INTERMISSION - PROJECT 1 - INDIVIDUAL PROJECT ONE STATEMENT

project one became quite a difficult prospect for the group i feel, whilst we took a lot of things into consideration and did our best to bring them all together - i feel as though ourselves (and many of the groups) only managed to scratch the surface...

there was a lot of things in the work that i was very proud of -especially in the sense of the vision we has for this collaborative society, in which people could use their skill sets for the benefit of the WHOLE group as oppsed to individually.a dynmaic like this would be very hard to achieve as there would need to be an entire mentality shift which could be too hard for first or second generation residents of the community.

I feel as though the longer it managed to continue for, the stronger the community would become. breaking away from the ties that we currently have to banks, mortages, supermarkets etc etc. one thing that we needed to address more-so was the way we were going to deal with the removal of "cash" from woodfordia.

whilst it could be achieved wihin the community it would make thigns very difficult when dealing with the outside world. selling technologies or products from the think farm would require the exchange of cash i think - then this cash could be used to pay back the money outstanding to purchase woodfordia from the council. only through pure ownership of the site do i think that woodfordia can truly self actuate and become self sufficient.

in its very essence living in a woodfordia that isnt purely owned is non self-sufficient - unfortunately the only way to achieve this is through the acquisition of cash and then payment to the council.

all of this needs more thinking but i feel as though we have begun and started forging a future vision based around the elements eating, dwelling, making, moving, breathing that provide a platform from which to build and constantly refer. in the future stages of the project it will be important to refer back to these for direction and reference.

i am looking forward to following b.o.b on the remainder of his journey towards the end of semester and creating a woodfordia with him that could become an exemplar for many others like it into the future...

woodfordia 500

The 500 Year Plan

- We recognise, appreciate and graciously receive gifts from our ancestors. We understand these are the gifts of lore and the celebration of our existence.

- We aim to gift future generations a clean slate: an organisation unencumbered with financial social or environmental debt.

- We’ll cultivate a convention of decision making, strengthening through time, that will resonate in our work and nurture our future.

- We’ll plant a forest of goodwill and benefit from its shade.

- We will build with the eyes of artists.

- We’ll provide space for our descendants to meet the challenges of their generations with vigour, courage and imagination and encourage them to celebrate their journeys with levity and frivolity.

The 500 year plan lives in our minds. It is our myth. It is a vision for how we might be and sensed by all who feel our welcome.



I think this particular vision resonates deeply with what the group are trying to achieve in our Woodfordia proposal... the importance of collaboration and unity in decision making...

in a sentence i feel as though this is extremley appropriate to what we are aspiring for...



 

Moneyless Man...

Moneyless man reveals how to live a cashless life without starving

Separation between stomachs and the soil means most food comes in plastic packets, but eating for free can be fun

• My year of living without money
• I live without cash – and I manage just fine

 

 

Mark Boyle, the moneyless man, collecting food. Photograph: Charlotte Sexauer

When I began living without money 18 months ago, the most common question people asked me was "How on earth are you going to eat?". An understandable remark, but an insight into the burgeoning degrees of separation between the stomach and the soil.
For most of us, food comes in plastic packets from the supermarket. A friend, who runs tours of an organic farm for school children, gives much anecdotal evidence of this. One week, while pointing to a rosemary bush, he asked the kids if anyone knew what it was. After 20 seconds, one 12-year-old raised his hand and proclaimed it to be "corned beef". Worse still, none of the others laughed.
The answer to this FAQ is in the query itself – I eat from the earth. Food is free, and indiscriminately so. The apple tree doesn't ask if you've got enough cash when you go to pick its fruit; it just gives to whoever wants an apple. We are the only species, out of millions on the planet, that is deluded enough to think that it needs money to eat. And what's worse, I often observe people walking straight past free food on their way to buy it from all over the world via the supermarket.
There are four legs to the money-free food table. The most exciting, and my favourite, is foraging, which originally meant to wander in search of food and provisions, but is used these days to describe the act of picking and eating wild foods. Although this can take a lifetime to learn, anyone can start today. I'd recommend picking up a pocket-sized book called Food for Free by Richard Mabey (sourced for free via Read It Swap It) or perhaps taking a weekend course with people such as the BBC's "roadkill chef" Fergus the Forager, before hitting the hedgerows.
At the moment look out for giant puffballs, bristly ox-tongue and rocket, the latter often found in the cracks between walls and paths in cities. If you need any more excuse to hit the coast, now is the perfect time to collect seaweed. The real beauty of wild food is not only that it's highly nutritious and ecologically sound, but that picking it is also a fantastic excuse to go adventuring with friends.
Great Britain has been tamed, so its remaining wilds could no longer feed its population. This makes the next leg – growing your own food – crucial, both in terms of tackling climate change and rebuilding a resilient local food network. Whether it be on your kitchen windowsill, in your back garden, or on the allotment, start with whatever you can manage. Choose crops you love eating and if you are time poor, choose varieties that require little work. Not only will you reduce your food miles and packaging, you'll also get to eat food that tastes of your own sweat, a flavour no spice can match.
Growing and foraging all your calorific needs is a huge task, especially without fossil fuel inputs such as fertiliser. This is where the third leg comes in: bartering. Bartering can either be an exchange of food, especially in the summer when many people have gluts of one crop or another, or an exchange of skills for food you can't get elsewhere without money. In many ways barter is just an awkward form of money and lacks the deeper benefits of doing something completely for free (such as you do with close family and friends), and it brings up the age old problem of "the double coincidence of wants", where both parties have to have something the other desires. But it has got huge benefits. Not only does it localise the economy, it helps build bonds between neighbours, leading eventually to communities that are more resilient to external shocks; societies where friendships, not cash, are seen as security.
The fourth leg of the food-for-free table is waste food. Skipping – jumping into skips – is one form of this, but I prefer to build relationships with small businesses that throw perfectly good grub away, either because of insanely rigid laws or their own quality standards. By choosing this method, you save yourself the task of looking through a bin and you get to build a relationship with another local who, in almost all cases, feels terrible about chucking out edible food (one third of all food in UK is wasted) at a time when one half of the world's population goes hungry. Whilst I don't tend to eat much waste food myself – it makes up roughly 5% of my diet – I do go skipping regularly. It's a lot of fun and I distribute the harvest to those who need it. Using waste food is far from ideal, as it is hardly building a sustainable model that the rest of the population could replicate. But while we continue to fly food from all over the world just to make it into a UK skip, I feel our first obligation, to both the farmer and the hungry, is to get it out of bins and into bellies.
So Milton Friedman – if the Guardian is available online beyond the grave – I hate to break it to you, but there is such a thing as a free lunch.
• Mark Boyle is the founder of the Freeconomy Community and has lived moneyless for the last 18 months. His book, The Moneyless Man, is out now, published by Oneworld - sales from the book will go to a charitable trust for the Freeconomy Community

“nothing is permanent, everything is in constant ux and change.

through day and night, through summer and winter, year arfter year, from birth to death, life ows in a timeless cycyle - life in the soil and on the ground. in winter and air, life of man and animal and plant - always in change and transformation, in rise and fall, in growth and decline. days end as it was at days beginning...” ANDREAS FEININGER

 i feel as though this is extremely important to remember and a beautiful notion - "days end as it was at days beginning" - regardless of what people choose to do, in particular our scenario in woodfordia, everything is ephemeral in a sense... non-permanent...

 

we should remember this that we are only visitors in any place, in a way like water...

 

where is water before it is somewhere? it is constantly moving, changing, dissapearing and reappering elsewhere in another state...

 

 

and another one...

"You are not here merely to make a living. You are here in order to enable the world to live more amply, with greater vision, with a finer spirit of hope and achievement. You are here to enrich the world, and you impoverish yourself if you forget the errand.

Woodrow Wilson 


what else do i have to say about this one....?

ordinary things...

"Since most of us spend our lives doing ordinary tasks, the most important thing is to carry them out extraordinarily well."

 Henry David Thoreau 

i had a thought that perhaps the woodfordia model we had started to conceive was ordinary (low tech)...

then i remembered this - one of my favorite quotes...

you begin...

"you begin saving the world one man at a time; all else is grandiose romanticism or politics..."

charles bukowski


when reading bukowski last week this idea resounded strongly with the idea of what woodfordia has become to the group. it is a case of self-actuation through collaboration. it is only through the ability to give each individual the opportunity to become self-sufficient that the model we are thinking about becomes possible.

a successful collaborative environment is the culmination of a series of individuals becoming "empowered" and knowing that they can provide for themselves - without the need of outside influence.

i have a great vision of the "think farm" at woodfordia being the exemplar for a world of change through which people come together in search of saving themselves - to eventually assist in the momentum shift that the world requires.

a chain is only as strong as its weakest link - in woodfordia each person will be stronger than they were before in the knowledge that they are integral to the chain... 

what a wonderful idea

"food" for thought...

"what do you expect them to do...?"

wage labour...?

"the essential conditions for the existence and for the sway of the bourgeois class is the formation and augmentation of capital; the condition for capital is wage-labour. wage-labour rests exclusively on competition between the labourers. the advance of industry, whose involuntary promoter is the bourgeoisie, replaces the isolation of the labourers, due to competition, by the revolutionary combination, due to association. the development of modern industry, therefore, cuts from under its feet the very foundation on which the bourgeoisie produces and appropriates products. What the bourgeoisie therefore produces, above all, are its own grave-diggers. Its fall and the victory of the proletariat are equally inevitable."

the communist manifesto



woodfordia is about eliminating this competition between men and rather celebrating the beauty of love and collaboration...

week 5 - architectural possibilities

as a group we have decided that to help us structure our research and progression towards the final presentation it is important to structure how we would like to address the issue of self-sufficiency in woodfordia...

after phil crowthers lecture we felt a strong attachment to the notion of

moving, eating, dwelling, making, breathing 

 

 

we felt that we could carry these 5 key elements through each panel to help direct our point of view and give us some possibilities / scenarios to work with...

 

i.e

 

moving - the cost of fossil fuels rising, becoming unaffordable - how could this be addressed in woodfordia???

eating - the shortage of food supplies in the future, how the community of woodfordia can become self   sufficient in this regard...?

dwelling - inner city crowding - rising real estate prices, over sized housing - how woodfordia residents could    apply pattern language to ensure the houses in the commune were built appropriately.

making - what making means today and what it would mean in woodfordia - does what we do for a job define who we are or vice versa in the new woodfordia???

breathing - how we are strangeling the world by polluting and removing forrest etc - alternatively how could the people of woodfordia give back to the natural landscape of woodford through regeneration and giving back!

 

 

these 5 key elements give a solid grounding into how our final boards will be presented wo draw them altogether and carry the story line of our character through timeline...

capitalism...

"capitalism is, indeed, organised crime.... and we are all the victims..."

refused



sometimes you just need a little music to help get you thinking!

the green imperative - victor papanek

"unless we change the direction in which we are heading, we might end up where we are going..."

in this incredible book papanek suggests that...

"swapping, bartering, and borrowing things probably preceded commercial trading by thousands of years. similarly people have bought used merchandise for generations..."

this runs so harmoniously with the vision of woodfordia that we have - a society in which things are not only shared but created to last.... so far removed from the capitalist driven "design to die" factories through which so much rubbish is produced...

"the creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect alone, but by the play instinct, from inner necessity. the creative mind plays with the object it loves."    Carl Jung

our woodfordia vision IS this - a collaborative place for those with nothing BUT neccesity - utilising their desire to live to self actuate and push forth...

WOODFORDIA as the cradle of new thought - the "THINK FARM"  

ARCHITECTURAL WEAPONRY: AN INTERVIEW WITH MARK WIGLEY

"One of the primary roles to be played by the experimental activists in architecture is not to come up with new ideas of what architecture should be, but to come up with new ways to talk about it"

this in a sense sums up the feeling that has been resounding with me this semester... the immediate response to every situation it seems is to reinvent the wheel rather than sitting back and discussing the opportunities available at hand with what we know and have already developed...

man is very fast to grab the hammer and start banging things into shape -without really looking at what is broken in the first place and what needs to be done... no one builds a house without first establishing a plan.

"he realizes that, if you give everybody a playground in which they can unleash their desires, then it won’t be a 60s paradise of love and solidarity and all that – people will actually kill each other, because we’re dark, miserable creatures."

my fear is that man is not in control of his desires and THIS is what causes him to become dark and miserable... i think it is our disconnection from technics and our own path - our lack of self-actuation and sustainability...

lazlo himself....

lazlo...

"it calls for changes in the structure. it reaches a point in which these changes are no longer smooth, gradual changes - but they are becoming sudden changes. "a tipping point" 

"evolution is not forgiving - you must come up with a more viable system... what is happening to humanity is not necessarily moving towards an extinction - but we are moving toward a point where we could become extinct. we have one big advantage over most species - practically all - that we can recognise this process - find out what it is, where we are at this point, and then not only ask ourselves "what to do" but actively find out ways of coping with it"

week 4: people and lifestyles

the group began the process of discussing how we thought the people that would inhabit our woodfordia...

what is the premise behind their move there??? it all goes back to the circumstances effecting them...

-unemployment?
-housing affordability?
-rising food costs?
-inability to afford electricity? 
-over population?

overall it came down to the premise of not being able to provide for themselves within the city they live in... a need to self sustain and self actuate...

in terms of reliance on technology and capital - all these things can be achieved in a low tech fashion... however first of all a person requires basic necessities before luxuries... 

lazlo's theory became a strong topic for discussion... 

people need to breathe, eat, drink, sleep and shit effectively - all of which can be done without the reliance on computers or technology... so in the first instance these should be addressed - then the rest will follow.

in the future we developed an image of an infant woodfordia based on collaboration and sharing - helping others to establish themselves out of the need to survive. utilising skill sets previously held to develop a harmonious system aimed toward self actuation

the aspatial city...

immediately i found this reading intriguing as the writer was in Manchester at the 17th edition of the incredible future everything conference, which was held at the monumental museum of science and industry, home of the industrial revolution. 

the continual link back to the industrial revolution and man's connection with machine is undeniable in this unit...

i loved the final image of the farady tent which was designed to prevent the person beneath it from being exposed to frequencies against their will. this seems consistent with my personal desire for this unit - to take a step back form the constant exposure to the high-tech digital age that constantly interferes (welcome or not) into our daily lives...

i remember living in london and the feeling of not ever being able to escape the gaze of the surveillance cameras everywhere... when did an individual lose their right to choice??? i think slowly we are becoming more and more like the situation in orwells 1984...

http://m100group.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/1984-1.jpg

If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face - forever.

GEORGE ORWELL - 1984

"goodness is something to be chosen. when a man cannot choose he ceases to be a man." 

http://th08.deviantart.net/fs38/300W/i/2010/273/7/7/a_clockwork_orange_closeup_wip_by_applesaucemoss-d1qi6i4.jpg

week 03: sustainable future

In this weeks tute we asked ourselves what a sustainable future meant within the woodfordia context into the future... 

the key discussion focussed around -

"what would woodfordia offer in terms of a society without capital...?"

in social and cultural contexts we though about the possibilities that woodfordia could offer to the people, not only of moreton, but the wider region of south eat queensland and australia...

a common thought between the group was the idea of establishing a system by which the woodfordia site could be "purchased" back from the council, without the exchange of currency...

this would have huge impacts on the way that the people of this commune would communicate and have dealings with the outside world. for example a system of bartering would have to be implemented within and outside of the area. this would create a range of problems in comparison to the existing model of "free trade".

perhaps this would provide man with more drive to provide for oneself? the idea that necessity is the mother of all invention. 

an interesting place to start from - what is work without "pay"?????

does what we do define who we are???

the arktika

in the search of trade - so called progression of the human paradigm - the arktika went along, steadfast, in its relentless pursuit of the "unknown"... 

with little regard shown and without care of the casualty absorbed by the men aboard - the ship circumnavigated the earth - racing the sun - carrying with it the selfish desires of the "greater" bourgeoisie.

is it madness that propels us into the depths of suffering at the expense of the expendable... what is it to "be" - if "being" means nothing but serving the good of the minority?

the arktika is the system that we live within - a cruel relentless beast with no obligation to those which rely upon it so heavily... how man cries out for equality and fairness! 

why is it so hard to achieve?  

is it the condition of man kind to cast aside the well-being of our fellow human?

or is it simply the faceless system to which we all subscribe - organised so clinically by those with the swollen fascist pockets - for the benefit of themselves?

week 02 : social + culture

what is the future vision?

social and culture progressions into the future...

in the session we discussed the relationship between  man and tecnics  - especially our reliance on technology to define us as a species. it was agreed that as long as man has existed there has been a relentless pursuit to explore and further progress in sympatico with our technological advancements. through these prostheses we have established our identity and differentiated ourselves form the rest of the animal kingdom especially since the industrial revolution.

this time is especially important because at this point the introduction of machine and the production line exponentially accelerated our ability to shape the world around us through built form. the group agreed that there is a possibility that man has actually lost control of its path - that the machine has now taken the driving seat - advancing for the sake of advancement.

this notion resounded in many of our future scenarios becoming similar to many science fiction story lines - machine enslaving man - i.e the matrix or terminator...

for me personally i feel as though between the technological machine and the capitalist model in which we live - mankind has lost his way... there needs to be a movement back toward the low-tech world - where we become more in sync with what we consume and how it is produced... furthermore WHY we are producing it...

the machine in a sense has given even greater power to those that already wield it... only through learning to provide for ourselves can we free ourselves of the current burdens...

"In place of the old wants, satisfied by the production of the country, we find new wants, requiring for their satisfaction the products of distant lands and climes. In place of the old local and national seclusion and self-sufficiency, we have intercourse in every direction, universal inter-dependence of nations. And as in material, so also in intellectual production. The intellectual creations of individual nations become common property. National one-sidedness and narrow-mindedness become more and more impossible, and from the numerous national and local literatures, there arises a world literature."

http://images.huffingtonpost.com/2010-03-01-TarSandsDestruction_Web.jpg

The Communist Manifesto - Karl Marx + Frederich Engels