Water Dress

True or False

True or False: We need more water than we currently have to grow more food.

The answer is FALSE

According to the WWF, it's not the total amount of water that is the problem - it's how we are using it.

Currently the world is drawing on 54 percent of the world's accessible freshwater, says WWF, with 70 percent of that used by the global agriculture sector. But 60 percent of the water the sector uses, or 1,500 trillion liters, is "wasted through inefficient irrigation methods", it says.

Take rice, for example, which half of the world depends on for food - every kilo of rice produced requires 3,000-5,000 liters of water. Alternative methods of farming can remedy this, says WWF, citing 'system of rice intensification', or SRI, which it says in trials have show increased crop yields while using 30 percent less water.

(WWF; Environmental News Network)

Bridge over water

From www.xepic.com....

Water Sports

the television of the future?



the kitchen of the future?

what does the future look like?

Floods in Mexico / Droughts in Tennessee and Georgia

how do you show pictures of an urban drought? i just tried and failed to find any of note or that spoke the volumes of the photos above. and then i found this one ---



which could just be a creepy add for poland spring, until think for a second and realize this dude's in a fallout shelter. doesn't really scream drought, but gets the idea of impending disaster across. i like this image of a man surrounded by bottled water.

palace bottle

It's the future... "luxury water"...



http://www.evian.com/us/index_palace.php

water bridge

Water forms floating 'bridge' when exposed to high voltage

By Lisa Zyga

When water in two beakers is exposed to a high voltage a floating water bridge forms between the beakers. Credit: Elmar Fuchs et al.
When water in two beakers is exposed to a high voltage, a floating water bridge forms between the beakers. Credit: Elmar Fuchs, et al.

While it's one of the most important and abundant chemical compounds on Earth, water is still a puzzle to scientists. Much research has been done to uncover the structure of water beyond the H2O scale, which is thought to be responsible for many of water’s unique properties. However, the nature of this structure, governed by hydrogen bonds, is currently unknown.

“Water undoubtedly is the most important chemical substance in the world,” explained Elmar Fuchs and colleagues from the Graz University of Technology in Austria in a recent study. “The interaction of water with electric fields has been intensely explored over the last years. We report another unusual effect of liquid water exposed to a dc electric field: the floating water bridge.”

When exposed to a high-voltage electric field, water in two beakers climbs out of the beakers and crosses empty space to meet, forming the water bridge. The liquid bridge, hovering in space, appears to the human eye to defy gravity.

Upon investigating the phenomenon, the scientists found that water was being transported from one beaker to another, usually from the anode beaker to the cathode beaker. The cylindrical water bridge, with a diameter of 1-3 mm, could remain intact when the beakers were pulled apart at a distance of up to 25 mm.

Why water would act this way was a surprise, Fuchs told PhysOrg.com. But the group’s analyses have shown that the explanation may lie within the nature of the water’s structure. Initially, the bridge forms due to electrostatic charges on the surface of the water. The electric field then concentrates inside the water, arranging the water molecules to form a highly ordered microstructure. This microstructure remains stable, keeping the bridge intact.

The scientists reached the microstructure hypothesis after observing that the density of the water changes between the beaker edges and the center of the bridge. A microstructure consisting of an arrangement of water molecules could have a similar density variation.

In their experiments, the scientists also discovered the existence of high frequency oscillations inside the bridge, and they observed corresponding inner structures with a high-speed camera and visualization system. Unlike the much slower surfaces waves, these high frequency oscillations weren’t caused by surface tension. Rather, the scientists predict that the oscillating structures were triggered by the waviness of the voltage supply itself.

The researchers noticed a pattern with the inner structures: every experiment started with a single inner structure, which then decayed into additional structures after a few minutes of operation. The group thought that this decay might be caused by either dust contamination or the increasing temperature of the water bridge under the electric field. As the water temperature increased from 20 degrees Celsius to more than 60 degrees Celsius—which took about 45 minutes—the bridge collapsed.

The scientists explain that the unusual effect of the floating water bridge, as well as the microstructures they observed during the interaction of water with electric fields, could be another piece to the puzzle of the structure of water. The group said that they are currently investigating how highly ordered microstructures may explain the density change in the water bridge, with the results to appear in a future publication.

---------

Citation: Fuchs, Elmar C., Woisetschläger, Jakob, Gatterer, Karl, Maier, Eugen, Pecnik, René, Holler, Gert, and Eisenkölbl, Helmut. “The floating water bridge.” J. Phys. D: Appl. Phys. 40 (2007) 6112-6114.

Copyright 2007 PhysOrg.com.

Japanese Water Painting

A different, graphic aesthetic -

From the floor to the roof in 3 minutes

Ravaging Tide

http://www.amazon.com/Ravaging-Tide-Strange-Katrinas-Americas/dp/074329470X

Flash Flood

Water Levels

How a mature man deals with a serious weather catastrophe.

Helicopter and flooded road (from NY Times).

water coming out of the strangest places...

Global Dimming

Rain + Truck + Storm Sewer =

Ok - recently found this artist - Gordon Matta-Clark - I'm a bit obsessed with his use of objects/perspective...I found a bunch of images that seem interesting...

Monsoon in India

NYT - 7/6/07

Daily Mail images

Floods are judgment on society, say bishops

Telegraph.co.uk - 7/2/04
By Jonathan Wynne-Jones, Sunday Telegraph

The floods that have devastated swathes of the country are God's judgment on the immorality and greed of modern society, according to senior Church of England bishops.

One diocesan bishop has even claimed that laws that have undermined marriage, including the introduction of pro-gay legislation, have provoked God to act by sending the storms that have left thousands of people homeless.

While those who have been affected by the storms are innocent victims, the bishops argue controversially that the flooding is a result of Western civilisation's decision to ignore biblical teaching.

The Rt Rev Graham Dow, Bishop of Carlisle, argued that the floods are not just a result of a lack of respect for the planet, but also a judgment on society's moral decadence.

"This is a strong and definite judgment because the world has been arrogant in going its own way," he said. "We are reaping the consequences of our moral degradation, as well as the environmental damage that we have caused."

The bishop, who is a leading evangelical, said that people should heed the stories of the Bible, which described the downfall of the Roman empire as a result of its immorality.

"We are in serious moral trouble because every type of lifestyle is now regarded as legitimate," he said.

"In the Bible, institutional power is referred to as 'the beast', which sets itself up to control people and their morals. Our government has been playing the role of God in saying that people are free to act as they want," he said, adding that the introduction of recent pro-gay laws highlighted its determination to undermine marriage.

"The sexual orientation regulations [which give greater rights to gays] are part of a general scene of permissiveness. We are in a situation where we are liable for God's judgment, which is intended to call us to repentance."

He expressed his sympathy for those who have been hit by the weather, but said that the problem with "environmental judgment is that it is indiscriminate".

The West is also being punished for the way that it has exploited poorer nations in its pursuit of economic gain. "It has set up dominant economic structures that are built on greed and that keep other nations in a situation of dependence. The principle of God's judgment on nations that have exploited other nations is all there in the Bible," he said.

He urged people to respond to the latest floods by turning away from a lifestyle of greed to instead live thinking of the consequences of their actions.

Global warming has been caused by people's lack of care for the planet and recent environmental catastrophes are a warning over how we behave, according to the Bishop of Liverpool.

"People no longer see natural disasters as an act of God," said the Rt Rev James Jones. "However, we are now reaping what we have sown. If we live in a profligate way then there are going to be consequences," said the bishop, who has previously been seen as a future Archbishop of Canterbury or York.

"We have a responsibility in this and God is exposing us to the truth of what we have done."

The Rt Rev Richard Chartres, Bishop of London, said: "We are all part of the problem and part of the solution. Instead of living as if we owned the earth we need to recover a sense of being participants in a web of life with responsibilities to other life forms and to our children."

The Bishops' warnings came as flood-hit communities were being warned to brace themselves for more torrential rain this weekend, with the Met Office issuing a severe weather warning for large areas of England and Wales, with up to 50mm (2in) of rain forecast.

Aid battle for flood-hit Pakistan

BBC News 6/30/07

Rescuers in Pakistan are struggling to bring aid to more than a million people hit by storms that have also struck many other areas in south Asia. Army helicopters and transport planes are dropping aid to the homeless in Pakistan's Balochistan province.

Officials say fewer than 20 people died when Cyclone Yemyin struck on Tuesday but poor communications and remoteness mean an accurate figure is unavailable.

A key Hindu pilgrimage in Kashmir has been suspended due to heavy rain.

More that 140 people have been killed in storms and floods over the past week in India.

In flooded parts of Afghanistan, more than 80 people have died in recent days.

If Fire Were Water

Referenced from http://www.boredstop.com

German Newscast

Amazing Katrina Video

BBC Flood Images

Flooding in Texas

NYT - 6/27/2007



Heavy rains caused flooding in parts of central Texas and Oklahoma today, forcing some residents to climb to the tops of their vehicles, houses and trees to await rescue.

Montauk 6/26/07

UK Floods force thousands from homes

BBC News 6/26/2007

Thousands of people have been forced to leave their homes amid severe flooding across England and Wales that is now believed to have claimed four lives. Hundreds of families in Lincolnshire, South Yorkshire, Nottinghamshire and Shropshire have been moved to safety.

In Worcestershire police searching for a missing motorist have found a body.

On Monday, a man and a teenage boy were swept to their deaths in Sheffield and another man died after becoming trapped in a storm drain in Hull.

7th Plague

Plague mythology ought to figure into our constructs of global warming and floods. The two go hand in hand...

And now, a hailstorm -

Sand Storm

All this talk about water... what about the places that are drying up?

Proof that Global Warming is a lie

The genius who created this video is obviously not taking into account the fact that the majority of polar ice caps lie above sea level. It's a worthy attempt, though... and I hope it comforts people for at least a little while until they realize it's totally wrong.

Drowning Image

To link to a pre-existing image: right click the images and select 'copy image address' and then paste that into the URL text field that appears in the pop-up window for inserting picture hyperlinks... the image option is represented as a little landscape icon right above where you type the blog entry, next to the spell check icon.

Great image, Daniella!

Things I'm Obsessed With After Our Last Videotaping...

Language - Can't stop thinking about it. And how we want to use multiple languages in the piece - and play around with how they are used and misused and misunderstood. But not only that - what about the world of EXTINCT LANGUAGE? What causes a language to be washed away? Just like the internet and the dot com madness has added so many new words to our vocabulary - what words will wash away in this flood that we are creating? Ah - and Wikipedia lists recently extinguished languages (or they call them "modern" languages).

Rhythm of Global Warming to match the rhythm of our piece?
Is that possible? To take an image like - http://www.actewagl.com.au/education/_lib/images/Sustainability/Sustainability06%20-%20Global%20mean%20surface%20temp.jpg (sorry - can't figure out how to post images directly onto this note) - and have the rhythm of the overall piece happen in relation to this graph?

Some Drowning Images -
http://riannanworld.typepad.com/my_weblog/images/drowning.JPG
http://www.portlandmercury.com/binary/ca4b6c71/ex-11014.jpeg

Ah - and a Shirt Strangulation Image -
http://www.sphinx-sanitarium.com/straightjacket.jpg

notes for the opening

OPENING:
-Lobby, gallery (exhibits, science fair, art fair)
-Pre-show, drink water, nametags?
-Cyc rise, audience gets flooded, actors come on
-Rooftop dying (thoughts projected?), dies throughout the scene
-Faux fish
-Couple cooking fish
-Rope- dead girls, live man

Shots of erupting volcanos set to psychedelic music

Soft Construction With Boiled Beans: Premonition of Civil War

Crazy Article about the Moken who Survived the Tsunami

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/03/18/60minutes/main681558.shtml

Sea Gypsies Saw Signs In The Waves
How Moken People In Asia Saved Themselves From Deadly Tsunami

This article is a fascinating example of how the Moken People survived - and the history of their people, as well as the use of language...

Action or Inaction?

Imagine watching this ten years in the future, after the world has flooded and depression has taken over.

flood animations

Washington DC:


Miami:


Boston:


New York:


London:


And here's a little dramatic statement about how man-made global warming is a myth:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PIuNxy6i1o0

flood mythology

From the Hmong...

"Similiar to Noah's Ark,"Txoj Dab Neeg Kawg" (The Last Myth) is an animation set in the old world before the great flood . Two villagers,Yer and Ker, are chosen to be saved and create a world anew with the help of the shaman Chong SeeYee. With supernatural monsters on their tail, the trio must face death defying moments all in a race against time. This photoshop animation explores the life history of the Hmong people, and allows Hmong individuals to realize where they stand."

Audio Recordings

Here are my favorite excerpts from today's first session -

COPY AND PASTE THE LINKS INTO YOUR BROWSER FOR NOW...

http://www.boysandmurderers.com/audio/Opening.mp3

http://www.boysandmurderers.com/audio/Cooking.mp3

http://www.boysandmurderers.com/audio/Song.mp3

http://www.boysandmurderers.com/audio/Glasses.mp3

disaster theatre

From a review of En Un Sol Amarillo at the Under the Radar Festival this year...

"One of the most effective aspects of the play, in fact, is the dust—dust as a central prop and emblem of what happens during an earthquake, of the way all crumbles to rubble, to dust, to dust that is everywhere and inescapable. Dust is the play's most effective and striking prop—used to draw a stick figure of a dead child on a wall, which then crumbles away; dust sprinkled on a prone actor as he recalls his burial alive, dust clouds erupting from a drum as it is beaten; pools and swirls of dust on the stage floor as the play draws to a close."

Here is the rest.

from the HARPers

what is your first memory of water?

beach
jumping into a swimming pool
bathing with siblings
japanese bath in okinawa
trying to shampoo
drowning in a puddle
bath tub with cousin
brother peeing on me
black rubber boots
mississippi river

what is the feeling that water gives you?

fresh
strong
warm
hot
shampoo
cold
brecht
stings
fun
fear
wonderful

new text

monologue from a pair of girl's eyeglasses:

I've never told anyone this before.

That's not true, actually.

I told my mother once, when she was in the hospital after her radiation. But she wouldn't remember. I told Gunnebo Wickett from the John Deere store—that's not the name of the store, that's what we call it—Gunnebo was a friend of my mother's, um but their idea of friendship was a little uh, different than others'. Slippery. Is that right, slippery? Peculiar word. Like you can almost hear the oil in it. Gunnebo anyway. Real skinny guy, big purple nose like an autumn gourd with hair coming out, growing down into his moustache. That moustache was always shiny, look like he glued it down with epoxy, suppose he used moustache wax, which is, I mean where would you even find moustache wax, maybe on the internet, but he was kind of old, maybe he had some lying around, and he smelled too, like sometimes like the inside of an old car, like that kind of stale, not sure if it was his breath or his clothes or both, but boy was he skinny. Mom fed him a few times a week when she was well but she was a horrible cook because of the one-hand thing, she lost the other hand when she was a girl, some farm accident she never talked about but secretly I think it had something to do with sex.

But anyway when she'd cook stuff would stick to the pan and set off the smoke alarm so we took the batteries out. She just couldn't the pan off the flame fast enough. Be chopping something and then BEEP BEEP BEEP. Maybe it wasn't the one-arm thing… I'll bet other one-armed people can cook. Maybe she was just inept. But that didn't stop Gunnebo from coming around. Three nights a week, sitting his stinky lanky self at our table and scraping the plate with his knife in his fist and saying Amelia this is delicious and he'd leave the black parts on the edges of the meat like it was that way on purpose. Not me. I'd cut them off and give them to the pigs.

I didn't hate Gunnebo per se. Except when he made her cry. But that was only a few times and I'm pretty sure he didn't mean to. She wouldn't cry in front of him. Not in front of me either. She cried in the shower. I guess because he tears would go down the drain rather than into the skillet or on the counter or her jeans, or whatever. Because then they'd be part of her space, like molecules of sorrow embedded in her daily life but in the shower they get drained into the sewers or wherever, as though they never had anything to do with the her at all. You could tell how sad she was by the length of her showers. Long after the hot water was gone. When she was dying she showered every day, for hours and hours. So much water.

Gunnebo still came three nights a week then, but there were no dinners. We got KFC or Pizza hut. Gunnebo liked the crusts with the cheese inside. I'm not sure why he kept coming when she stopped talking. One night he fell asleep on the couch with his mouth all slack and that's when I told him. Then mom was in the hospital two weeks later and that's when I told her. And now, well. I'm about to tell you. I'm not sure why. I think it's because of your eyes. They remind me of, of leaves, of light coats and cold afternoon breezes and pumpkin patches and apple cider. Your eyes, and the fact that you haven't stopped holding me since I asked you to.

What I'm about to tell you is. I'm allergic to bees. Just kidding. I mean I AM allergic to bees, but that's not what I told Gunnebo or mom. I told them the story of how I feel sometimes when I think of death. Like I'm sitting crosslegged at the bottom of the sea, and looking at starfish and stingrays and all sorts of sea animals floating and resting and swimming, and there is no noise, none at all, and my hair is lifting all around my head like a net, and I'm calm. I'm calm.

(beat)

I'm not afraid of dying, Jimmy.

(beat)

What do you think of me now?

Hurricane Katrina

Worth watching in fullscreen view. Click the YouTube logo and then full screen it from there...

More images referenced from Digg

http://www.flickr.com/photos/alternate/sets/199123/

Time Fountain

http://cre.ations.net/creation/the-time-fountain

Macro Water Photography from www.frogview.com

Some images of water posted on www.digg.com --

No Surprises

I don't mean to pepper this blog with Radiohead videos (they are so like five years ago, ew!) but they seem to really apply in a lot of ways. This is a video from their album OK Computer.

early text

Text I initially created for the Ibsen festival can be found here:
http://www.sheilacallaghan.com/water_final.doc

Document of flood mythology:
http://www.sheilacallaghan.com/Floodmyths.doc

Notes I took from our reading at New Dramatists last year:

Lights up. Water everywhere. Clothes float in. Actors bring microphones in, place them near the clothes, and objects. The clothing sings. Then actors climb into the clothes, objects take on lifes. Certain objects have more than one life.

START PLAY WITH ARIA OF A FLOATING SHIRT
TWO MONOLOGUES START THE PLAY
INCORPORATE NOAH'S ARC AND FLOOD MYTHOLOGY
TRACK THE LIFE OF LOST OBJECTS THROUGHOUT THE PLAY
CHANGE THE GENDERS OF THE CHARACTERS

first thoughts

- the films you posted bill are great. it made me think of a couple of things - the first is the transformative nature of water. how do we show that? how it transforms the characters but it is constantly transforming - like time does. crazy idea but we could have a large block of ice on the stage that melts during the course of the show....or the opposite - we are watching water freeze during the show...can we suspend water mid-air? kindof like freezing time?

- i was also thinking about the whole idea of experimenting with water...the role that a "scientist" can play - taking water and objects (used in the piece) and seeing how they morph - or even disintegrate over time. maybe we have objects collected from audience members each night and keeping various vials of experiments going so that by the last show we have a whole wall of vials?

- ok- just watched the radiohead...it's amazing...it's absolutely fascinating. i love the way it captures the floating feeling of being deep underwater. i love the details on the dishes at the table (still scraps of food there) as if life was severed abruptly...i love the spotlight - and the idea that objects can be captured through light and how they tied that in to the sky at the end...

random chatter

NOTES FROM THE WAVERLY...

-swivel chairs
-body as body of water (70% of earth, of human)
-endless ocean, no beginning, no end
-locales: underwater aria, cloud aria
-grief: water as escape for survival
-flooding of the gorges in China, ancient underwater cities
-apathy from abroad... what can I do to help? nothing. shutting out tragedy, different perspectives on the same event, empathy vs. safety
-the contemporary vs. the historical, the quotidian vs. the epic
-playing with scale
-temporary distortion blog - http://temporarydistortion.blogspot.com/
-audience involvement-all drink water together; all hold breath together; different ticket prices; ways of approximating experience and involving an audience viscerally (event theatre), cell phone or computer usage during the show, audience determines how the show goes
-first memory of water (nearly drowning, learning to swim)
-fake news cast... is the world drowning while we all sit in a theatre? What is being buried, and why, and how will we deal with it when we open the doors and the water pours in?

Water in Zero Gravity

Look around you - Water

Radiohead

First Post

From Jason's blog:

"In the near term, however, the answer seems to be pursing a sort of event-driven theater that does what only theater can do, something akin to the crowds that have sprung up around Spring Awakening, Rent, The Blue Men, or Cirque du Soleil. The Denver Center did an amazingly effective job of this with 1001. The local papers were very kind to us, and an overwhelmingly large number of the older audience were very responsive, but reaching out to younger audiences via the local club scene and word of mouth made all the difference. The DCTC publicist told me that the cheap seats were sold out for much of the run, which is unusual for them - usually they're full for a week or two and that's it. This tells me that we need to take a page from hip-hop, punk rock, and the indie and rave scenes and reach past traditional media outlets, which are usually prohibitively expensive anyway, and we need to put something on stage that makes a difference in the lives of people our own age. I see too many plays by my peers that seem specifically intended to digestibly package the lives of twenty- and thirty-somethings for an older, wealthier crowd, one that might be liberal it its beliefs but is deeply conservative in its tastes and actions. Fuck that."

From my friend Deron's blog:

"Placebo Sunrise was a show that was so incredibly good that when I saw it I immediately regretted it was closing that weekend, because everyone who was important to me wouldn’t have a chance to see it. When I think about what the theatre experiences that have knocked me out have in common two thing comes to mind: 1)Their ability to wholly transport you to another world with its own unique rules and life and 2) Their robust theatricality. Placebo Sunrise had both of these attributes from the very moment you set foot in the theatre and walked down the long hallway to sit down in what appeared to be a mock up of a traditional vaudevillian theatre. A host named Louis greeted you and pulled off that rare feat of being utterly charming while still in character. He gave you a refreshing orange and vodka infused drink and immediately convinced you that you were staying at some weird and wonderful resort. When the show began the heroes, Garvey and Super Pants were hanging from their feet by bungee cord in front of a backdrop that was sketched on white butcher paper. Totally surprising, totally hilarious. They didn’t have to say anything at all before we were laughing and on the edge of our seats. But then the scene ended and the butcher paper backdrop was ripped down to reveal this huge two story set of a 1920’s hotel. It was amazing, it was magic, it was a totally minding blowing moment which is so incredibly difficult to pull of genuinely in theatre. I can’t really remember what exactly happened in the rest of the play except that it was little like a Marx Brothers movie directed by David Lynch and that’s the kind of show I had always wanted to see. The other moment that sticks with me is that this woman, maybe a mermaid even was pushed out on this giant turtle in the midst of this hotel farce and sang this gorgeous torch song. And the whole piece was hilarious, I think any art that really works for me is something that has a generous sense of humor. This show was MOMENTUOUS."