ELECTRIC FIELD
Electric field is:
Electric Field is an artistic prototype exploring the intersections of questions of energy and agriculture. It asks what kinds of alteranative energy imaginaries can we generate when working with principles of regeneration and soil health? Despite the focuson on sustainable energy transitions, the giand wind turbine project keeps energy hungry racial capitalism spinning and obscures the interdependencies of agriculture, communities and energy. With Electric Field we explore how it might be possible to challenge existing paradigms of energy and the so-called "green transition" by working closely with principles of regenerative farming and agroecology. This has resulted in working with...scavenge, retool, rescale and reassemble into contraptions for community solidarity... micro-scalar, ephermal, spinning, softening , potentially
Assembly instructions
Please share your creations with us: email address
Thanks to the magical and reversible properties of piezoelectric crystals, when any gust of wind blows upon the field, electricity is generated from these small, kinetic movements, in this case powering the small music synthesizer generating the sounds.
Electric field can be run
Made up of components (common reeds, piezo buzzers, wood, beeswax) all foraged within a 6km radius of the VXO Farm Lab plot in Växjö, Sweden
Regenerative Energy Communities, Electric Field (2022-)
In Sweden
What materials would you use in your environment.
"the universe is not kept running by a motor but by a living, growing organism" - Elin Wägner, Alarm Clock (1941)
farming for energy
made together
In particular, we strive to involve people who perhaps feel as they don't have a say in energy innovation or policy making due to the seemingly technical and engineery nature of energy and electrical systems. A key goal of ours is to give others the confidence to contribute to the larger conversation and to open up energy innovation to the many untapped resources and perspectives that have long been kept out of energy dialogues. As Helen in our team has put it, how can we make space for communities to feel that both food (farming) and energy (electricity + electronics) are not something that is done to us, but that we do?
In our project Regenerative Energy Communities, we have let people create
please blow
wind turbine
electricity as benificial waste product
soil and water supply remediation
biodiversity promotion the primary focus. against energy monocultures
We believe it is an important shift to imagine energy (but also artistic and design) communities starting from the soil rather than modes of control and monitoring of energy use.
All of the components of Electric Field were sourced within a 6km radius of Italienska Palatset. The piezo sensors that generate the power were taken from second hand electronics picked up at Kupan (Röda Korset Växjö). The reeds (Phragmites Australis / The common reed / Vass / bladvass) are from Lake Trummen. And the wooden base elements are from
electricity as benificial waste product
soil and water supply remediation
biodiversity promotion the primary focus. against energy monocultures
, with our workshops working to develop this sense of getting closer to the materiality of energy. We believe it is an important shift to imagine energy (but also artistic and design) communities starting from the soil rather than modes of control and monitoring of energy use.
energy not something that is done to us
Intro/context
link to our events page with Luleå abstract: https://regenerative-energy-communities.org/events/symposium-on-artistic-research-in-a-time-of-change
energy something we do not done to us quote
Material stories
In developing regenerative materials grown directly from the soil we find ourselves forming a different relation to matter and energy, with our workshops working to develop this sense of getting closer to the materiality of energy. We believe it is an important shift to imagine energy (but also artistic and design) communities starting from the soil rather than modes of control and monitoring of energy use.
electricity as benificial waste product
soil and water supply remediation
biodiversity promotion the primary focus. against energy monocultures
MAP
Phragmites Australis / The common reed / Vass / bladvass
The lakes in Växjo have a long history of battling eutrophication; a process whereby too many nutrients accumulate in a body of water, particularly nitrogen and phosphorous from degenerate farming methods relying on excessive use of chemical fertilizers. This leads to various negative knock-off effects, such as ........ Lake Trummen, whose water we irrigate our farm with, and which also eventually leads out to the Baltic sea, is no exception. In the marshy shores of the lake, phragmites australis, which thrive in eutrophied waters, densley grow, throttling biodiversity as they take advantage of these conditions, for which they become a bio-indicator. However, these reeds are not all bad - they provide important, calm breeding grounds and hiding spaces for many species (unfortunately including mosquito
es however), and most interestingly, they are proficient at taking these nutrients out of the water. However, these reeds need to be harvested to remove the nutrients from the site, otherwise they will decay in the water and release them again (Sundblad & Wittgren 1989). To aid with recallibrating the balance of the ecosystem, we have been thinning out these dense "fields" to use the reeds as our 'turbine blades'.
piezo buzzers
Piezo buzzers will be our generator, which means they will be the things generating the electricity. They are ubiquitous in electronic devices, and thus in e-waste, and are used in anything that beeps, buzzes or plays simple tunes. Some examples include telephones, smoke detectors and other alarm-y things, electric doorbells, ultrasonic humidifiers, toys that make sound....
As we know them as sound makers, they work because you feed the piezo an electric current, and this signal makes the piezo vibrate at different frequencies and intensities, which we hear as sound. However, if you reverse the process by 'vibrating' the buzzer, you will get an electric current! The word "piezo" comes from the Greek for "pressure" or "push" - so piezoelectricity is basically electricity that is created through pressure, or mechanical strain.
Materials, quartz crystals
We see cleaning up our surrounding ecosystems as also very much including the techno-ecosystems. Of course, in a few years, there probably won't be any landline telephones in the dump / second hand store (we have to ask for them, they don't bother to even try sell them) - but we see this as a way to clean up (obsolete tech...) now, with what we have available at our local space/time scale.
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piezo bbuzzers come in quite a lot of sizes, and sometimes have plastic casings on them. However in devices like old telephones, the case, used for resonance, is built into the design.
We'll have to insulate the piezos, as we're worried about the metals leeching into the soil! I think some even have some lead composite in the piezo ceramic material - eek! We hope to grow our own piezo elecric crystals soon.
To put this in toperspective, wind turbine generators use a huge amount of copper, rare earth magnets, and look something like this:
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Shame I doubt that bro can even charge his phone up there
Oyster mushrooms
Pleurotus ostreatus are proficient at soaking up (and metabolising?) heavy metals and other contaminants - a concern for all urban farms. We have a main road which runs past our farm, which we presumably our soil has a fair amount of pollution from.
Oyster mushrooms are also capable of growing both in soil, and on wood, which is necessary for this design. We used mycelium-innoculated wooden dowel plugs, which you can manufacture yourself (link).
wood
These wooden cylinders were salvaged from scrap at Linnaeus University's department for sustainable structural engineering. The long poles, made from pine, were cut into shorter pieces and then sliced in half length-ways. Presumably rectangular-shaped rods would work fine too, or whatever you can find - however, the type of wood is important to grow the particular species of mushroom on. (Link to what mushrooms grow on what substrate). These colums would constitute the wind turbine's foundation and mast.
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An average wind turbine's foundation uses .... of concrete and ..... of steel. put in person for scale.
beeswax
To plug the mycelium dowels, and for any mechanical securing, we used beeswax.
Map
How to make it from scratch
Output
Bridge rectifier
Most of the smaller electronics we interact with on a daily basis use direct current (DC), such as batteries, USB-powered devices and other chargers, which often work with standards of 1.5v, 5v, 12v and 24 volts. Alternating current (AC) on the other hand is usually associated with the high voltage electricity we get from wall plugs (240 volts), and in the transmission lines runbning around and between cities. Why we use DC and AC for these different purposes has somewhat to do with their physical properties, but is also due to the turbulent saga of "The current wars" (link) in 20th century USA, demonstrating how firmly rooted in toxic capitalism our electrical systems are.
Piezo electric generators, however, actually produce AC current. [why?] Since we'll be using the power with our small electronics using DC, we'll have to make a little circuit to turn this AC into DC, using diodes. Diodes (you might know the term from LEDs - Light Emitting Diodes), allow electricity to flow only in one direction.
They look like this : and are represented in circuit diagrams like this:
note how the little line on the diode corresponds to the direction of electricity flow, as portrayed with an arrow in the schematic representation.
It is very important to make sure we put the component in the right direction, otherwise it won't work.
You can probably use any type of diode that looks like this, but they all have slightly different specifications, like how much current they can handle, and what the voltage drop is of the electricity as it flows through. We used 1N4001 diodes, which have ....
feral circuits
We used this ultra low powered analogue synthesizer that our fellow geek and low-energy artist Ralf Schreiber showed us. It uses a microchip called a hex inverter and a few passive components. It's a very simple voltage controlled oscillator, which means that you can hear the electrical activity. This is also nice for monitoring what's going on with our generators, without using measuring devices which are not quite suitable for this unstable power.
Results
measuring
Why we find it interesting
additional
video?
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Luleå text Wind as regeneration: collective experiments in dreaming energy futures From smart city community projects to breezy speculative fictions, the monumentality of wind turbines seem to dominate the imaginaries of renewable, sustainable energy transitions. Despite the focus on sustainable energy transitions the giant wind turbine project keeps energy hungry racial capitalism spinning and obscures the interdepencies of agriculture, communities and energy. In this workshop we ask how might we scavenge, retool, rescale and reassemble renewables into contraptions for community solidarity instead? Join us to invite the micro-scalar, ephemeral, spinning, softening and potently poetic qualities of wind onto the platform of sus- tainable energy experiments.
Using “regeneration” as a framework for challenging dominant paradigms and imaginaries of renewable energy practices, this workshop hosted by Regenerative Energy Communities will share hands-on practices and fieldnotes on orienting towards wind, as a way to nourish crossings be- tween energy, culture, climate and biodiversity. Working at the micro to meso scale will invite workshop participants to meet with the pluralities of wind energy. To do so, we will introduce a range of what we characterize as regenerative methods and practices, including designing with compost- promoting regenerative materials, hybrid combinations of computational tools and biological processes, slow engineering, speculative poethics and a transdisciplinarity crossing situated within the longstanding and emerging innovations of various agroecological communities indebted to Black and decolonial farming movements.
In the workshop, R.E.C will introduce prototypes made during our research at VXO Farmlab, an experimental regenerative farm in Växjö, Sweden. Through storytelling, kinetic explorations, languaging and mate- rial immersion, we will delve into histories and possible futures of energy through wind, culminating in a network of mapping and also a series of functionally speculative, small scale prototypes. Bring your own practice, dreams and micro fantasies, make them collective and perhaps regenerative!
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19 dec chat
grinding function worth producing?
Pumping/collecting water function?
finny finny (HAWT - horizontal axis wind turbine)
look into size of finny finny blades. see windpower for dummies
Algorithm based design - go or no go?
nose cone?
tower function
spinny spinny (helix)
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mapping energy needs on the farm
dreaming energy futures, with wind, mycellium, regenerartive energy prototypes
windmills, for milling and pumping water
wind is invisible
moving beyond the one use function (e.g. just a farm of solar panels)
- mycoremediation (increasing soil health)
small scale
tumble week plower
interdependencies
modularity
wind scattering seeds
a completely regenerative, infinite printing/material. no toxins, resins...
Wind as regeneration: collective experiments in dreaming energy futures
From smart city community projects to breezy speculative fictions, the monumentality of wind turbines seem to dominate the imaginaries of renewable, sustainable energy transitions. Despite the focus on sustainable energy transitions the giant wind turbine project keeps energy hungry racial capitalism spinning and obscures the interdepencies of agriculture, communities and energy. In this workshop we ask how might we scavenge, retool, rescale and reassemble renewables into contraptions for community solidarity instead? Join us to invite the micro-scalar, ephemeral, spinning, softening and potently poetic qualities of wind onto the platform of sustainable energy experiments.
Using "regeneration" as a framework for challenging dominant paradigms and imaginaries of renewable energy practices, this workshop hosted by Regenerative Energy Communities will share hands-on practices and fieldnotes on orienting towards wind, as a way to nourish crossings between energy, culture, climate and biodiversity. Working at the micro to meso scale will invite workshop participants to meet with the pluralities of wind energy. To do so, we will introduce a range of what we characterize as regenerative methods and practices, including designing with compost-promoting regenerative materials, hybrid combinations of computational tools and biological processes, slow engineering, speculative poethics and a transdisciplinarity crossing situated within the longstanding and emerging innovations of various agroecological communities indebted to Black and decolonial farming movements.
In the workshop, R.E.C will introduce prototypes made during our research at VXO Farmlab, an experimental regenerative farm in Växjö, Sweden. Through storytelling, kinetic explorations, languaging and material immersion, we will delve into histories and possible futures of energy through wind, culminating in a network of mapping and also a series of functionally speculative, small scale prototypes. Bring your own practice, dreams and micro fantasies, make them collective and perhaps regenerative!
(284 words)
Luleå presentation scripty wipty: https://cryptpad.fr/pad/#/2/pad/edit/KAgKmMdmrVNWA1qsjeZveRnL/
VR gray page PDF: https://en-gb.invajo.com/events/getinvitationfile/eventId/5a958770-42f5-11ed-90d3-093bb0416a71/docId/c5524e60-641a-11ed-8df7-cbddb485de69 (is pasted below)