World’s Largest Wave Farm to be Built off the Coast of Scotland

Fantastic commonsense here – UK is an island, lets make waves!

Scotland holds 10 percent of Europe’s wave power potential, and the nation just announced plans to tap into that resource by building the world’s largest wave farm!

 

Once constructed, the farm will generate 40 MW of green energy – enough to power 30,000 homes each year. The project will be developed by Aquamarine Power off the coast of Lewis using 50 of the company’s devices, and it should be up and running by 2018.

Wave power is sometimes considered the lesser cousin of wind and solar power; it came to the game later than either one and even the largest wave farm may generate less power than small wind farms do.

What makes wave farming so great is that it can continue to work tirelessly, unlike wind or solar farms – even when the sun is down and the wind is calm.

 

Scotland is the perfect location to…

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Sanctuary

Tags

beauty, environment, nature, photography, quotes

Trees are sanctuaries. Whoever knows how to speak to them, whoever knows how to listen to them, can learn the truth. They do not preach learning and precepts, they preach, undeterred by particulars, the ancient law of life.     Hermann Hesse, Bäume. Betrachtungen und Gedichte

Photograph taken in Sea Wood, near Ulverston, Cumbria, UK – May 2013.

The end of the Sawar Road, Water Towers, Cantt., Lahore. 25th July 2011.

Monumental falls, hear the bricks crash but we are spared the dust. Sculptor David Alesworth in Lahore is one of 28 artists I am profiling in my latest sculpture book – his sense of humanity wonderfully reflected in his blog.

davidalesworth

Felled like trees in their entirety

some having stood for almost 150 years

exquisite brick detailing, gone forever.

Goithic revival flourishes

a minor earthquake when this one came down

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2.5% Freshwater

Tags

consumption, environment, photography, research, sustainability, water

What are we doing still using drinking-quality water to flush our toilets?

 http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn23597-act-now-to-avert-a-global-water-crisis.html

As the powerful water masters meet in Bonn, Germany this week we hope water conservation and sensible usage gets an airing on the agenda. Only 2.5%  is freshwater on our planet so its a precious resource we should protect. Scaremongering of water-wars in the future is not so stupid when you study the facts. This article makes interesting reading.

Photograph – I took this shot of Lake Windermere in March 2013. Windermere is the largest natural lake in England.  I am currently working on a commission from Friends of the Lake District with the theme of water pollution. http://www.lakedistrict.gov.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0019/170623/windermere_catchment_restoration_programme_leaflet.pdf

A small collection of sculptures will be created from the salvaged debris collected on a mass dive to the Lake depths.

Pterodactyl

Tags

art, exhibition, feathers, found, installation, sculpture

Today I am busy writing about extraordinary artist Kate MccGwire who I am featuring as one of the twenty-eight sculptors in my new book on mixed-media sculpture.  MccGwire creates haunting curvaceous sculptures that are truly breath taking, and all are made with feathers, yes feathers. Visit her website to see how wonderful her work is – you will be astounded!  http://www.katemccgwire.com

 

Evacuate 

Site specific installation by Kate MccGwire at Tatton Park, Cheshire 2011

And so in line with all good researchers I looked at which artists had worked with this material before. (Regular readers of this blog will know I love feathers too, but tend to use the odd one sparingly in my work – almost too precious to use). Now I am a fan of German sculptor Rebecca Horn’s upside down piano since I saw it at Tate Modern many years ago – it really does make you question “is it safe to go underneath it?”

Anyway, her work with feathers turned into performance in the 1970 – 80s as a way of animating her sculptures. The work is strangely beguiling as she cocoons herself with wings and fans. But, the work that captured my ‘you don’t have to be crazy but it helps’ badge is the work shown here and to be really honest, I love it. How about you?

 

Heart of Darkness

Tags

art, carbon, China, death, environment, mining, photography, toxicology

Beautiful Dystopias Collection 2012-13

Alternative Perspectives     A collection pf photomontages developed harnessing the scanning electron microscope at the University of Central Lancashire, (during my residency there 2011-13), to create magnified images of objects, plants and creatures. These photographs form a foundation layer that is manipulated in Adobe Photoshop program, with the juxtaposing of additional imagery to make social commentary about the way we live and our relationship to the earth.

Alternative Perspectives: Heart of Darkness (foundation image of fragment of granite brought back from China)

Hidden remains break the surface to reveal the many lives lost whilst extracting precious metals, minerals and rare earth elements to feed our insatiable appetite for new technology and luxury consumer goods. Mining of these valuable minerals has an allure for the profiteer to pay scant attention to the health and welfare of its workforce.  Whilst the poor peoples ignore safety in preference to eking out a living, by digging with their rudimentary equipment, to find a few nuggets that will mean food on their tables.

Soil: an under-appreciated dynamic consortium of communities. Part 1?

Soil – love it for all the right reasons

Just Science

Quick fact: the amount of data generated by analyzing the genetic make-up of 1 gram of soil would surpass the total for the entire Human Genome Project. That is because a gram of soil may contain between 2,000 and 18,000 different genomes comprised within roughly 40,000,000 to 2,000,000,000 bacteria cells (1) and (2). Soil; we all walk on it, but do we ever think about what might be lurking in it? My daughter does, for instance, because she looks for tiny black snails to bring into our house and put in potted plants. However, I’m referring to things much smaller and much more influential to the overall ecosystem. Bacteria and fungi have mostly beneficial impacts on the lives of plants, but we know only a fraction of a fraction of the total species present. Many of us think of soil as dirt; dry and inorganic, but soil is a…

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All our own realities

All our own realities

Is there a parallel universe?

Do you want to find out about other realities?

Arts Catalyst have organised this event for you.

Intellectual power

Tags

philosophy, power, research

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/may/14/oxford-university-takes-shell-funding

George is on excellent form here – worth two minutes of your time – please let me know what you think about his points.

EcoArts Australis Conference

Art and environment embraced down under

planetcentric

Earlier this week, I attended a stimulating event – the EcoArts Australis Conference, held in Wollongong. EcoArts Australis is a new organisation based in Wollongong that aims to bring together environmental and arts practitioners to use the arts in creative ways to promote sustainability. The conference was their first significant event.

EcoArts Australis formed when environmental and arts practitioners came together to use the arts in creative ways to promote environmental sustainability. It is based in Wollongong, New South Wales Australia.

EcoArts Australis draws on the experience of people working across the natural resources and arts sectors across Australia. It includes ecologists, environmental managers, specialists in museum management, environmental theatre, community facilitation, the visual, performing and community arts, project and event management and monitoring and evaluation.

I came to the conference expecting an experience that would stretch my emotions as much as my mind, and I wasn’t disappointed. Indeed, the…

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An Inside Look At The Science Of Eating Grass

No, no, no! I have nothing against the moo, and yes they are very clever in their food processing abilities to a point, but we have too many of them, because we are too greedy for the produce they give us. This leads to huge amounts amounts of methane entering the atmosphere and contributing to green house gasses. We all need to eat less cow and value them more.
A farmer friend of mine confided in me one day that over the decades cows have generally increased in size by 50% leading them to experience new problems with their legs because they carry so much weight – just like like we do when we get fat.

Dinner Table Science

Cows are cool.  And here is why.

They’re not especially smart, or amazingly athletic, nor are they formidable predators or experts of camouflage.  Their main survival tactic is to be large and to move in groups.  But what’s really cool about cows, is that they are ruminants.

A ruminant is a mammal that eats only plants (an herbivore) and manages to get enough nutrients out of these plants by digesting them multiple times.

This in in contrast to animals like, for example, humans.  Humans are monogastric, and have one, single chambered stomach.  Our digestive system is basically a one-way pipe: food goes in one end, is digested along the way while we absorb the nutrients, and then the waste exits the other end.

However, cows (and other ruminants like goats, sheep, camels, and giraffes) eat only grass, and they need to work a lot harder than a 1-stomach system…

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Combing the Earth One Genome at a Time: In Pursuit of “The Next Big Thing” in Sustainability

Bacteria can save the world and your energy bill?

Just Science

There is one thing that can be said about scientists: they’re never satisfied…thankfully. Observation and curiosity leave them on a never-ending quest to understand Mother Nature and improve humanity. One great example of this is the field of alternative energy science. Through the efforts of the Bioenergy Research Centers (BRCs) and Joint Genome Institute within the U.S. Department of Energy‘s Office of Science, there is a perpetual search for Nature’s best metabolic machinery. This search requires thinking outside the box and sometimes outside your comfort zone. For example, last year researchers from the Joint BioEnergy Institute published findings that originated in the El Yunque National Forest in Puerto Rico, a rain forest and home to Enterobacter lignolyticus, a bacterium that is tolerant to ionic liquids (liquids with salts that are not crystaline, but are liquid). This discovery began with the observation that soil microbes at El Yunque…

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