Right now in Copenhagen, Denmark, the world’s leaders are arguing their way through to take less responsibility in cutting greenhouse gas emission, only because it will “hurt the economic”. In most of the case, the so call “economics” are large corporations that doesn’t want to incur the substantial cost for changes. I put together this small website as the final project to provide some information and urgency over global warming.
Click to open the website. “Stop Climate Change”
On every November 9, while the world is commemorating the collapse of Berlin wall, many ask that why is the other wall – the Israel Wall, still being built slowly across West Bank? Paula Levine’s digital project – “the wall”, as a part of her “shadows from another place” series digital art, presented some insights and experiences from the actually lives around the Israel Wall to the audience of the world via the mediums of map and internet.
The form that the project takes is as a website, a portal of information that is made accessible to the world whoever connected to the Internet. The website serves as such a medium that is used to brought not only thoughts and speeches from the people of the Israel Wall, but also facts and events happened around the wall. These details are presented as different style of media on the website as voices, videos, and pictures to the world. Paula writes in her introduction: “The Wall is such a linking of place to place. Through locative media, the web and cartography, the intention is forge geographical intimacy between distant locations by translating the impact of distant events into local terms, on local ground.” The detailed map included in the web carries a lot of information to the audiences to understand the close relationship between Israelis and Palestinians. The use of city map to overlay the Israel Wall on San Francisco triggers the audience to exam the results of that the wall were built in their own city, and how their live could be impacted. On the website more city is to be overlaid in the future, which could bridge and translate the events and experiences to a much broader base of audience. By incorporating with current technology, the local stories and events around Israel Wall were passed onto the audience as lively as it could through Paula’s projects.
If we look up the word “wall” in the Oxford dictionary, “A wall is a continuous vertical brick of stone (in Paula’s project, the Israel wall is made of concrete.) Structure that encloses or divide an area of land… a thing perceived as a protective and restrictive barrier.” As the definition dictates, any wall serves two main purposes: to stop and to protect.
The contents of Paula’s website is consist with stories from the locals of the Israel wall. The stories were primarily sourced from a local group called: “Machsom Watch volunteer”, whom is one of the many groups that act against building Israel Wall. As most people would known, there are always two sides of an argument.
Theoretically, if two people were engaging a nasty fight, and injuries were already made to each party, and the fight would likely lead into a blood bath, the first step of solving the conflict is always to separate the parties from further damage. What if these two people have to leave in the same room without a way to relocate either one of them, then some kind of barrier is needed in the room divide them. And then workout a way to balance each parties interests through communication. In most of the time the communication is made through a trusted medium. However, after the barrier was setup, issues with accessibility occurred. Bathroom was at one end of the room and the kitchen was on the other end. When one of people want to use the bathroom or kitchen on the other side of the barrier, the people have to go through all the harassment like body search and waiting for the permit from the other side to enter etc. And such permit could be rejected any time as the other side thinks so. The issues also could include the rights on the fixture that is on the barrier. These issues are the topics that have been addressed in Paula’s projects. Paula’s website information concentrated on the increasing difficulties that the Israel wall has brought to its surrounding residents. However, the contents of the website failed to address the fact that the Israel Wall did prevent a lot of suicide bomb attempts and some unnecessary military confrontation.
Having the stories in the project skewed towards only one side of the argument Paula’s project is likely to be perceived as unconvincing in terms of contents.
Although much similarity could be found between Berlin Wall and Israel Wall, religious difference is always harder to balance than political difference, plus the complications added from western world’s interests in mid-east. In conclusion, Paula’s project successfully use the website form map overlay method to bridge the local stories to the world, however she still needs to broaden her whole picture of stories to presents a convincing statement.
A project to quantify co2 emission, and put the emission activity to images.
Extra things that occured along with the Mobility Video Shotting.
This is the “orange” acting piece. Although, we really have no idea what are we acting about. We included the “orange-ish” wall and doors (there are actully 2 different doors).
The roof of South Building is restricted area, off limits for students. Why? you know why. Crazy art students God knows what sort of stupid stuff they gonna do up there. However, up there, it has a spetacular view of the island and the surrounding. No wonder they keep us out of there, coz’ we could setup a tent on there; And there are sneaky windows to look into whats going on inside of some the classrooms.
One of the most frustrating things, when people are visiting the Island, is finding a “free” parking spot. As attempting as they are, in fact, there are a lot of free park on the island. The only problem is that they will all be occupied by time you get there.
The public market on the Granville island in the heart of Vancouver is a extremely interactive and public place. Because it is in the a tourist attraction, people from all over the world can be found here.
