[dovesnotdrones]

These are some prototypes for making a sprouted surface.

Here is how I made the prototype in the top two photos:

Grow Time: 7 - 10 days Typically, the seeds begin to sprout in 2-3 days. It takes a minimum of 7 days for the seeds to fully mature. Once they are mature, they last for about 7 days. If you want to have them ready for a specific date, I recommend starting 8-9 days ahead of that day. 

Materials:

Thin, lightweight plywood  Handy Pantry seed germination mats Cress seeds Staples (and staple gun) Water Spray bottle 

Steps:

1. Soak the cress seeds overnight or for a few hours. Soak approximately 1 part seeds 3-4 parts water. Better to err on the side of less than more because you can always add more water. The seeds will form a gel around them and should be thick like pudding.*

2. Staple the seed germination mat on the wood. It should be stapled on the back but cover the front. First, staple one side to the back, then roll it up over the side of the wood, across the front, down the opposite side, and staple the other side to the back. 

3. Gently wet the seed germination mat. It will puff up when you wet it. If it gets hit with too hard of a spray of water you can put a hole in it. Ideally, try to wet it with a faucet that disperses the water, a shower head, or a spray bottle (that sprays a lot of water so it doesn't take forever to wet it), or just don't turn your faucet on all the way.

4. Spread the seeds on top. Make sure to spread them evenly and spread them along the sides.

5. Set the seeds in a place that is out of the wind and gets indirect sunlight. It would be a good idea to put plastic under the seeds if they are on a wood table. Wind will cause the seeds to dry out. 

6. Spritz the seeds with a spray bottle 2-4 times per day, soaking them to keep them moist.

7. The seeds will begin to sprout in a few days. They will be fully mature in about 7 days. After they are fully mature they will last for 7 days. On about day 5 or 6 I will usually put them in a window or area with more light. 

* Sometimes the seeds can off gas a pungent smell during the sprouting process. My hypothesis is that this smell increases the longer they are soaked, so soaking them for only a few hours may reduce the smell. An alternate method to try could be, rather than soaking the seeds, wetting the pad first and then covering the pads with dry seeds which, in theory, should absorb the water and begin to grow.

SOURCES FOR MATERIALS: You can buy the Handy Pantry seed germination mat on either of these sites: - www.wheatgrasskits.com/micro-mat-hydroponic-grow-pad - Handy Pantry Etsy Site

The cheapest source I have found for bulk cress seeds are: http://www.sprouthouse.com/SearchResults.asp?Search=cress For large surfaces I would order a minimum of 1 pound. I haven't calculated the quantity of seeds needed for surface area coverage, but I would roughly estimate that 1 pound of seeds can cover 4'x4' to 8'x 8', potentially larger.

ATTRIBUTIONS: This method was inspired by the Chia Pet, costumes from the  performance What is Enough? (2012) and a method theater technicians used to make large letters at the Kampnagel Summer Festival in Hamburg, Germany (2012).

[dovesnotdrones]

February 10, 2014 København, Danmark

This is a simple greywater system I built in my apartment. I made six of these and water them with water leftover from washing dishes. The plants transpire the water back into the air, returning it to the hydrologic cycle. The goal is to make an extremely simple system, so it is easy for others to replicate. I designed this system so it would work inside an apartment, rather than needing to flush the water outdoors. Here is what I did:

1. I drilled holes in a bucket. 2. I placed the bucket on a lid (from another bucket) to act as a saucer to catch any water that drips through the holes. 3. I filled the bucket with dirt 4. I planted the plants — making sure to break up the roots a little at the bottom — and left a couple inches of room at the top of the planters to prevent the water from spilling over. I chose plants that were water loving, like ferns, bamboo grass, baby's tears, cat grass, sedges. It is also a good idea to choose plants that don't need much sunlight.  5. I watered the plants deeply (by putting them in the sink) and then put the planter in the window, with the lid saucer underneath. 6. I repeated this 6 times to give me a sufficient amount of plants to uptake my water use. 7. I waited a couple days to start watering them with the dishwater, to give them a few days to establish their roots. 

I think I probably need more like 12 planters, but I will wait and see how it goes. Maybe I will work on a system for using less water in the first place.

If you want to see more complex greywater systems I built in the past, check out: http://katherineball.com/No-Swimming and http://katherineball.com/Indoor-Greywater-System

I also recommend the book Building a Greywater Oasis by Oasis Design for building outdoor greywater systems. 

[dovesnotdrones]

6 February Walls and Space, Danmark

Benny, Owen, Vebjørn and I made a mix for Bokashi composting at the School of Walls and Space today. I made the Bokashi serum from scratch and then we inoculated wheat bran, spent grain from brewing beer, and newspapers with it. Bokashi is a Japanese style of composting that ferments food in an anerobic environment with little smell and no bugs. You can even compost meat! We will wait two weeks before being to compost with the mix. Within that two weeks, the bacteria in the serum will inoculate the mix. When we begin to compost, we will toss handfuls of the mix on top of food scraps in a bucket (with a lid). The bacteria in the mix will inoculate the food scraps and begin to compost them. You can read about the full process here and here.

[dovesnotdrones]

January 21 København, Danmark

I started washing my dishes with coffee grounds. It works really well to cut the grease, plus I don't have to buy bottles of dish soap. I learned about this when I lived in London and when I visited Torino, Italy. It is pretty common in Italy to wash your dishes with a mixture of coffee grounds and ash. I keep the coffee grounds in a little bowl right by the sink, so I can just grab a little but when I want to wash a dish. I haven't had any problems with the grounds clogging the sink or getting sick. I actually think it might be good for my internal ecosystem to not have everything 100% sanitized all the time. It's part of my practice of reinoculating my system with fresh bacteria. I also eat skyr, a type of yogurt high in protein, in the morning. Before I eat the skyr, I drink a glass of warm/hot water to wake up my digestive system. I try to eat miso one time a week and other fermented foods too. I have also been trying to eat a lot of diverse foods and not wash vegetables and fruits when they are organic. I think it is good to ingest a little dirt from wherever I am living. 

[dovesnotdrones]

January 20 København, Danmark

I am in Denmark for the next two months. I have been thinking about living as form and what I could do to explore that notion. 

Here are some origami containers I made for spices, inspired by the spice stores I visited recently in Jordan. I placed them next to my stove to make it easier to use them while cooking. I can just grab a pinch of this and that, rather than having to open containers all the time. I have been trying to use more diverse spices because I have heard they are good for keeping the ecosystem in my body healthy. The origami instructions are here.

[dovesnotdrones]

3 Jan 2012 Jerash, Jordan

Wandering as a ghost through the ruins of the Jerash, one of the best preserved ancient Roman cities in the Near East, the echoes of chisels chipping Corinthian and Ionic laced into marble conjure a consciousness of how the Roman empire still impacts us today. The expanding rings of the empire's shockwave penetrate further than just the Roman grid system's reshaping of urban planning via vanquishing collective spaces by burning crosses into them. How could the contemporary Israeli-Palestinian conflict be a repercussion of Roman destruction and occupation of Jerusalem in 70 CE, slaughter and exile of it's Jewish inhabitants, and then the crumbling of the Roman empire giving way to the Muslim regime of Caliph Umar the Great in 637?

To see the Cardo of Jerash is to see an empire crumble. Once paved with polished marble, lined with columns and an underground stone sewer system, now heaving with dust and fallen pillars. Empires really do crumble, though their shockwaves ripple outwards long after they are gone in a physical sense. How does one resist the rule of a metaphysical empire? How does one remove the Cardo from their cardo? 

[dovesnotdrones]

29 December Jerusalem, Israel/Palestine

To be a stone in a wall in a city that has been conquered twenty nine times.

In the time before bulldozers, you are pulled from the palm of the land. Your moss coating peels off as you are dragged through the pale sand to press shoulders with other stones your size, positioned to communicate the message of the builders. Days of weathering in sun, wind and westerly rain are etched into your sternum with ricocheting arrows and splashes of blood, urine, and spit—some oozing from children abducted from early age now growing grey hairs of absolute warriors. The moat of fear begins to fill and you are slathered with mortar. Roman blocks of polished marble are pressed on top of you. Holding the steady weight with your inner geometry, you surround buildings as tall as the trees, expanded with domes. Architects draw up their battle plans on sheets of white paper creased flapping in the wind, burying you as an anathema, then digging you up to reinforce hierarchy. Who is going to stamp the ground to determine what story is told here? An archway is cleaved in your wall and you become a gate with the name of the next city. Crusaders batter through, holding shields in their left and swords in right, exposed to the weapons of urban planning as they are forced to turn left through the narrow corridor. Streets bathed in mercilessness are washed as water streams down from the north. The residue of fear is used to mix the next layer of mortar. Obtuse, unsanded stones of Islamic builders are stacked on top, followed by a layer of smaller blocks of the contemporary Jewish occupation. Among the layers of stones, the interfacing of three religions compete devoutly over approximate locations of sacred sites of different conceptions of the same god. A model for rebuilding Solomon's Temple perches on a roof top overlooking the Dome of the Rock, bordered by the Wailing Wall which is split 70/30 between gender. The golden dome covers a rocky outcropping perhaps where Mohammed ascended into heaven, perhaps where the universe combusted into being, perhaps the spot where "god" created the universe, perhaps where Issac was almost killed by his father, perhaps where Solomon's temple smothered the grass, perhaps where the amorphous was transformed into the particular, perhaps where humanity received its first breath, perhaps where humanity will sigh its last. To be a stone in a city built by victors, a letter in a line of history written by victors.

[dovesnotdrones]

28 December Wadi Rum, Jordan

A playground in another world. Today I climbed in a wadi, Arabic for valley, of giant red sand dunes, sandstone hudus, and basalt rocks coated in desert varnish. The black stain of the desert varnish is created by microbes that live on the surface of the rocks, oxidizing manganese and red iron oxide and coated in clay to reduce heat and radiation. 

Riding a camel is a lesson in looseness, much like knitting. The more you relax and let go, the easier it is. Rocking back and forth in the saddle straddling Arfawn’s hump, the movement of my entire body was dictated by the movement of the camel. How often in life is the movement of our bodies determined by something that is beyond our control? Such as being pushed by the waves floating in the ocean or rocking in our mother’s arms as a baby. It seems more commonly our motion is moved by machines: riding elevators, escalators, driving in cars. How are our bodies effected differently by being completely moved by organic forces vs machines?  

Alternatively, one may beg to differ that there is no separation between “us” and “not us”. Jordanian scorpions are an excellent illustration of the organism-environment. There are two types of scorpions: ones that live in burrows in sand and debris (like the deathstalker) & others that live in holes in the rocks. The ones that live in the burrows carry their tails on the sides, while the ones that live in holes carry their tails above their backs. How do we determine our environments and our environments determine us? When does the “we” and “environment” fall away completely, like rocks dissolving into deserts? 

[dovesnotdrones]

27 December, Wadi Araba, Jordan

Other worlds aren't just possible. They are already in existence, and have been for thousands of years.  Bedouin in the deserts of the Middle East, Hadza in the Central Rift Valley and Serengeti, the Maasai in what is now called Tanzania and Kenya. In the Feynan area of Wadi Araba, Bedouins live in the desert and the rocks in tents sewn out of goat hair, billboards, and blankets. What would it be like to live in one of those worlds? What can be done to help their worlds retain autonomy from the hegemony and Gidden's Effect of the one world order? 

[dovesnotdrones]

26 December Dead Sea, Jordan

There are those places on this planet that change you. The lowest place on Earth was one of them for me. Floating in the dead sea, my body became a sponge. All the water in my body rushed out of me and in came the saltiest water I have ever tasted. 

What will happen when the names of places lose the reason for which they are named? When semiotics succumbs to desertification, exhaustive exploitation and climate change? What will happen when the Dead Sea dries up completely because of fertilizer plants, agricultural irrigation and drinking water? What will happen when all the glaciers in Glacier National Park have melted? 

[dovesnotdrones]

23 December Amman, Jordan

Marhaban - Hello Ahalan wa salhalan - You are welcome Shokran - Thank you Ma'a salama - Good Bye

Today, I went into Old Amman to see the Roman Theatre and Citadel. Rehbi, our tour guide, explained the theatre, built in 151 AD, was used for concerts and performances. < I should preface that I haven't fact checked any of this…but sometimes it's nice to learn about the place where you are by hearing stories from people rather than reading words on a screen >. Its audience of 6,000 were divided by the rich in the front level, the soldiers in the mid level, and the public in the top level. How does this clever buffer zone between the military and the aristocracy exist today outside of the theatre and even outside of Amman? The theater's massive corinthian columns were knocked down in the earthquake of 747 AD at the time when Amman was Philadelphia, the city of brotherly love, and was symbolized by a snake and scorpion slithering around an eye. The monacre was carved with the hope of diffusing Jordan as zone of conflict between the Romans and the Seleucids. The Romans occupied Jordan in 63 BC, but the Greeks occupied it earlier in 300 BC, and before them the Persians, Assyrians and Ammonites way back in the Iron Age. Philadelphia was part of the Decapolis: the 10 city economic confederation of Greece, sort of like the EU. The echo from the centerpoint of the theatre sounds like history repeating itself, same tricks, different names. The Roman occupiers mutated in to the Byzantines in 324 - 395, after that Umayyad took control (660 - 750 AD) as the first Islamic dynasty spreading Islam around the world. At the citadel perched on a mountain over the city, we walked through the Umayyad palace, a domed stone structure with walls built by both the Romans and the Umayyad. Rehbi showed us the difference between Roman walls and Islamic architecture: the Romans built walls out of square blocks while the Muslims took stones existing in the landscape and mortared them together to create walls as jagged and contoured as the rocks themselves. As we walked by the wooden arch jig used to make the dome and into the cross shaped reception hall (the remains of a Byzantine church), something I had read referencing the Umayyad rang through my head:

"If “sustainability” is about anything, it is about carbon. Carbon and climate change. To listen to most environmentalists today, you would think that these were the only things in the word worth talking about. The business of “sustainability” is the business of preventing carbon-emissions. Carbon-emissions threaten a potentially massive downgrading of our prospects for material advancement as a species. They threaten to unacceptably erode our resource-base and put at risk our vital hoards of natural capital. If we cannot sort this out quickly, we are going to end up darning our socks again and growing our own carrots and holidaying in Weston-super-Mare and other such unthinkable things. All of the horrors our grandparents left behind will return like deathless legends. Carbon-emissions must be “tackled” like a drunk with a broken bottle: quickly, and with maximum force….I am also convinced of is that the fear of losing both the comfort and the meaning that our civilisation gifts us has gone to the heads of environmentalists to such a degree that they have forgotten everything else. The carbon must be stopped, like the Umayyad at Tours, or all will be lost." - Paul Kingsnorth, Confessions of a Recovering Environmentalist

The palace led out into the Umayyad Mosque, which pointed in the direction of Mecca. Knowing very little about Islam, I inquired about the significance of Mecca and  was told it was where Abraham built the first house of worship, where Mohammed was born, laying the black stone of a meteorite as the cornerstone of the Kabah. Next to the mosque was the temple to Hercules, the pillars fallen down with the earthquake of 747 and resting at the hand of a 13 meter statue. The ruins stood against the backdrop of the city, Old Amman and New Amman waging a war between the hum of disordered traffic, health codes and parking chaos & modernity marching to the clip of an iv drip, confident and lockstep all in the name of progress. The valley flanking the Citadel's mountain was laced with a Palestinian refugee camp and a green park surrounding the King's palace.

[dovesnotdrones]

(Pictured: Some patterns and designs in Jordan)

22 December Amman, Jordan

Today I ran around the area I am staying in “New Amman”. What was once agricultural land is now inoculated with urban sprawl. Flat, beige apartment buildings are shooting like genetically modified corn. Empty fields strewn with trash and discarded concrete appear abandoned, post-apocalyptic, but are are really just in a holding pattern waiting to be covered with medium-rise buildings. Construction sites rounded every corner, the propane truck sounded like the ice cream truck, two men shoved discarded 2x4s into a cloth bag that hung over the sides of a donkey, an father and son crossed the roundabouts on smaller mules (qubressy?) as the discorded traffic huffed in the traffic jam to modernity.

This has been my first small taste of discrimination that is impossible to shake. To be a woman running in Amman is a small glimmer of what it must be like to be a black teenage boy walking through Harlem being stalked by the stop and frisk police. It is strange how discrimination invades the psyche. It goes beyond having to be conscious about what I wear and to have to be on alert in the streets. The guards, the construction workers say things to me in Arabic as I ran by (wearing a long sleeve shirt and pants). I even ran past an American man who told me “be careful”…what are the chances of that happening in the US? How does being aware of your discrimination & knowing you can’t shake off what makes people discriminate against you & and having to be on alert, affect one’s way of navigating life, one’s behavior, one’s psyche?

[dovesnotdrones]

21 December Amman, Jordan

Today I went to a spice store and I bought Zatar, a bakery where  they sold cookies by the kilo, and a fruit store where we bought cherimoya, pomelo, and two varieties of persimmons. There is a different perception on health codes here. At the spice shop, the clerks let me taste the thyme-sesame mixture it by taking a giant scoop of it out of the bin and letting me grab a pinch of it directly with my bare hands before putting it back in the bin.

The walk through the city went by power company's headquarters conveniently situated next to the Ministry of Energy. Jordan is having major energy supply issues and is generating its power by burning fuel oil. 

I visited a mall with a Carrefour supermarket, which led me to wonder: How is intra-American and European culture is inoculating the middle east? In the age of globalization, it is possible for one to exist in Jordan without eating anything that is grown here, wearing anything made here or even drinking the water?

[dovesnotdrones]

20 December Azraq, Jordan

Rumors fly that the next world war will be about water. Today, I visited the Azraq Wetland Reserve in northeast Jordan. What was once a vast wetland that animals would migrate through in transit from Scandinavia, Greece, Southern Africa, Russia and China, now has dried to a puddle by comparison. On 2 Feb 1967, 347,000 birds were counted in the Azraq marshes. On 2 February 2000, only 1200 birds were counted in the Azraq marshes. The wetland's spring was pumped dry by the thirst of Amman, Irbid and Zaraqa. In 1945 .3 million cubic meters (MCM) of water were being pumped out of Azraq. In 1965, the number rose to 4 MCM and 15 MCM in 1980. In 1999, the springs dried up completely. The most recent development in Jordan's search for water was the discovery of an underground aquifer and the construction of a pipeline, contracted by a Turkish corporation, to bring the water to Amman. Now people on the outskirts of Amman get water three days per week, rather than just one. No one drinks the tap water, though, because much of it comes from fossilized sources which are radioactive and there are also issues with sewage pipes leaking into the clean water pipes . If there are no landfills or widespread recycling in Jordan, are the plastic water bottles being burned in the desert? I also visited Qasr Al Kharaneh, an 8th century AD Umayyad Fort or Inn and a bathhouse with Greek-inspired nude paintings (rare for a country whose primary religion bans nude imagery) and a bear playing guitar.

[dovesnotdrones]

19 December 2012 New York, Berlin, Amman

Today I slingshotted across the sky in a metal bird fed by dinosaur blood. From New York to Amman, Jordan via Berlin. In JFK I dropped my jaw and my rights as I waited in line at security, seeing for the first time someone from the google glasses explorer program. One nightmare emerging within an another nightmare. I am really not looking forward to becoming anymore of a robot than I already am. "As the shackles start to rub, we confidently predict the emergence of new, more comfortable designs." — Paul Kingsnorth.

Midway, I stopped in Berlin to deliver a handmade scarf on behalf of a friend, who couldn't make the delivery himself because he had been denied a visa by Fortress Europe. After making the scarf handoff, I went to Oranienplatz to check in on the Refugee Strike encampment to see what was happening with other people subjected to the institutional violence of the illegalization regime. The tents on the public square were wrapped in plastic billboards to weatherize them for the winter. I chatted with a nice man from Niger and some other men from Africa in the info tent. They told me that they are tired of demonstrations, tired of journalists, tired of nothing changing. I would be tired too if I had to live through two Berlin winters in a tent made out of advertising. Everyday journalists come to take photos and videos, but they never print what they say, and nothing ever changes. They have been living in the park for 11 months, arriving on foot—breaking the asylum rules by marching away from solitary confinement-esque lagers across the country to gather in Berlin and attempt to stand up for their right to have rights. However, this struggle does not stop in Berlin, it reaches it mycelial web to Vienna, Copenhagen, France, London…an inertia has germinated. Yesterday a forum was held on the European Day of Migration. On the 15-16 there was a demonstration, concert, film and theatre event concerning the ultimatum to evict the encampment and either force people back in to isolating lagers or deport them.

Upcoming calls for mobilizations include:

— 20 December 2013: Demo against deportations by Air Berlin at Terminal C of TXL Berlin Airport 7 — Jan 15: Demonstration in Dessau is called to remember Oury Jalloh who was burnt alive in a police cell in Dessau on 7 Jan 2005 — 21-23 February 2014: No Border Lasts Forever Conference in Frankfurt: conference.w2eu.net — May 2014: March to Brussels for the European Parliament elections

"Our demands are and will remain: the abolition of Lagers and Residenzpflicht, the stopping of all deportations, a permanent right to stay, the right to work, access to education and to a self-determined habitation as well as the right to freedom of movement. We demand to be treated and respected as human beings. We demand our human rights!"¹

On my walk back to the train, I came across a poster for a performance entitled FRONTex SECURITY by Hans-Werner Kroesinger at HAU from 18 - 21 December: http://english.hebbel-am-ufer.de/programme/schedule/kroesinger-frontex-security/ questioning "how much the lives of refugees are a commodity worth protecting"? Frontex is the European Union agency for external border security, "protecting" EU external borders from "illegal" immigration and people trafficking.

People always tell me the Greeks are protest maniacs, but the demonstrating kept going even as I was getting on my flight at the airport where a group people were protesting Air France's transportation of live animals for experiments. Surrounded by photos laid out on the terminal floor of vivisected primates, bunnies, and mice with computers sewn into their brains, they held signs that signs read "No Border, No Nation, Stop Animal Deportation" and "Tiere vor Profit".

Arriving at the Jordan border crossing, I was subjected to my first retinal scanning. I tried to squint my eyes as much as possible.

1. "Call for Demonstration: We are all Oranienplatz and we will stay all!" Leaflet picked up at Oranienplatz for 15-16 December 2013 Konzert & Programm.

[dovesnotdrones]

Fliers picked up at Orienplatz encampment of the Berilin Refugee Strike.

Refugee Strike Berlin: asylstrikeberlin.wordpress.com

[dovesnotdrones]

During the Aldo and Leonardo Residency in the Boundary Waters Wilderness, I collaborated with scientists from the Minnesota Biological Survey Lawson Gerdes, Jeff Lee,Dan Wovcha and field assistant Jenna Pollard, to make an installation that rendered a scene of what 21st century land surveying entails — and what one variety of scientific research in the Boundary Waters wilderness looks like: the relevé method. The installation contains scientific tools, information, camp gear and idiosyncratic objects that illustrate the character of the four of us that went to the Boundary Waters to survey the biodiversity of the area using the "relevé" method. Using aerial infrared maps, we canoed and bushwacked to specific sections of the Boundary Waters to mark off 20x20 meter plots and assess all the plant species living in each plot. We surveyed each relevé plot at multiple levels, from the canopy to the ground cover, assessing density and maturity. We would also dig a hole in the ground to inspect the soil layers (if charcoal was present that would indicate there had been a fire) and test the PH of the soil. By performing the relevé method, we were able to generate a scientific rendering of the native plant community and fill in the map of biodiversity for the state of Minnesota that the Minnesota Biological Survey has been charting over the last two decades. The installation was created at Wolf Ridge Environmental Learning Center in Finland, MN.

The five of us have discussed exhibiting this installation again some day at a larger public institution. We have ideas for a series of public programs that could go along with it, including relevé school curriculum, the launch of a relevé society (these societies/clubs are prevalent in Europe), relevé events/performances, and workshops (for example: where participants can learn how to press plants, make a plant pressing book, and a solar plant dryer). We have plans to make a proposal to the Minnesota Science Museum and the Bell Museum of Natural History or during the 50th Anniversary Celebration of the Wilderness Act in Albuquerque. If you have any suggestions for any institutions to contact about hosting the exhibit, please email [email protected].

Photos courtesy of Jenna Pollard, Dan Wovcha, and Katherine Ball.

Much gratitude to Wolf Ridge for hosting the installation, Lawson Gerdes for bottomlining the science end of the collaboration, Jeff Lee for leading the Boundary Waters Trip, Dan Wovcha and Jenna Pollard for their filming/photography, zest for life, insatiable curiosity, deep wonder and reverence for the flora and fauna with which we share this planet.