Found this inventive bike car back in my photo archive. A must share. It dates from July 2008.
Category: Photos
Cray Reservoir Brecon Beacons
Cray Reservoir Brecon Beacons
Back in 2007 we traveled in a spur of the moment to the Brecon Beacons area in Wales. After the family business we attended, we had some time to potter around and came along the Cray Reservoir on our way to Swansea.
Cray Reservoir is a storage reservoir located in the Brecon Beacons National Park for the water supply to the city of Swansea in South Wales and was built between 1898 and 1906 by Swansea Corporation.
The reservoir now supplies water to the towns in the valley of the River Tawe and north Swansea.
The location of the reservoir was chosen as it was upstream of the heavily industrialised parts of the Tawe valley and in an area of high rainfall with as large an upstream catchment as possible. This meant that the ideal location was just to the north of the carboniferous coal belt on the Old Red Sandstone within the Brecon Beacons National Park. The 28-metre high dam is at the lower end of a wide glaciated valley and is estimated to impound some 4.5 million tonnes of water.
Upstream of Cray Reservoir the land is largely upland moorlands or unimproved grassland with large areas now given over to plantings of conifers. The impounded water quality is therefore good and the water requires only minimal treatment before entering the water supply system. The treatment of screening, disinfection and lime dosing is carried out south of the reservoir at Nant yr Wydd.
Despite the generally excellent quality of the water, there have been occasional episodes of impaired quality mostly concerned with forestry planting and the release of difficult to treat turbidity into the reservoir. On occasions when such raw water quality impairment has overwhelmed the treatment facilities, some bacteriological deterioration has been experienced in the downstream water supply system such as in 1981.
Source: Wikipedia
Experimental Motorboat “Pipefish” – Dutch Design (67)
Pipefish
I saw this sleek motoryacht at the 2015 Sail Amsterdam parade for the first time.
Here it is moored alongside the BOTEL, the Amsterdam Boat Hotel, before it leaves mooring to potter around at Sail 2015.
Via twitter I came into contact with a son of the developer, Adriaan Bruijnzeel, who was able to give me some details.
The idea is light long and narrow, or F.T.S which stands for Fantasy, Tranquility, en Simplicity.
Like many motorboat designs of the nineteen 20ies, speedy and economic cruising is possible with length and sleekness.
The Pipefish measures 15 meter by 2 meter and has an aluminum hull which reminds of a sleek sailing yacht.
It can sleep 3 persons, one in a double and two in a single hut.
With one Hummer H1 motor (probably a marine version of a Detroit Diesel) of 150hp it can reach a speed of 43-45 km or 24-25 knots.
Nemesis Machine
Nemesis Machine
An installation with input of several data from the London Megalopolis that visualizes how several aspects of city life are monitored already. Think camera’s. think air pollution, think temperature and think traffic and transport moves.
The Nemesis Machine is a miniature city, made up of wires, chips, computer parts, switches and specially designed electronics. The installation shows the current data flow of Smart City London, complete with environmental sensors and surveillance cameras, as well as data from traffic information and environmental monitoring systems. The work responds to the temperature, light, pressure and sound of the simulated city. If something changes in London, it’s registered directly in motion, sound and light in the miniature city of Utrecht. The Nemesis Machine is like the avatar of London and is not only driven by the real city, it is entirely dependent on it.
The Nemesis Machine – From Metropolis to Megalopolis to Ecumenopolis from Stanza on Vimeo.
See Hacking Habitat, a must see event in a former prison in Utrecht.
Curated by Ine Gevers, Hacking Habitat witnesses “the rise of a ‘remote control society’ colonizing and infiltrating increasing realms of daily life for the sake of safety and risk- management. Monitoring cameras and smart gateways are installed everywhere, while we are classified and atomized by automatic face recognition. Software and algorithms define who deviates or contributes too little to our economy.
The installation is by Stanza
Living Unit
Living Unit
In a prison not in use anymore in Utrecht currently there is an exhibition named “Hacking Habitat“. Various artists give their vision on the trend to curtail all of our privacy nowadays.
Living Unit is the unit where Dutch artist Maarten Schuurman has put all his belongings. He lives “off the Grid” with these six suitcases where he succeeded to put all his belongings in. The less possessions you have and the more you move around like a squatter, the less control “they” can exercise over you.
Consequently Maarten took back a lot of control. Actually that’s also the theme of the exhibition: Taking back control (or Hacking) of your habitat.