The scrubber takes in air and binds the CO2 to sodium hydroxide. The heavier concoction is then sent through a few more chemical intermediaries, eventually resulting in a batch of separated CO2 that can be piped away, while the hydroxide gets fed back into the machine.

According to the university, the scrubbers can capture around a ton of carbon dioxide for less than 100 kwh of electricity, about ten times as much CO2 as was released to keep it running. Unfortunately, that's not quite enough to keep it from being prohibitively expensive. The cheapest way to keep CO2 emissions out of the air is still not generating it in the first place. [Popsci]

The move is important since data centers are becoming an ever-increasing drain on the energy grid, accounting for about 1.5 percent of all electricity consumed in the U.S. in 2006 (expected to rise to 2.5 percent in three years). While the efficiency levels Google touted are admirable, data center trackers cautioned that the test results hadn't been verified by a third party. [NYTimes]

Kuepper was awarded two Australian Museum Eureka Prizes, the country's top science award, for iJET. Unfortunately, it seems like the only page that would explain how iJET works is down right now, but Kuepper said it would probably take five years to commercialize the technology and it'll help people in less developed nations to “read at night, keep informed about the world through radio and television and refrigerate life-saving vaccines” without all those nasty CO2 emissions. [The Australian via Treehugger]

For her invention, Rintel will receive $10,000 cash and spend a day “shadowing” an eco-expert from Leonardo DiCaprio's 11th Hour Action website, devoted to sustainable-living practices. All well and good, but when I was 12 years old, I probably would've been more excited if the prize involved shadowing Romeo himself. Maybe this is why I never won cool competitions like this in middle school. [Cnet]

Greencore has three versions of its AC system, a fixed one, a portable one with two batteries and another portable with four batteries. All three run on 24 volts DC and have a cooling capacity of 10,200 BTUs and a heating capacity of 13,400 BTUs. According to the company, McDonalds and the US Navy are already on board with testing the units. [Treehugger]

Vu1, the company behind the technology, says ESL bulbs don't contain the trace amounts of mercury in CFLs and don't require the manufacturing energy behind LEDs, making it better than both. The first screw in models, which produce 40 lumens per watt with a 6,000 hour lifetime, are expected to be available by September 2008. At $12 a bulb, they cost about the same as dimmable CFLs already on the market. [Vu1 via Cleantechnica]

For your money, you'll be getting one of the fastest all electric vehicles around. The 2009MY can accelerate from 0 to 60 mph in 3.9 seconds, has a top speed of 125 mph, and can go 227 miles on a 3.5 hour charge. If you're especially opulent, you can add sweet extras like a painted carbon fiber top for $3,200 or a premium leather interior for $1,800.

Want to think a little more before you let this sweet lil' ride burn a hole through your bank account? Here's a couple of reviews to help you make your decision. Or if you're in California, scuttle over to their dealership in LA. [Tesla Motors]

The maps are especially important as floating wind farms become more technologically possible. Ocean wind farms have less environmental impact than onshore wind farms and also tend to be more efficient, since winds are stronger over the water and there are no hills or mountains to block a heavy gust's path. Placed in the correct areas, the farms could harvest up to 500 to 800 watts of wind power per square meter.

One area with extremely high winds is located off the coast of Northern California near Cape Mendocino, where northernly zephyrs are deflected to create a local wind jet that blows year-round. Similarly, Tasmania in New Zealand and Tierra del Fuego in South America have the potential to utilize similar jets. [NASA via Treehugger]

The set has a contrast ratio of 10000:1 and a 20mm thick display panel. It requires about 30% less power than regular LCD TVs and gets its juice from one of Sharp's triple-junction thin-film solar cell modules. The modules are about the same size as the television's screen.

Sharp plans to market the LCD and the energy system as a pair and says that its product could be a hit with both people living off the grid and environmentally-conscious consumers. The company will be exhibiting this, and other energy-saving technologies, at the G8 summit on Monday. [Physorg]

In fact, Sony Ericsson was the only company to score more than 5 out of 10 in the Greener Electronics Guide, which judges tech giants on their recycling programs, their use of harmful chemicals and their energy waste. Microsoft and Nintendo were at the very bottom of the guide, with Microsoft's exceedingly low score on climate criteria and Nintendo's Wii being more of a resource hog than one might expect.

The Information and Communications Technology sector accounts for two percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, and e-waste becomes a bigger and bigger problem the more we ignore it. While consumers like us can do our part by only buying the gadgets we need (and the greenest ones at that), companies really need to step up and rework internal policies to stop polluting. [Greenpeace]

The new pod, an evolution from the Orange portable wind charger that debuted at Glastonbury 2007, will act as a trial in using renewable energy sources on a larger scale. If everything goes well, the technology will become a staple at “Chill n' Charge tents” in future festivals. The pod can be found within the Pennard Hill camping grounds at Worthy Farm in Somerset. [Slashphone]

Right now, almost all products ship with a proprietary power adapter. Green Plug's technology allows every electronic device to communicate its own energy requirements to one adapter, allowing for several goods to use the same power box. But in order for the universal adapter to work, companies have to embed Green Plug's firmware into their electronics.

Westinghouse, the first company to sign on with Green Plug, said the adapter would not only help it cut costs (it wouldn't have to sell power adapters with each product if the consumer already has a universal one at home), the environmental savings are huge as well.

434 million consumer electronics devices are “retired” in the U.S. each year. Those products, and their power cords usually end up in landfills. Meanwhile, over 3 billion power adapters will be shipped worldwide this year. Imagine how much less that figure would be if everything plugged into a single hub. [ PC World]

ElectraTherm's Waste Heat Generators recover heat from various sources without any specialized electronics or hard-to-maintain components. By boiling water up to 200°F, the generator can produce from 25kW to 1MW of fuel-free, emission-free electricity.

About 50% of all fuel burned by industrial sources becomes "waste heat." Though businesses can try to use fuel as efficiently as possible, nearly seven quadrillion Btu of waste heat still escapes to do nothing but warm the atmosphere. But ElectraTherm says that its products, if used widely, could recover the equivalent electric output of 92 500MW gas-fired power plants.

The company says that the university will recoup its purchase cost in three to four years, with electricity costing about three to four cents per kwH during that time. After the payback period, the cost per kWH will drop to less than a penny. If only ElectraTherm's machines could be hooked up to the hot air our politicians will spew come election day, then all our nation's energy problems would be solved. [Electratherm via Cnet]

The boat is made from 100 percent carbon fiber and has an LCD touch-screen control system, leather trimmings and, most importantly, photovoltaic cells on almost all its horizontal services. Czeers is hoping to produce between 4 and 8 boats per year. Pricing is not yet available, but considering that the last version of the MK1 was last shown at the Millionaire Fair, you can probably bet it's super expensive. [Gizmag]

The bags, made from sugarcane, corn or wheat, can increase greenhouse gas emissions because they require higher temperatures to decompose. Even the biodegradable versions don't disintegrate as planned when thrown into the anaerobic environment of a landfill. The lack of oxygen causes the bags to release methane, which is 23 times more powerful than carbon dioxide.

They also tend to screw up recycling operations by contaminating the waste stream and making regular recycled plastics unsaleable. Recycling companies would need to invest in extremely expensive equipment to extract bioplastic packaging from regular waste.

Not to mention, bioplastics also compete for land with food and biofuel. The industry, which is growing by 20 to 30% a year, may take over several million more acres of farmland within the next half decade. With rising food prices set to push another 100 million people into poverty, maybe it's time everyone just ditched plastics all together. [Guardian via Treehugger]

Once you place an order, the site will ship one of five off-the-shelf prepackaged solar arrays and dispatch an installation crew to your door. An on-line database tracks local building and permit requirements and sends the necessary forms to you for you to fill out.

This is great news for everyone who has ever wanted to jump on the solar bandwagon, but was afraid to because of the headaches that come from any large home project. The system will also help make everything cheaper, since half of a solar system's costs are from installation hassles.

Unfortunately, the service is limited to California addresses right now, but if business is good, we could probably count on a nationwide roll-out in the near future. [Green Wombat via Wired]

Hop-On markets the phone as an ideal choice for kids, teens, seniors, and world travelers. If you ask me, it also sounds like a good option for anyone who... well... may not want the government tracking their activities, if you know what I mean. [Telecoms.com]

The new design comes at the request of Ericsson, which wanted an alternative to a purely diesel-run base station. Those consume roughly 20,000 liters (5,283 gallons) of diesel per year - an increasingly costly expense with rising world energy prices.

The E-Site draws its power from a wind turbine in the network tower and solar panels on the roof. Clean energy sources charge a battery that then powers the base station at night. The E-site also has a small diesel generator, just in case the batteries run out.

What's even more amazing is the E-site's operating system, which can learn to adapt its power-generating techniques to different situations. For instance, if the batteries are running low at night, but the system knows the sun will rise soon, it can decide to wait it out until morning rather than head straight towards the diesel. Good thinking, E-site! [Cnet]

Product Page [Via Red Ferret]

Interview/Article by Jonah Brucker-Cohen

With an ever-increasing amount of technology intended to "improve", "augment", and/or "add convenience" to our busy lives, there seems to be less of an emphasis on creating devices to reflect or comment on our natural or built environments. Taking this challenge as a starting point with her work, Chicago-based artist, Sabrina Raaf, examines the seemingly "invisible" elements of modernized and technologically equipped spaces by re-interpreting this covert data through mechanized objects that create feedback in the form of sound or other visual outputs. From exploring live data sets in the immediate gallery space with "Translator II: Grower", a robot that measures carbon dioxide levels and draws corresponding blades of grass on the wall, to exploring the tension between humans and adaptive or automated systems with "Dry Translator", Raaf's work exposes the unspoken conflicts between society's push for technological autonomy and the struggle to retain human emotion and sensibility. Her most current work, "Icelandic Rift" comments on the almost "alien" nature of future forms of agriculture that could exist in zero-gravity environments. Gizmodo recently caught up with Raaf to discuss her unique and calculated artistic approach to creating work that not only challenges common perceptions of technological utopia, but also examines just how deeply we've become entrenched in high-tech fetishism.

Interview, images, and video after the jump...

Name: Sabrina Raaf
Education: MFA, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Art and Technology, 1999
Affiliation: Assistant Professor, Electronic Visualization, School of Art and Design, UIC, Chicago, IL, USA
Exhibitions: Sabrina Raaf is a Chicago-based artist working in experimental sculptural media and photography. Her work has been presented in solo and group exhibitions in 2005-6 at the Wendy Cooper Gallery (Chicago), Mejan Labs (Stockholm), Espace Landowski (Paris), Ars Electronica (Linz), Opel Villas Foundation Art Center (Rüsselsheim), Artbots 2005 (Dublin), Stefan Stux Gallery (NYC), San Jose Museum of Art, and the Museum Tinguely (Basel). She is the recipient of a Creative Capital Grant in Emerging Fields (2002) and an Illinois Arts Council Fellowship (2005 & 2001). Reviews of her work have appeared in Art in America, Contemporary, Chicago Tribune Sunday Magazine, Leonardo, www.lab71.org, The Washington Post, and New Art Examiner. She received an MFA in Art and Technology from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and is currently Assistant Professor in the School of Art and Design at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
URL:http://www.raaf.org

GIZMODO: Your project, "Translator II: Grower", connects a Carbon Dioxide (CO2) sensor to a mechanical robot that draws lines representing blades of grass on a wall according to how much CO2 is in the space. Why did you choose this form of representation and how does the output reflect back on the visitors to the exhibition?

SR: Much of my work in the last several years has focused on creating interactive sculptures that monitor their environment and generate sound or imagery in real time. This output is programmed to be data that is eminently readable by humans as useful as well as aesthetic. In other words, the output of the sculptures is a translation of invisible phenomena occurring in the environment into phenomena detectable by it's inhabitants. In the case of the Grower installation, the carbon dioxide exhaled by all the inhabitants of a space was made visible as blades of grass drawn in ink by the robot. The metaphoric relation posed by Grower is that grass needs CO2 in nature to grow. Here, my simulated grass needs the breath of human visitors in order to thrive. The height of the 'grass' directly reflects on the momentary density of humans in the space. In other words, the fields of drawn grass represent the history of the flow of people through the space. People can read the relative heights of grass not just as indications of how many people passed through, but also as how well that space is thriving. If the space is thriving, then it likely will be better able to support new "a-life" and/or new art forms such as the Grower itself.

GIZMODO: "The Unstoppable Hum" (TUH) examines the proliferation of electronic and electrical devices pervading our daily lives at home or at work. The project monitors electrical activity in a space and attempts to find patterns within these inputs to compose a musical score. The project also detects people in the space and emits a "sniffing" sound when they are close. What is TUH saying about technological infiltration in our environments how does the design of the project reflect this concern?

SR: I was inspired to create "The Unstoppable Hum" after I began researching the advances in and popular expectations of "smart architecture€". I became very aware of the hum of the building systems around me systems that were already responsive and self-regulating even if they weren't yet "smart". In a large office building, the activity of the many systems installed to regulate the environment is generally already highly complex if you look at them as a whole network. In fact,
the activity is complex enough to form seemingly natural life patterns via their cumulative array of on/off states. This is because the systems are often directly responding to our various natural life patterns as dynamic inhabitants of the space as well as the external patterns of weather outside.

The systems I concentrated on for this piece were the ones that are there to make us feel physically comfortable, secure, and connected to the other inhabitants of the building. For example, I tapped into internal phone systems, ventilation systems, automatic doors and elevators, security and safety systems, and so on. Again, these systems aren't smart, but they do directly serve humans and are automated to shut themselves off or turn themselves on in the pursuit of fulfilling the parameters we set for them. Together they create that hum in a building that we so expertly tend to tune out. TUH makes tuning the hum out impossible by generating complex musical scores on the fly in response to the cumulative activity of the building. The scores are never identical and are always changing as long as the building is activating and deactivating systems according to our needs. The piece is meant to raise people's awareness to the complex set of sensory-based activity behind the hum.

GIZMODO: "Dry Translator" responds to trends in "smart architecture" where local environments are increasingly adapting to our presence and actions. Instead of merely reading or recording these movements, the project amplifies them back onto the body of the participant. How concerned are you that we might lose control of our natural environments as more and more systems are built to adapt directly to us?

SR: I have to say that the environments that I was concentrating on when constructing this work have little that could be called "natural" about them as they were predominately man-made urban structures. For me it is hard to fathom how, in making our already wired homes and offices more uniquely responsive, interaction designers could catalyze individuals into further losing control of natural environments. One of my goals with Dry Translator is to bring the viewer/participant into a state of extreme heightened sensitivity towards their environment with the suggestion that every surface could be "alive". This installation is about turning the banal material of drywall found in most any contemporary home or business into a highly sensitive communication device that could be used to pass "touch" messages between visitors. Sound vests worn by visitors received live or pre-recorded messages that were generated by second person via scratching, smoothing, drumming, or talking into a wall. The sound then output to the vest pans and vibrates over and around the visitor's torso and up and down their spine (via a series of small speakers embedded in the vest). Call me an optimist, but I hope that the type of sensitivity generated by smart/responsive systems could help raise peoples€ awareness of their environments (e.g., in my case the materials it is made of) and that this phenomenon might trickle down into an enhanced sensitivity towards all their environments including natural ones.

GIZMODO:"(Breath V) Pink Bliss" re-examines the "fetishistic" side of technology where a prosthetic finger rubs the liquid crystal display of a common calculator as someone approaches, while "breathing" sounds play through speakers. Why is this relationship between "user and device" important to you? Do you envision a future where technological progress could eclipse or replace human intimacy?

SR: This is a more lighthearted piece that is meant to play off of the relationships the "Digirati" have with their [Personal Digital Assistants] PDAs ranging in nature from dependent to obsessive to even fetishistic. The piece illustrates (in a slightly naughty way) how good pushing the buttons of a PDA could make its user feel. Pink Bliss includes a pocket calculator I found at Office Depot with a display that (just by chance) emanates hot pink waves of liquid crystal when pressed. It was just too good to resist€. Despite this, I can't imagine a future where even the most biomorphically PDAs would serve as a satisfying replacement for human intimacy. (However I'm sure that at least on a sexual level we will continue to witness a proliferation of gizmos and interface designs that will attempt to do so "wirelessly" up to and beyond Woody Allen's "Orgasmitron") But, whatever simulations, stimulations, and artificially intelligent personalities may be put on a virtual store shelf in the future, they will only temporarily appease the user's appetite. They are part of an eternal product market based on novelty and disposability and not long-term satisfaction. As humans we are born programmed with a desire for real intimacy and it is unlikely that we will ever lose the ability to distinguish between fact or fantasy of it. We will always crave it with all its powerful emotional textures and triggers. The real question is whether or not people will choose to believe that human intimacy is an optional experience that offers more or less the same value as the artificially mediated experiences available to them.

GIZMODO: With "Saturday", you examined "communication leaks" between mobile devices in public spaces by using consumer "spy" devices such as CB radios and walkie-talkies to eavesdrop on private conversations on Saturdays in Humbolt Park, Chicago and recorded them for later playback. Users can listen to the clips through custom made gloves with integrated bone-conductance technology where they must hold their fingertips to their forehead. Why did you choose this type of interface to access the recorded conversations and what did you discover about the way people use portable electronic communication devices in public space? Were you surprised by the audio content you captured at the park?

SR: Similar to the "Dry Translator" piece, I wanted to make an interface that was intuitive to use and that played on natural human gesture for its activation. Also, I really wanted to give the participant the same sense of "listening in" that I had when making the piece. After much research, I decided to present Saturday in the form of an interactive audio glove. In order to hear my recordings of conversations, participants simply press their gloved fingertips to their foreheads and they are able to, via small bone transducers embedded in the glove fingertips, hear the sound without the use of their ears. This is possible because these particular transducers transmit sound by translating it into vibration patterns that are meant to resonate through bone of the user (and thereby bypass the inner ear and transmit sound directly to the auditory nerve). So, even if a user covers their ears and then places their fingers to their temples, they still "hear" the sound.

Gesturally, this piece permits a new way of listening. The user places their fingers to their forehead in a gesture of a clairvoyant or akin to Rodin's "The Thinker" in order to tap into the lives of strangers. Pressing different combinations of fingers to the temple yield plural viewpoints and group conversations. These sounds are literally mixed in the bones of the listener. My surprises with the conversations I culled over the span of a month were how diverse the backgrounds of the individuals were yet how similar their concerns and frustrations. In economic issues, people regularly singled out the same reasons to lose faith in local politics. I also listened to quite a lot of gang communication (comprised mostly of hours of seriously bad rapping being called back and forth) and actually witnessed the start of a couple of inter-gang fights over the use of radio frequency channels. That was quite unexpected!

GIZMODO: What projects are you currently working on? How are they similar or different than your past projects?

SR:"Icelandic Rift" is a series of structures assembled from industrial materials, stark yet organic forms, and automated systems. These sculptures come together in each work to form a modular system of organic architecture which plays on the viewer's senses of scale and gravity. The Icelandic Rift sculptures are electronically powered works that include mechanical systems which function to automate lights and fluids within the sculpture body. Materials in the series include aluminum, cast acrylic, eurothene, ferrofluid, and custom kinetics and electronics. In all, the structures in the Icelandic Rift series represent a future vision of agriculture and growth in a zero-g environment. It is a composition of artificial islands supported and connected by steel and aluminum struts so that they can be assembled as part of a greater mechanical system that hovers above the floor. Together the architecture formed by these structures is designed to be perceived as both vaguely familiar and also austerely alien.

On the larger aluminum islands in the series sit smaller island forms cut from cast acrylic and/or aluminum. The island centers are hollowed out to function as reservoirs to hold Ferrofluid - a type of liquid magnet. This is a dense black liquid which spikes up when an earth magnet is placed in its proximity. Under some of these islands I have automated hard magnets and electromagnets that, in turn, automate the standing Ferrofluid liquid in the reservoirs so that the liquid is made to spin, rise, twitch, or travel. These symbolize the energy sources for the systems. I was in part inspired to create this work by the landscapes that I explored in Iceland. There, I saw breathtakingly monumental glaciers, which seemed to float atop fields smooth black lava rock. In other parts of the country, there were endless stains of acid green sulfur on the earth as well as steaming blue pools of heat-loving algae which defied one's sense of "the natural"€. The landscape in Iceland is famous for its lunar feel but its elements seemed to trump gravity and logic in ways that were utterly unexpected. I am also drawing inspiration for this work from the multi-tiered design of staged, hillside agricultural systems such as those seen in Asian rice terraces. Last, I am drawing inspiration from the soft design forms found in domed space observatories, water droplets, and BioSpheres.

OTHER NEW WORKS:

- NEW PHOTOGRAPHIC WORKS IN THE TEST PEOPLE SERIES HERE: http://www.raaf.org/Prints/Photo.html
- New Public Commission work starting now for McCormick Place West (completion date is approximately December 2007):
see attached description, www.mccormick2008.com/media/files/facts.pdf
http://www.mc4west.com
http://www.choosechicago.com/media/mcplacewest_facts.html

Interview/Article by Jonah Brucker-Cohen

As technology gains ubiquity in our everyday lives, a danger exists that we will eventually lose touch with how this increased use effects our natural environment. With a growing reliance on electrical power and silicon chips used in our daily electronics-entrenched existence, the question remains as to how this technological obsession will change our planet in the years to come? Examining this conflict from the inside out is San Francisco-based artist, Amy Franceschini and her ongoing artist-collective, Futurefarmers. Working to both connect us with our fragile environment and engage with the ongoing conflicts of over-consumption, pollution, and sustainability, Franceschini uses technology as a means to both disseminate this concern as well as pose questions about how to rescue us from these potential fates. GIZMODO spoke to Franceschini about her approach in creating digital and analog projects that challenge our perceptions of technology and how a little effort to conserve our resources now can save us all in the future.

Name: Amy Franceschini
Age: 35
Education: BFA: San Francisco State University,
MFA: Stanford University
Affiliation: Independent Artist
URL(s):
www.futurefarmers.com
www.futurefarmers.com/survey
www.antiwargame.org
www.free-soil.org

GIZMODO: Your project, "Photosynthesis Robot", challenges the fundamental definition of what a robot could or should be. How does this work / theme fit into the larger theme of your work?

AF: This piece was made at a time where I was a bit disheartened by "New Media" works. Rather than a "Why the Future Doesn't Need Us" robot take over, I proposed a nature take over - or a way of working with nature rather than trying to mimic it or replace it. The larger question this points to is the perceived separation between humans and nature. This piece is about that paradox. It fits into a larger thematic in my work in terms of a concern about our role as humans within the greater body of the nature we are part of. Much of my work is about balance. In the case of Photosynthesis Robot, it is dependant on several variables in order to propel itself forward. Who will provide water, lighting conditions and space for it to move about and do its business? In this case chasing after SUV's capturing CO2 emissions. Go [little] robot, go!

"Homeland Security Blanket" (Franceschini, 2002)

GIZMODO: The "Homeland Security Blankets" (HSB) project materializes the US government's domestic threat level meter into a physical object and potential consumer product. Why is this manifestation important to you?

AF: I made this piece right when America invaded Iraq. I was involved in a lot of protests in San Francisco and a deep concern that our nation was becoming something I did not want to be any part of. The Homeland Security Blanket speaks to the current veil of apathy and media hypnotism America seems to be under. This piece is important to me as a product in terms of it being a critique of consumer culture. I think today people feel comforted by material objects. These material objects provide a false sense of security, as does the Homeland Security Act. So the HSB project suggests this false sense of security or pokes fun at it.

"Sundial Watch" (Franceschini, 2004)

GIZMODO: Sundial Watches" takes the 3,000 year old invention into the personal gadgetry world. How do you see this crossover informing how we perceive today's high tech gear?

AF: Sundial Watch (SDW) again for me was a sort of "Luddite" approach to New Media art. At the time I made this piece I was comparing the idea of digital devices to one's own devices. How do you tell time without a watch that depends on batteries and mechanics? In SDW, one must collaborate with the gadget, in that, you must know where North is in order for the correct time to display itself upon the face of the watch. I guess in terms of informing how we perceive today's high tech gear, I would hope it would serve as an anchor, such that it would make people think about how dependant on technology (we have become).

"DIY Algae/Hydrogen Bioreactor", (Franceschini, 2004)

GIZMODO: Your work presents a critical view of the pressure we impose on the environment while simultaneously engaging with this conflict. How does this theme fit into the "DIY Algae/Hydrogen Bioreactor" project?

AF: My concern with technology is that I am simultaneously excited about innovation, but I question the need to depend so heavily on high-tech solutions. The DIY Algae/Hydrogen Bioreactor is an attempt to put the power of energy production in the hands of the people, such that they are not so dependant on the privatized world of energy. The process is still in an embryonic stage, but all the factors that it depends upon to produce hydrogen are abundant; sun, water, algae. I see these elements as "modern technology".

"Soil Sampling Shoes", (Franceschini, 2005)

GIZMODO: The "Soil Sampling Shoes" project attempts to covertly take soil samples of Superfund waste sites in Silicon Valley as the wearer simply walks around on the soil. Why did you choose this particular location and what were you attempting to discover with this work?

AF: I chose Silicon Valley Superfund Sites because it is really the breadbasket of the high-tech industry. I live and work very close to this area and use the products produced there. In researching these sites, I found that there are 29 sites in Santa Clara County. This is the most concentrated area of toxic sites in America. After doing much research I found that many of the companies responsible for contaminating this area were making products that I use. When I tried to get information about the history and current status of the toxic clean up, I found that the issue had sort of ceased to exist in the public eye. When I began calling various companies to ask about their Superfund status, many of them did not want to discuss this or told me I could find everything I was looking for at the EPA library.

I made the Soil Sampling shoes as part of a larger project, "Gardening Superfund Sites". The shoes gather information in the form of soil information that can be pure evidence. This soil presented in the form of a sculpture becomes suspended evidence. The shoes become charged objects in the sense that the glass vials filled with soil become a representation of the memory of each site. A record of the waste produced in the making of computer memory in the early 1980's.

GIZMODO: What projects are you currently working on? How are they similar or different than your past projects?

AF: I am currently working on several projects. One is a citywide performance with Michael Swaine. It is the game of telephone played between 5 telephone booths across the city of San Francisco. The piece runs in line with past work, in that it is a bit "technostalgia" and a bit of a critique of the art institution. Here is a brief:
The contemporary idea of an art gallery has changed over the years, in part because of the Situationists. The city as a stage for public interaction is an important way to make change in society. Telephone Booth will use a network of five small spaces, rectangular like most galleries, but transparent and part of all cities. Public telephone booths will be used to frame five small performances that revolve around the idea of communication. Communication is an integral part of being human, and also an integral part of art. The "TELEPHONE BOOTH" is quickly being replaced for telephones without walls. (Where will superman change into his outfit?)

The motivation for this project is two fold:
1. To provide a situation and a medium for artists(citizens) to collaborate with an unexpected outcome.
2. To create a platform for audience/artist participation in the form of an urban play where the urban audience and programmed audiences merge to generate a dialog between these two audiences.

In this game of telephone(booth) we will invite "artists" and "non-artists" to have an improvisational dialog. An invited artist will listen to one side of a conversation and then pass the dialog on to the next member of the relay race. Five citizens will perform for the city in the soapbox of a telephone booth, and an audience will travel from phone booth to phone booth by bike and see and hear the conversation grow and change. The audience becomes at once a localized and distributed participant guided through the city by a string of conversations. The invited artists include: Werner Herzog, Shaun O'dell, Elaine Buckholtz , EATS TAPES and David Wilson.

UK design student Peter Brewin's shower concept is said to be able to save the city of London 85 billion liters of water a day using technology based on a Dyson vacuum cleaner to clean and reheat the recycled water and then heat it to the proper temperature.

Eco-aware shower recycles water [BBC News]

Update: From the 'if it sounds too good to be true' dept.: It looks like that product is being marketed by United Nuclear. United Nuclear is UFO crackpot Bob Lazar s company: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Lazar. I d be wary of the claims he s making and the veracity/existence of this hydrogen car product.

Thanks Joe!

OhGizmo