half-baked ideas

The crops from MX reviews at the end of last term- This half baked water system (+ some after holiday slump..). The components are supposedly there, just (!) need to do the mixin' and the bakin'. And of course, the two other systems... In the meanwhile, trying to get educated about desert greenhouse practices, a mission proving to be challenging, considering I live in a country where the average temperature for this season is -10c.

Potential mapping

The 3 systems layered, overlapping with existing roads and borders.
(not sure why this uploads so strangely)

Water opportunities

Energy opportunities

Soil opportunities

In the next few weeks I will be compiling information on rainwater collection systems in arid zones, to be used as a precedent and basis for the water system design. This seems to be the limiting factor of this hybrid system, and so needs to be resolved to establish the foundations or basic assumptions of the project. Later on the same approach will be applied to overlay the energy systems and the greenhouse agriculture. Hopefully the effective hybridization and appropriate form will then emerge...

Pharan floods- site II

Pharan floods- site I

First try at mapping wadi Pharan seasonal variations and flooding patterns. This is the first site out of 3 which I am planning to map. Each site has a different condition in terms of the workings of the wadi. At this site, site I the wadi intersects with the Jordanian border, the Jordan rift valley (Arava in Hebrew) and road 90. This is also the only place along the wadi which is currently populated. As seen in the maps, the small settlement placed to the south of the wadi is Moshav Pharan named after the wadi. The moshav, consisting about 100 families, was founded in 1971 as a Kibbutz and then converted into a moshav structure. Meaning there is still collaboration on agricultural activities, yet other aspects of life are managed individually. The moshav relies on agriculture export for its source of income, mostly flowers and peppers, which are grown in the extensive greenhouses seen above. Some families run dairy farms, and recently solar fields are promoted as an upcoming source of income.

Mapping the unknown

Ancient courses of the Mississippi River meander belt.
Harold N.Fisk, 1944

Looking now at 'Mississippi Floods' by Anuradha Mathur and Dilip da Cunha.
This book is an interesting and beautifully executed mapping essay by the authors documenting and synthesizing maps, surveys, photography, paintings and models of the Mississippi river and its varying Meanders, Flows, Banks & Beds.

Mapping as the first act of agency, seeks to create order in the undefinable. An entity as powerful as a river or a wadi, which is also inconstantly changing and is manifested in a scale beyond human comprehension both in time and space is not simply harnessed. The map, as a base for the plan is an extremely powerful mechanism in defining the existing, forgetting the unwanted and prophesying the future.

I am now struggling with how to map wadi Pharan, on which little information is available. This is a crucial moment which has implications on the argument, the organization of information and ultimately the proposal. The scarcity of existing information on itself is evidence of an alternate set of priorities, favoring certain investigations than others. From a more positive standpoint, finding that appropriate 'voice' to a map enables a more sensitive interaction.

"The elusiveness of these terrains has not stopped the corps from pursuing their definition. The efforts of the corps have resulted in interventions that match the Mississippi in magnificence. These interventions have an impact not only on the river but on larger lands of the Mississippi's making. They also bring life to these lands, forcing them into the inexhaustible gray zone between man and river that marks the lower Mississippi landscape." (p.9)

directions

Unrelated yet informative...



This is borrowed from:
http://strangemaps.wordpress.com/
a site well worth exploring for its abundance of random maps, revealing unsuspected trends, which are of curious interest.
As a side note on mapping- I realize more and more how mapping carries with it a very particular kind of deceiving agency. This is the kind of agency that does not own up to its own impact. The author of a map, much like the author of an excerpt in the museum, remains anonymous. Thus his narrative is transformed to an uncontested truth. The agency of mapping has the power to rewrite the memory of our past, be a focal lens of the present and direct the construction of the future. All this, while camouflaged as a tracing of reality.