WATERSHED+

This visual blog by Lead Artist Sans façon presents images and projects related to the WATERSHED+ art program. WATERSHED+ is a public art program hosted by City of Calgary's department of Utilities and Environment Protection. WATERSHED+ aims to develop awareness and pleasure in the environment, not by changing water management practice, nor developing a uniform visual language, but rather by creating a climate of opportunity for water initiatives to build an emotional connection between people and the watershed. WATERSHED+ presents a unique approach to public art by embedding artists and artistic practices within UEP core activities, participating as members on infrastructure design teams, contributing to project design, development of events, community education, etc. You can visit us at: watershedplus.ca This program was devised by Sans façon (Charles Blanc & Tristan Surtees) with a team composed of Matt Baker, Emlyn Firth, Yan Olivares, Eric Laurier and Bert van Duin.

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Plus catalogues the last 8 years, each of the works realized with WATERSHED+ and the artists and teams involved. Alongside this documentation we invited six prominent arts voices – a combination of artists, curators, writers and editors - to explore a topic and to complement the narrative of the program, projects, and process from their experiences. These art subject matter experts bring knowledge about contemporary art, urban and cultural development, and insights into creative processes. Plus also outlines the less tangible outcomes and provides recommendations for the future of the program. "We have always struggled with trying to define WATERSHED+ – it’s a plan, a program, an artwork. It is processed-based work, with temporary and permanent work. It is performance and collaborative. It is artist-lead, municipal, internally and externally focused; it is engaging, informing, educational. It is engineering. It is art. It is serious, critical, joyous, challenging, and celebratory. [...] It's all of these things, it's blurry. " "[...] This is the story of the first phase of WATERSHED+. It catalogues projects, who was involved and the outcomes. It contains people's opinions and experiences from many points of view: engineers, artists, managers, and critics – many of whom helped shape the program it has become. " From Plus, Introduction WATERSHED+ is a City of Calgary public art project Essays by: Tatiana Mellema, Hesse McGraw, Diana Sherlock, Susan Szenasy, Shauna Thompson and Janet Zweig Interviews of staffs and artists by amery Calvelli Plus Graphic artist: Mustaali Raj

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Map of countries with no (permanent) rivers.

They are:

Sovereign states: Bahamas Bahrain Comoros Kiribati Kuwait Maldives Malta Marshall Islands Monaco Nauru Oman Qatar Saudi Arabia Tonga Tuvalu UAE Vatican City Yemen

Dependencies and other territories: Anguilla Bermuda British Indian Ocean Territory Cayman Islands Christmas Island Cocos (Keeling) Islands Easter Island Gibraltar Niue Norfolk Island Pitcairn Islands Saint Barthélemy Saint Martin Tokelau Wallis and Futuna

Map by reddit user darth_stroyer.

From Brilliant maps

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Matt Emmett won the 2016 Arcaid Images Architectural Photography Award at this year’s World Architecture Festival. The yearly Arcaid competition scopes out the sharpest shooters in architectural photography, in recognition of expertise and challenging norms in the artistic medium.

Out of 20 shortlisted entries, Emmett ultimately won the Arcaid jury's favor with his photo of the East London Water Works Company's 1868 covered reservoir in Finsbury Park, London.

From here

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Glacial melt, Skafta River, Iceland.

Photo by Benjamin Grant

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Aerial picture of tailings – the waste and byproducts from mining operations – pumped into the Gribbens Basin next to the Empire and Tilden iron ore mines in Negaunee, Michigan, USA.

Read more here

Photo by Benjamin Grant

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Pictures of the pollutants on the surface of the fetid Gowanus Canal in Brooklyn, New York.

The body of water -- one of the most polluted in the US -- is getting a $506 million (£344 million) detox after being used as an industrial dumping ground for more than a century. "The mud is up to three metres deep and has the consistency of thick mayonnaise," says Walter Mugdan, superfund division director at the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which is overseeing the cleanup.

Photo by

Steven Hirsch

From here and there

Previous post with similar pictures by another photgrapher

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After the Flood Control Act of 1928, the US Army Corps of Engineers started to study and alter the nation’s river systems—the Mississippi especially.

As a way to test out their building projects to make sure that they would work, they developed crude models, mere ditches cut in the dirt with water flowing through them.

In 1943, the Corps began construction on a model that could test all 1.25 million square miles of the Mississippi River. It would be a three-dimensional map of nearly half of the continental United States, rendered to a 1/2000 horizontal scale, spanning more than 200 acres. It was so big that the only way to see all of it at once was from a four-story observation tower.

A staff of six hundred engineers, technicians, and support staff would use the model to simulate past floods, and to figure out what could be changed to achieve different results.

As computer models became more accurate—or accurate enough—the Mississippi Basin Model gradually lost its funding. It finally closed in 1993 and now lies derelict.

From the 99%invisible podcast.

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Sound map of natural conditions of the United States by the National Park Service, estimating how places would sound naturally, without human influence. 

The trend is higher sound levels in wetter areas with more vegetation. This is due to the sounds of wind blowing through vegetation, flowing water, and more animals (especially birds and frogs) vocalizing in more fertile locations.

You can look at higher res maps here and also see the sound map of existing condtions.

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Waterlicht is an art intervention that presents a virtual flood with wavy lines of light, showing what the level of the water with rising sea levels would be without human intervention.

Originally created for the Dutch District Water Board Rijn & IJssel by Studio Roosegaarde

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The extreme flatness of the Northeastern China Manchurian Plain has caused the Songhua River to meander widely over time. The result of the meandering is that the river is surrounded by a wide plain filled with swirls and curves, showing paths the river once took. The plain includes classic features of meandering rivers, such as ox-bow lakes—semi-circular lakes formed when a meander is cut off from the main channel by river-deposited sediment. Meandering rivers shift their positions across the valley bottom by depositing sediment on the inside of bends while simultaneously eroding the outer banks of the meander bends.

The area in this picture is about 32 kilometers by 41 kilometers.

Image from NASA/GSFC/METI/ERSDAC/JAROS, and the U.S./Japan ASTER Science Team

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Humpback whales use a special hunting technique known as bubble net feeding. Whales, either individually or in a group, swim in a shrinking circle, blowing bubbles below a school of prey. The shrinking ring of bubbles encircles the school and confines it in an ever-smaller cylinder. The fish trapped in the middle of the bubble net are then eaten in one go as whales rise from below with an open mouth.

Pictures by Wayne Davis and  Christin Kahn

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The Brooks Aqueduct is one of many Canadian Pacific Railway irrigation projects that were intended to promote settlement in southeastern Alberta in the early part of last century. The aqueduct  brought water to an area that was little more than a desert. 

Construction begun in 1908 to bring water from the Lake Newell reservoir across a dried-up river bed 3.2 km wide. The Brooks Aqueduct was considered a major engineering feat in its day, featuring a catenary-shaped flume mounted on columns 60 feet high in places and an inverted syphon under the railway line.

It remained operational for 65 years when it was ultimately replaced by a canal and was left as it was. It is now a National Historic Site of Canada.

Read more here and there

Photo by Vitold

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Trawlers set out from a port as the a three-month-long summer fishing moratorium ends in Ningbo, Zhejiang Province, China.

From here

Picture: China Daily / Reuters

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647 feet underground, the Shandaken Tunnel was transformed into a banquet hall on May 20, 1922, when 150 guests shared a celebratory lunch to mark the holing through of two tunnel sections.

At the time, the 18-mile tunnel built to carry water from the Schoharie Reservoir to the Ashokan Reservoir, and onwards to New York City, was the longest in the world.

From NYC Water

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Overlooked, produced by design studio Pentagram, wanted to “celebrate the gatekeepers” to the subterranean world beneath London’s streets – the street or ‘manhole’ cover. The team took rubbings of various forms of this type of street furniture, from coal hole covers, to the cast iron discs covering access points to sewers, conduits and gas mains. The tome “tells the history of London through street covers, outlining the vital roles that each piece of street furniture had in serving Londoners”.

Other rubbings of streets metal covers can also be found here

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The Dracaena cinnabari, also called dragon blood tree, has adapted to arid climates and mountaintops with little soil. Originating from Yemen Soqotra archipelago, the large, packed crown provides shade and reduces evaporation and the the leaves are scleromorphic as a specialised feature to prevent excessive loss of water.

Atmospheric moisture condenses on the leaves, channelling the water down the trunk to the roots. The shade reduces the evaporation of any water drops that fall to the ground, and also allows seedlings to survive better beneath the adult tree, which could be why many dragon’s blood trees grow close together.

The general distribution of Dracaena on Soqotra reflects the size of areas that are affected by the monsoon mists and drizzle.

It is called the dragon blood tree due to the red sap that the trees produce.

Read more here and there

Picture by javarman3

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The cherry blossoms in Inokashira Park, Tokyo, Japan, turning Inokashira pond pink.

The green and blue sheets are part of Hanami, a japanese tradition were people eat and drink under the cherry blossom trees.

Photo by Danilo Dungo