Leftovers
This is a collection of text which we've cut from articles, essays, and grant applications but would like to reuse or repurpose. It's always rough to cut good writing so let's recycle!
A PKN (phosphorous, potassium, nitrogen) test runs about $75. Standard soil toxics assays cost $35 for lead, $100 for comprehensive heavy metals, and $300-$1000 for PCA/PCB and other toxics testing.
Op-ed by Shannon & Jeff
Jan/Feb 2011
In principle, we are focused on moving beyond the “leftover data” that many people are accustomed to receiving from big science, instead of challenging it and making it their own. That is, while we support transparency in government, we’re concerned that for many, open databases and API’s are the ultimate goal, and not simply one source of information. Considering that much municipal and environmental data is produced for compliance reasons, it is often sparse, or of low quality. There is much to be said for cultivating a culture of openness, and for instituting an overwhelming public expectation for transparency, but we hope to overturn the assumption that this represents the only source of information to better understand and affect public, corporate, and governmental processes.
In contrast to the typical model of harvesting data from communities, our approach at PLOTS is to commoditize the expertise, and the experts, rather than the public. Instead of a scientist culling data from a sea of participants, we hope to create tools and a platform that will allow independent groups to gather, interpret and discuss the results of their work based not only on the use of scientific data. We are also intent on building a community and a culture of critical inquiry, and to emphasize the intimate awareness of ones environment brought by local community inhabitants. The desire to bridge the divide between “the experts” and local communities is one that came to the forefront in the above example of the BP Oil Spill, by residents that sought (then and now) to conduct their own discussion of spill impacts.
By contrast, as the spill progressed, more and more Gulf Coast residents began to use social media outlets such as Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and independent blog sites as platforms for discussing what impacts they and their communities were experiencing, and to provide a means of discussion with individuals across the globe who were interested in the unfolding crisis. Instead of utilizing a ready-made data collection platform provided by an NGO, a media outlet or an academic institution, residents were eager to take the control and meaning of the data they were collecting and processing into their own hands.
Shpilman Institute for Photography grant application by Mathew, Jeff & Shannon
The proposed research program will be an inquiry into the convergence of techniques traditionally associated with surveillance and the accessibility of photographic technologies as applied to grassroots activist projects that the Public Laboratory has worked on over the last year. Public Laboratory has developed as a community of practitioners and researchers of low cost DIY tools that create open and transparent access to communities engaged in monitoring local issues of environmental justice.
In the case of the BP Oil Spill, we watched hour after hour of the oil spill "leak cam" that was an official response using surveillance methods, but contributed little to the public understanding of the ensuing crisis as difficulties continuously arose in accessing new and timely information. Rather than accepting this static viewpoint of a crisis, Public Laboratory saw this as an opportunity to challenge that type of sole viewpoint and to break the technological monopoly that the government holds in such instances.
Building on our initial year of work, this research project would conduct a much needed inquiry into the methods of grassroots activism when combined with appropriate technologies. While so-called ‘new’ forms (under the banners of neogeography, experimental geography, radical cartography, even PGIS) of image-making attempt to coopt the authority of the geographic image, and the development of universal, inexpensive digital cameras has created a flood of imagery that populates the personal profiles of social networking sites, Public Laboratory practitioners are experiencing a shift in activist thinking into an even newer emerging practice which holds the greatest promise for a novel critique and investigation of the photographic form. Our work centers on moving beyond DIY enthusiasm to redefine the techniques for advocacy and activism when the process is open, encourages both successes and failures, builds from the ground up and works parallel and in conversation with the tools of environmental monitoring that are deployed the government, but not useful to communities.
This research project will specifically address three of the DIY techniques that Public Laboratory has been developing through the last year and their use in communities that we collaborate with: grassroots aerial photography, spectral imaging and thermal photography. Grassroots aerial photography is rapidly growing to include new imaging technologies which explore a wider spectral range, drawing on techniques pioneered by NASA and the military industrial complex. Infrared photography and even hyperspectral imaging, using modified ("hacked") point-and-shoot cameras, offers photographers analysis tools to produce photographs of environmental processes such as photosynthesis and contamination. Formerly invisible...xxx. Our proposed research utilizes the techniques of these three photographic instruments in the context of what it means when such tools are accessible and available to citizens, while examining the meaning of authority that is typically given to similar non-DIY models used by government and industry.
Potential impacts of research: why this research is important and what it will contribute
Based on the preponderance of cellphone video evidence -- Oakland police officer, taser incidents, ... grassroots aerial photography, from balloons, kites, and small aircraft, is becoming a widespread practice, and presents individual photographers and small organizations to produce powerful evidence in the tradition of investigative journalistic photography.
An increasingly invasive regime of satellite photography, CCTV, backscatter x-ray imaging -- photography in its information-technology embodiment/? is being used to encroach, to inspect, to assess and measure en masse. This makes sense for the first wave of the information age, dominated as it was by industry and military players. But grassroots and alternative or indie movements are gaining momentum, as the last decade of P2P filesharing yields network topologies supportive of Wikileaks-style tactics. Such decentralized approaches give popular and grassroots movements leverage ... challenge surveillance strategies which were once the exclusive domain of government and industry.
Even as the mainstream media struggles to identify "photoshopped" images, and to develop a critical eye for that kind of technological dishonesty, satellite imagery retains the patina of authority which photography outgrew decades ago.
(Iraninan missile photoshopping, Chinese high-altitude train line photoshopping)
In the face of new and powerful forms of imaging -- often from orbit -- which do not yet bear the subjective ...
Grassroots aerial photography is rapidly growing to include new imaging technologies which explore a wider spectral range, drawing on techniques pioneered by NASA and the military industrial complex. Infrared photography and even hyperspectral imaging, using modified ("hacked") point-and-shoot cameras, offers photographers analysis tools to produce photographs of environmental processes such as photosynthesis and contamination. Formerly invisible ...
We propose a research program to investigate and document such practices amongst the communities we are working with -- ranging from environmental activists monitoring cleanup efforts along the Gulf of Mexico's oil-affected shorelines and Brooklyn's Gowanus Canal, to neighborhoods creating thermal photography of heat leaks to improve home insulation, to balloon aerial photography of contested land claims in informal urban settlements in Peru. Our research will examine the structures of participation which enable the adoption of new and unfamiliar tools, the technologies and economies of scale which these photographers take advantage of to create their new equipment, and the emerging role such new photographic forms are playing in activism, journalism, and elsewhere.
[[[Mathew, fresh start]]] “It is narcissistic, vain, egotistical, unrealistic, selfish, and hateful to assume emotional ownership of a town or a word. It is also essential." Richard Hugo (no citation)
In the case of the BP Oil Spill, we watched hour after hour of the oil spill "leak cam" that was an official response using surveillance methods, but contributed little to the public understanding of the ensuing crisis as difficulties continuously arose in accessing new and timely information. Rather than accepting this static viewpoint of a crisis, Public Laboratory saw this as an opportunity to challenge that type of sole viewpoint and to break the technological monopoly that the government holds in such instances.
Within the past decade, photography has rapidly become embedded in the public sphere, following two trends. On the one hand, surveillance as a ubiquitous practice amongst government and industry, and on the other hand the increasing ubiquity of consumer digital cameras building a networked, tagged record of social spaces. Between the poles of secret, targeted surveillance and an ad-hoc, informal social media panopticon lies a middle ground of public, strategic, and community-driven surveillance employed by activist photographers. We propose a research project to explore the impact of activist photographic surveillance strategies on community self-image and perceptions of control. When grassroots movements adopt and repurpose advanced imaging techniques for activist ends, do they recreate the chilling effect of surveillance or empower new modes of community understanding? Our case studies will be practitioners of grassroots aerial photography, spectral imaging, and thermal photography who in the past year have emerged as producers of new forms of photography which challenge traditional, authoritative data regimes with creative, critical, and investigative acts.
We will will work amongst the communities with whom Public Laboratory has developed collaborations -- including environmental activists monitoring cleanup efforts along the Gulf of Mexico's oil-affected shorelines, Brooklyn's Gowanus Canal, and Montana’s Southern Pole, neighborhoods creating thermal photography of heat leaks to improve home insulation, and balloon aerial photography of contested land claims in informal urban settlements in Peru. Our research will examine the structures of participation which enable the adoption of new and unfamiliar tools, the technologies and economies of scale which these photographers take advantage of to create their new equipment, and the emerging role such new photographic forms are playing in activism, journalism, and community self-perceptions.
“A slow and measured democracy, locally situated, in the style of the direct democracy of the assemblies of the Swiss cantons, or a 'live' , media democracy, on the lines of the measurement of audience ratings in commercial television or the opinion poll?” -- Paul Virilio, the Information Bomb, pg 122 Contemporary media conversations can become overwhelmed by floods of irrelevant data designed to induce paralysis. In the case of the Deepwater Horizon spill, we watched hour after hour of the “leak cam,” an official surveillance response that morphed into a broadcast fetish object on which to heap fears and concerns while returning nothing to its viewers. This static viewpoint of the gush of oil ignored the slow-moving, local disasters happening on a human scale.
Virilio’s fear of being overwhelmed by a media deluge and turning to machines for salvation is reflected in the structure of modern communications. Problems with data deluge are treated as parsing problems that require the filtering and visualizing of incoming streams of data. Through the eyes of a programmer, the problem can be solved between the creator and user. This approach favors easily parseable data, categorizable data, and in Virilo’s mind, degraded data, removed from the complexity of life. Our approach is different. We stress the use of community-driven photography and spacial imaging to create maps of land, ecology, and the built environments. These are not simple, interpreted maps, they’re they are detailed photographs in all of their complexity and nuance.
We know the difference between accurate photography and clear imaging, and that is what we teach in our workshops- a process for public investigation and interpretation linking online and real world collaborative production. Our tools encourage broad participation in their simplicity: Balloon aerial photography with point and shoot cameras- paper towel tube thermal cameras. We want everyone to collect data and find out directly for themselves, and create a “slow and measured democracy, locally situated.”
Do these advanced photographic techniques and the enthusiasts who are championing them stand to spark a local, community-led science-driven narrative that participants and community members feel ownership over? We will write our paper on this topic, using interviews, surveys, and use-data to evaluate questions such as, [[these are butte specific]] do people cross county lines? are lasting bonds constructed? do cross county collaborations continue online? do community members become recognized by their peers as “experts?” do they feel empowered to make informed decisions in public forums? We will collect surveys on this information and evaluate our process with in-person