Ellie Irons

I will steward this object for 200 years…

Last month I attended a Trade School class lead by artist/researcher Max Liboiron, and I came home with the object below:

It’s a piece of what used to be Barren Island, a South Brooklyn community built, as Max describes it “entirely on trash”. It existed from the 1850’s until its residents were forcibly evicted in 1936 to make way, I believe, for the development of new city infrastructure. Prior to this, it was a teeming waste disposal site, housing both “stinking rendering plants and disenfranchised inhabitants who processed waste from Manhattan, Brooklyn and the Bronx” (Max’s words, again). It was the garbage outpost for a growing metropolis long before Fresh Kills existed. Eventually, due to dredging, construction and shifting terrain, the detritus of the island began to disperse, and it washed up on the shores of what is now known as Dead Horse Bay.

This out of the way stretch of beach, located near Floyd Bennett Field, is an urban archaeologist’s dream. But as Max discovered, the pieces of Barren Island that wash up on the shores of the Bay are are actually historically significant artifacts of a lost (and undervalued) community. Garbage pickers and treasure seekers technically should have an archeologist’s license to remove artifacts from its shores, but this is loosely (if at all) enforced. The artifacts presented to us at Trade School in April were removed from Dead Horse Bay and modified into works of art before Max understood their true significance. As works of art, they are no longer pristine artifacts, and don’t belong back in the sand at the bay, but she still feels that they should remain in the public realm, as testaments to a forgotten time and culture. So the concept of stewardship treaties arose, where in:

Any member of the public can become a steward by co-writing a stewardship contract, or Treaty, that designates the terms of care. The terms of these Treaties are open, but they must include plans to care for the artifact for the next two hundred years, and they must maintain some sort of public access given that the artifacts are part of the heritage of many New Yorkers and belong to the commons.

So I took the plunge, selected this particular art-artifact, and co-wrote a treaty. Each piece in the series is modified in some way by the artist’s hand. The one I chose seems to be a chunk of compressed metal and horse bone.  It has small sea bird nests affixed to its craggy surface, fashioned out of reindeer lichen and chips of plastic from the bay. Check here for a much higher res image.

I’ve had this object sitting in my studio for close to a month now, but until today I had not seen the place from which it came. But happily, today Future Archaeology decided, on a whim, to take an afternoon trip out to Dead Horse Bay. We left the artifacts in their place for future visitors, but thoroughly enjoyed photographing and exploring this surprising landscape. Below, a few more photos from the trip, plus the Barren Island art-artifact in its new home in my studio. If you’d like to visit it, let me know!

The Self-Composting Nest!

I learned today about another amazing avian nesting habit (other favorites here and here). This is bird-nerd stuff, to be sure, but also interesting in terms of an architectural innovation that makes use of the energy generated by microbes breaking down vegetable matter. The Malleefowl of Australia (Leipoa  ocellata) builds a massive nest mound (the one below is 5 meters wide!) and stuffs it with vegetation. This vegetation then rots, and produces heat, which incubates the eggs. Neat!

(Gluepot Reserve, SA (Apr, 2010), Photo © Vik Dunis)

I came across this amazing nesting strategy because I was reading about the wider affects of climate change on bird survival rates and population declines. In drought stricken parts of Australia, these nesting mounds dry out too quickly, so the vegetation doesn’t continue rotting, I assume because the microbes that drive the process require moisture. Slowing microbe activity means the nests cool down, and the eggs die. There have been attempts to intervene by pouring water over the mounds, which have been marginally successful, but most birds still abandon nesting sites in dry conditions (see Bird Conservation: Evidence for the Effects of Interventions- pdf).

One of the reasons this struck me is because I’ve run into a few folks lately who are working on projects using microbial fuel cells from soil for power. I haven’t been able to dig up too much info about the process, but according to Wikipedia…

Soils are naturally teeming with a diverse consortium of microbes, including the electrogenic microbes needed for MFCs, and are full of complex sugars and other nutrients that have accumulated over millions of years of plant and animal material decay.

This rich build up of microbes is needed for us to be able to tap into the electron transport chain that generates the power derived from a microbial fuel cell. It apparently takes 1 cubic meter of good, rich soil to light an LED, so the birds seem to have us beat on this for now. Below, a diagram for a basic soil MFC, and a photo of a mature Malleefowl on a giant nest mound.

Coorong National Park, SA (Feb, 2012), © Kay Parkin

Bioreactors in Bushwick

I moved my nascent algae collection from the Parson’s Build Your Own Bioreactor Workshop to our Bushwick Studio, where I’m working on setting it up in the window of the wood shop, overlooking the M Train (video below). I’m trying to build a system that starts with small reactors at the top, each stocked with algae gathered from a different location. As they grow, I’ll funnel them into a second set of larger reactors, then finally mix them all together into one big reactor on the windowsill (which I still need to build). This is still a rough prototype, but less leaky than the first! The curtain rods definitely need to be replaced soon.

This set up should hopefully allow me to maintain small populations of the original samples in the top row of reactors, while generating enough algae in the larger reactors to start harvesting and experimenting with it as a medium or dye. The harvesting and pigment extraction part of this is still a bit of a mystery to me, but research is in the works. All of this is inspired by Angelo Vermeulen’s Biomodd Project, which is coming to the New York Hall of Science next fall, but also has roots in the algae that I produced unintentionally when I was working with sweet potatoes back in the Hunter days:

At the time I was enthralled by the stuff- a little bit of pond in the middle of all that concrete and grime that is the (current) Hunter MFA Building.  I kept the algae alive even after I’d transplanted the sweet potatoes into pots with soil, and did a few drawing experiments with it, but when I left for the summer my little ponds inevitably dried up, and that was the end of it.  So I’m thrilled to have discovered a new avenue back into this project. Algae growing weather is upon us, and I’m looking forward to identifying more algae-rich locations for the map we started during the workshop:

I tossed a few invasive water chestnuts gathered upstate along the Hudson last month into one of the reactors. Apparently algae is tough enough to dry out completely and regenerate once it’s exposed to proper conditions, so maybe I’ll have some Hudson River algae propagating soon:

Bioreactors at Parsons

I spent the past few days on the floor of the Design + Tech program at Parsons, attending a Build Your Own Bioreactor Workshop run by Angelo Vermeulen and Katherine Moriwaki. The culmination of a few days of discussion, prototyping and algae gathering will be presented tonight at 16 East 16th Street, 12th floor, open to the public. Invite below!

Dirt at the Museum of Arts and Design

I just learned (via artist Margaret Boozer) of an exhibition at the Museum of Arts and Design that relates closely to my interest in the aesthetics of urban soil. Swept Away: Dust, Ashes and Dirt in Contemporary Art and Design includes what sounds like an amazing collaborative piece created by Boozer with the cooperation of Dr. Richard K. Shaw, soil scientist for Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS). Shaw has been surveying soil in New York City’s five boroughs over the past 15 years, leading up the recently finished New York City Reconnaissance Soil Survey. Boozer’s project Correlation Drawing/ Drawing Correlations presents samples collected across the 5 boroughs, displayed in a grid of plexiglass structures reminiscent of correlation boxes (which are cardboard boxes used to collect and transport samples in the field). I’m looking forward to seeing the piece in person, and I’m also excited to learn that urban soil surveying is getting its due!  My recent project in the Wissahickon and my upcoming workshop Drawing with Dirt at Trade School are both closely related to this project, and it’s great to know who else I’m dialogue with. When I was in the planning stages of the Wissahickon project last spring I learned of the Future Farmers run project Soil Kitchen, which definitely influenced and extended my thinking on the topic.  Below, an image of Margaret Boozer’s Correlation Drawing/Drawing Correlations: A Five Borough  Reconnaissance Soil Survey from the artist’s website.

Ocean Currents

Perpetual Ocean is a gorgeous visualization of ocean currents over recent years, produced by NASA’s Scientific Visualization Studio. A big file, but worth it. Screenshot below, watch it in action here. Thanks Dan, for passing this along!

Landscape Drawing: The Dutch Golden Age to Dan Flavin

I took last Friday night off from more hip pursuits to look at old drawings, and stumbled across some less old ones in the process. I started off at the Met, which always has some beautiful stuff in the second floor hallway gallery to the left of the main staircase. I often spend a little time there when I’m on my way to the photography and contemporary galleries. One highlight this time was a small grouping of sketches and paintings by William Blake:

The Angel Gabriel Appearing to Zacharias, 1799-1800 (apparently this painting is made with an experimental egg tempera paint Blake developed to imitate medieval techniques)

After a quick walk through the Oceania Gallery (it’s currently my favorite gallery- I always feel like I need to take up wood working when I’m in there) I hopped on a downtown bus to the Morgan Library. 

The Morgan has a really interesting pair of exhibitions up right now: a collection of drawings from the Dutch Golden Age (also the advent of western landscape painting) on the first floor, and drawings by Minimalist Dan Flavin on the second floor. It’s a fascinating combination, and presents a side of Flavin of which I was utterly unaware.

To begin with, one whole gallery (the small cube just off the atrium) is completely dedicated to a single Flavin piece. It’s funny to bask in the warm glow of Minimalism in the venerable old Morgan. Although perhaps Minimalism has matured enough at this point to fit in just fine amongst all the old books and manuscripts that Pierpont Morgan collected.

untitled (in honor of Harold Joachim) 3, 1977
pink, yellow, blue, and green fluorescent light
8 ft. (244 cm) square across a corner
Photo: Billy Jim, New York

After spending a little time with the above sculpture, I wandered through Rembrandt’s World: Dutch Drawings from the Clement C. Moore Collection. Of course I enjoyed the  many superlative portraits and figure studies by Rembrandt and his followers, but I was most drawn to sketches by pioneering landscape painters like Aelbert Cuyp and Jan van Goyen, whose careful attention to the native habitat of Holland ushered in a new era in  attention to landscape as subject. With amazing economy of line and tone, these artists created a lasting impression of their local landscape:

Aelbert Cuyp (1620–1691)
Windmill by a River, with a Jetty in the Foreground
Clement C. Moore Collection
Photography: Graham S. Haber, 2011

Also of note was a gorgeously dense study of the interior of a barn by Abraham Bloemaert (with lovely study of a young tree on the verso, I learned from the catalog) and an interesting collection of sketches lumped under the category Animalier by the likes of Cornelius Saftleven. The following was not included in the exhibition, but is representative:

Finally, after wrapping myself in 17th century Dutch landscape, I headed upstairs to look at Dan Flavin’s drawings, thinking there would be little connection between the two. I was wrong, in a good way. Flavin was an adroit drawer, and did a lot of sketching from life. In addition, he loved water, and lived along the Hudson, both in the Meatpacking district and later in Cold Spring in the Hudson River Valley, where he frequently sketched from the landscape. Below, a sailboat sketch from the 1980s.

Sails, 1986
Pastel
11 x 14 inches (35.6 x 28 cm)
Collection of Stephen Flavin

In addition to sketching from the river, Flavin also collected drawings of the river by those of the Hudson River School. He also had an interest in and collected Japanese landscape drawings. There were some lovely, delicate little drawings by Ando Hiroshige on view (after all, the Japanese and Chinese had an appreciation for pure landscape much earlier than Western cultures) alongside the likes of John Frederick Kensett and Aaron Draper Shattuck, who helped define the new American vision of landscape in the 19th Century.

John Frederick Kensett, Catskill Mountain, graphite pencil on cream wove paper covered with a transparent white wash, 1849.

Both exhibitions are worth spending a little quality time with, and the Morgan has a pretty amazing atmosphere on Friday evenings. The galleries are free from 7-9 pm and classical musicians fill the atrium with live music.  The renovated library and study are worth a look at as well: such dedication to tomes of paper, slowly moldering as e-readers and Google books fill our screens and heads. Long live analog reality!

Timothy Morton on Peak Nature

I’ve been reading bits and pieces of Timothy Morton’s writing over the past few months, mostly on his blog Ecology without Nature. I came across his work because he wrote a little bit about artist Judy Natal’s project Future Perfect, which I admire. I came across Natal’s work because she was part of an event organized by another project of interest, SP Weather Station (for whom I’m doing an upcoming Weather Report). These chains of discoveries happen all the time, and sometimes I like to keep track of them.

Over Christmas I was given one of Morton’s books, Ecology without Nature, and as I show here, his way of thinking about climate, ecology and humanity really resonates with me. Initially, I thought maybe it was just me, but in the last few weeks I’ve seen his ideas and writing popping up in other places. A few days ago I came across a piece he wrote for Adbusters while I was idly browsing my facebook feed, and I just discovered he was recently interviewed on Bad at Sports. I’ve yet to check out the Bad at Sports interview, but I read the Adbusters piece, Peak Nature, while I was on the train today. I’m still digesting it, but I’ll pull out a few passages that stuck with me.  This one is great:

You are walking on top of lifeforms. Your car drove here on lifeforms. The iron in Earth’s crust is distributed bacterial excrement. The oxygen in our lungs is bacterial out-gassing. Oil is the result of some dark secret collusion between rocks and algae and plankton millions and millions of years in the past. When you look at oil you’re looking at the past. Hyperobjects are time-stretched to such a vast extent that they become almost impossible to hold in mind. And they are intricately bound up with lifeforms.

He goes on to suggest that, in our era of global climactic shifts, we can no longer use the idea of “weather” as a dependable constant upon which to watch our lives play out.  He sees our increasing awareness of our changing climate as a collapsing of foreground and background, engendering a dissolution of the concept of “horizon”, a clever but also apt use of a visual art metaphor (although we prefer to say “far ground” in my beginning drawing classes!):

If there is no background – no neutral, peripheral stage set of weather, but a very visible, highly monitored, publicly debated climate – then there is no foreground. Foregrounds need backgrounds to exist. So the strange effect of dragging weather phenomena into the foreground as part of our awareness of global warming has been the gradual realization that there is no foreground!

It’s refreshing to read philosophy that feels so directly tied to issues that I’m working with, both in the studio and in my day to day struggles with own ecological niche. One more for the road (of course these are all better in context!):

Let’s think about one way in which global warming abolishes the idea of a horizon. This would be the timescales involved – yes, timescales in the plural. There are three of them. We could call these, in turn, the frightening, the horrifying, and the petrifying.

1) Frightening timescale. It will take several hundred years for cold ocean waters (assuming there are any) to absorb about 75% of the excess CO2.

2) Horrifying timescale. It will then take another 30,000 years or so for most of the remaining 25% to be absorbed by igneous rocks. The half-life of plutonium is 24,100 years.

3) Petrifying timescale. The final 7% will be around 100,000 years from now.

There is a real sense in which “forever” is far easier on the mind than these very large timescales, what I call very large finitude. Hyperobjects produce very large finitude, scales of time and space that are finite and for that reason humiliatingly difficult for humans to visualize. Forever makes you feel important. But 100,000 years makes you wonder whether you can imagine 100,000 anything. It seems rather abstract to imagine that a book, for instance, is 100,000 words long.