nadine » TBC

Pictures from TEML final event

tine — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 12:42:31 +0000

Day 1, 2 & 3 —

All the pictures can be found here: http://teml.nadine.be

Heatwave cocktail

tine — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 15:46:45 +0000

We need 5 consecutive days of 25° Celsius of which 3 consecutive days of 30° Celsius to have a heat wave.
Well.., we’re not there yet, but we’re melting already.

To keep The Ever Waste Land fertile and healthy we’ve installed a big water tank in the garden. Projects such as ‘spira-dye‘ by Bartaku, ‘Playground 0:1:1,2‘ by Isabelle Pauwelyn and ‘the Brave Little Forest’ by Bernard Leroy really needed that.

Spira-dye is a plant spiral that contains a selection of plants (mainly berries) with strong color dye used for the production of solar cells.

Playground 0:1:1,2 is an architectural intervention that opens urban space by gardening. The aim is to create meeting places where people can come together in a temporary and ambiguous and ambiguous haven. Where the projects lead to, is not that important. The participants are outside. That’s enough in itself. Here, the people can play in all earnest, and play with the earnestness, if necessary.

The Brave Little Forest wants to nurture 10 000 trees that had accidentally started growing in bad areas (for trees anyhow) such as in gutters or between the cracks in the concrete. In The Ever Waste Land they can find home in a daycare where they can grow bigger and bigger until they will be planted elsewhere.

I propose a toast. Here’s to them!

If these guys don’t survive, you’ll be dead soon.

tine — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 10:13:24 +0000

Did you know you can have black bees delivered at your doorstep by the Belgian Post?
Sounds like a fantastic way to annoy your postman!
But.. Christina Stadlbauer, who is working in the no-zone of nadine in Schaerbeek, decided she’s going to pick them up her self in Chimey… Too kind.

Within the Rue Gallait 80, currently called: The Ever Mass Land, a new project emerged: The Ever WASTEland. The Wasteland is an open ground open to ecological and social projects. It gives the opportunity to people, bees and ecosystems to actively intervene within.

One of these projects is Christina’s ‘Bzzz – Bees in Urban Space’. She has now installed beehives in 3 different locations in Brussels. The aim is to use the hives and their products as monitors of natural processes in the city.

So, the beehive installation is ready, the bees will be brought by personal taxi and then what? What else has been planned?

The observation can start, but not before we’ve done some good technical research into camera’s, microphones and registration devices. To further stress the sustainable character of the project and to make this whole observation and transmission independent, the installation of photo-voltaic panels for renewable energy supply is intended.

The observation will be put online soon, in the meantime you can check okno’s Open Green’s pages with the honeybee observatory.

By next year we’ll be eating a pot of city honey.
But… if no bees should survive this city life, we can conclude that no human beings shall live here in 20 years either.

Use red onions to make your own Solar Cell.

tine — Mon, 25 May 2009 15:34:43 +0000

I’m convinced that the scientist in you always wanted to create juice. High voltage! … My thoughts exactly.

And actually… it turns out to be rather simple.

Let me explain:

- Take a tin coated piece of glass (can also be coated with titanium dioxide) – let it rest for a half hour in the cooking liquid of onion peel - after this half hour, rinse it with water and leave to dry.

While the glass is in the onion peel liquid you can prepare the counter electrode.

This positive electrode is created from a conductive SnO2 coated glass plate - Use a Volt meter to check which side of the glass is conductive (it’s the rough side) – Use a lead pencil to aply a thin graphite layer to this side’s surface.

Take the dried glassplate and put the counter electrode side on top, offset the glass plates so that the edges of each plate are exposed - add one or two drops of iodide electrolyte solution in between these glass plates - use two clips to hold the plates together, the result when mesuring with your volt meter is about 0,4V.

Low voltage indeed, … ah, but highly satisfying to see that you’ve just created your very own solar cell.

Here is a website that gives a nice step by step overview too, but in this case they actually prepare the glass plates them selves too. In the above case we just worked with prepared glass.

Raspberry Solar Cell

These Solar cells were made during a 3 day workshop on Photovoltaics, later this summer nadine will open its doors again for the second part, we’ll keep you posted on content and exact dates.