Fujimori is pushing the ladder like a wheelbarrow. The parts of his system are fun to move around. I want that to be a key part of my system, too.
The wheelbarrow is an exquisite piece of technology. The Chinese Wheelbarrow is the coolest wheelbarrow. Shovelling dirt and pushing it around is maybe the least virtual activity. I am interested in virtual systems, and I think things like NFTs are interesting, but I feel a commitment to build things that are steadfastly anchored in the real world.
I tried to compose this image so that the shadows line up at the intersection of one loop cycle and the next, so it would give an approximation of continuous motion. I think it looks like a freight train rolling by.
These images are in 144p resolution. They're only 256 pixels wide. I am concerned with the ethics of consumption, and this extends to the consumption of computer resources. These low resolution images are much less resource-intensive to send and process than HD video. They're compatible with a slower, lower-intensity internet, an internet that isn't constantly hungry for more. They're suited to a version of the internet with a 12mph speed limit.
I'm interested in designing construction 'kits' that are easy to manufacture and distribute. I have a strong interest in CNC machining, which I'll touch on later on. Here, I'm interested in sketching the human and ecological outlines of my proposed system. Once I establish what it should feel like, I'll talk about how it would work.
I'm interested in building a system that has the same level of integration as containerized shipping, but at a human scale.
Trains are the original time travel. Einstein framed his theory of special relativity as a thought experiment involving clocks on trains. Platform 9 3/4, from the harry potter universe, presents an image of a distortion to the fabric of train timetables. If you want to 'run away to the circus', you hop into a rail car, and it whisks you away into a fantastical alternate reality.
I've never ridden freight trains, but I have a fantasy of riding in a tea house on a freight train. It would be a superimposition of two ways of experiencing time. The space would be warm, quiet, and intimate, and the view out the window would continuously unfold onto new landscapes. I don't know what the backcountry of america looks like, but I want to.
If we're going to solve the problems of america, we need to look at the body of america. I imagine the freight train as a platform for looking at the infrastructural backbone of america, and the tea house as a place for thinking up creative solutions. You could carry a bicycle on the train with you, and hop off to obtain more textured observations.
Of course, this is just a fantasy. A freight operator would never allow little treehouses to be nested into their systems. But I think I can build an artwork that feels like riding in a teahouse on a freight train.
I said that shipping containers were empty boxes that you can put anything into. Into this one, I put a horse. Or the idea of a horse. Before we had cars we had horses. Horses graze grass that grows under the sun, and are in that sense, 'solar-powered'. On the pathway to a liveable future, I imagine that the agent of change looks more like a horse, and less like a tesla.
Technological utopians imagine a future that is full of robots and sensors. Look at the Eyes, Nose, and Ears of the horse: the way they gesture, and organically process incoming signals. These are the kind of sensors that I imagine being instrumental to the construction of a liveable future: Eyes, Nose, and Ears. I believe in the primacy of embodied cognition.
I think the scale of horses is interesting. They're bigger and stronger and heavier than people, but the relationship is not one of overwhelming domination, the way that cars and SUVs overwhelm pedestrians so completely. My ideas are fundamentally pedestrian. I believe in that scale. 600 to 1000 pounds is a good weight for a house, I think. That's how much a horse weighs.