwriter electronica is here among us.

ASCOLTARE
Fits somewhere besides Aphex Twin's crash of listless melody and spasmodic collages of rhythm, yet also flirts with intrusions into abstract sound-art. Whatever that means. I've heard him and he's good.

MAN FROM URANUS
Lists artists that have had the most impact on him as Iron Butterfly, The Moody Blues, The Rolling Stones, Donovan, The Monkees and Grand Funk Railway. Probably pretty weird then. Check him out for yourself. Recently worked with Agaskodo Telivirek (feat Miklos The Accountant) on their latest Adaadat release.

Images in this post are property of Adaadat.

Foldable Smart Gadgets

This patent by Sony came to my attention the other day. The engineers are attempting to design components of handheld devices which can be folded when they're not used. As of now, this is done via rather crude mechanical principles and the smaller you are supposed to fold a device, the more joints and angles you need. The idea below could sort this problem out:

"The boffins at Sony’s Tokyo labs are working on a clever way to get bulky electronic devices into small pockets. Their plan is to create handheld computers, phones and portable games consoles that fold up for carrying and then become rigid for use.

The body and screen of folding gadgets would be made from a flexible polymer containing conductive rubber bracing struts filled with a gel of aluminosilicate particles suspended in silicone oil.

When a current is passed through the struts, the particles clump together and harden the gel, making the gadget solid enough to use. Sony has found that it would take very little power to make such a folding device harden, so the drain on its battery should be low. The company's patent adds that the transition from soft to hard takes just milliseconds. It suggests that the same technique could even be used in a video game controller to make it jolt or change shape in response to on-screen action.

Read the full patent here."

Matthew Roney

The second show I went to over the weekend was just next door at Parasol Unit, another sleek and nice gallery space that you not really notice from outside, street level.
Anyway, the exhibition featured work by US artist Matthew Roney who does comic-like sculptures and drawings. The odd thing about them is that they are as cute as they are gory and the longer you look at them, the more excessive and debauched their content becomes.

Some impressions:







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Conrad Shawcross

Went to see some art again this weekend. First up was a show by Conrad Shawcross at the Victoria Miro Gallery. I came across his work during the last Frieze a couple of weeks ago. In the midst of a somewhat bloated undertaking which already gets more attention that it's good for the art exhibited there, I came across a cage-like structure among the crowded stalls. The type you would usually expect wild and strange animals being locked up in. Nevertheless, the setup was in a way befitting for Shawcross' work since some of his mechanical sculptures crafted from wood, rope, wires and metal are actually moving whereas others give the appearance that they should move but they dont. So, in a way, this wild and exotic animal of a contemporary artwork was locked up inside there, on display for the common folk.



Above you can see a larger version of the installation which was also on display at Frieze. The first thing that came to my mind was a reference to a large carousel, the type you might find at theme parks. Having been a kid that was rather easy to scare, I never had much for the scary rides but enjoyed the carousels that would take you on a sort of sightseeing trip around the area. The second impression was that you could actually immediately understand the mechanics at work there from the different spin ratios of the moving parts, being transmitted by gears and shafts from the intial engine.
That way, Shawcross accomplishes an experience which elevates the viewers impression on an abstract level without emphasizing the details of his concept for that piece too much.

"Binary Star, 2006, is the latest in Shawcross's series of kinetic light works and his most physically ambitious to date. Constructed specifically for the vaulted upstairs gallery, Binary Star takes the relatively recent discovery of stars that have found themselves locked in orbits around each other as its inspiration. As a model the binary star throws up an opposing reality to our own mono-solar system. The work, with its fast-moving geometry, is designed to engage the viewer through a complex and intricate dynamic revealing the arcing symmetries of this unfamiliar reality of space." (from the press release)





Another piece I really liked is pictured above. It first looked like some sort of knitting machine or mechanical loom to me. Having a closer look I discovered some sort of colour code on the ropes which, in combination with the display frame in the middle of the piece, made me think of some sort of notation processing system. I was only later to find out that I haven't been that wrong at all and that it was in fact a reference to Babbage's difference engine.

"Paradigm (Ode to the Difference Engine) 2006, is a giant double rope machine unraveling its rope as fast as it can ravel it . Comprising two identical machines, each made of hundreds of cogs, spools and pulleys, the twin structures turn in mirrored opposition to each other, countering all the other does. Built rationally and with intricate empirical precision the work was designed with the knowledge that it could never function - Shawcross's process from the outset was impossible. The artist has spoken of the work being reminiscent of Charles Babbage's unrealized Difference Engine conceived in 1822 and widely regarded as the first computer, also imbued with the same tragic elements of the unobtainable. "




Another fine piece which has no moving parts this time, not even fake ones, and is entirely made out of wood. After being exposed to the previous works of the artist, I begin to understand the overall conceptual nature of his pieces. It's not only the perfection of "hard science" which is expressed in his works, it is also the 'failure' of machines as so happened with "Ode to the Difference Engine". What is often overlooked is that evolution is not a linear process although popular science expresses it that way. Evolution by itself is nothing but an attempt to historically map the tragedies and failures of its potential and to reconstruct this way why and how certain life forms came into being. In a way, evolution is a huge tragedy of the attempts of realizing potential.
I also think that repetition plays a certain role in his works. It is due to redundancies that large parts of the universe exist and even abstract "man made" things like langage. Against the backdrop of that observation the tetrahedrons of the last piece pictured explore the space that is reserved for some form of creative practice due to their redundancy, although they don't create a uniform shape or surface. The potential of their combination leads to a heterogenous arrangement which can be said to be unique and does not necessarily have to be reproduced in exactly the same way in order to create the same experience with the viewer. In that important aspect, the piece differs from the 'hard sciences' and manages to distinguish itself as art and not science.

"Space Grid (Mirrored tetrahedron system), 2006 pursues the binary theme of the exhibition. With the help of a cosmological mathematician Shawcross has developed a system of tetrahedrons that tessellate universally in space. The system comprises of two types of tetrahedron that are identical but are in fact mirror images of each other. Shawcross arranges these tetrahedrons in a multiplicity of combinations and directions to form a 6-D grid of dense geometry that has infinite possibilities."



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