Sometime over the Autumnal Equinox weekend, I noticed I had fallen out of love — with a man, New Zealand, and well, just about everything. Everywhere I looked, all I saw appeared rorted, munted, or just plain shonky, to use the vernacular. Almost two months later, strolling through the new Tender is the Night exhibition at City Gallery, an exhibition that asks us all how it feels to fall in and fall out of love, I noticed a stirring, an awareness that this state too had passed, and there are so many things I’m excited about and looking forward to sharing. Here are just a few:
1. Tender is the Night is a wonderful counterpart to City Gallery’s recent Roundabout° exhibition, which explored big love, aroha, and compassion in a selection of contemporary art from around the world. This one draws in close and even dares to get a little wet while exploring the complex and intense nature of personal desire, love, longing and loss across both time and place.

   I’m always drawn to Ukiyo-e, literally “the floating world,” the elaborately colourful woodblock prints from the Edo and Meijii periods of Japan, and this exhibition includes some wonderful examples. Right next to — and inspired by — the shunga, a sexually explicit subcategory of Ukiyo-e, is one of my favorite works in the exhibition, “Hungry Ghost with Dragonfly Jar,” (pictured above) a gouache painting by contemporary New Zealand artist Kushana Bush.

   The other piece I fell in love with and just wanted to hang out with all afternoon is by another young artist from New Zealand, Francis Upritchard, “Wife” and “Husband” (below). At first glance, I was struck by the emotion on each face and the tensions between them. Only after a while did it become apparent how splendidly they were crafted from other animals in the form of recycled fur coats and gloves.

   

   Tender is the Night runs 7 May – 17 July 2011 at
   City Gallery Wellington, 101 wakefield st, Wellington, New Zealand
   Related events:
   Curators’ Tour (The awesome Heather Galbraith) Friday 27 May, 12.30pm
   Open City Friday 8 July, 6–9.30pm Entry $10/$5 concession (including City Gallery Friends)

2. First Light bach Energy Solar Decathlon Entry 2011 at Frank Kitt’s Park through May 22, 2011.
   
   This should be number 1 in excitement level, but since I wandered over after checking out Tender is the Night, I’m reporting in chronological order. New Zealand is graced with all the forces of nature in such abundance — sun, wind and water — and it’s crazy that our homes and buildings are not making the most of them. One of my projects and passions this year is designing a regenerative family house here in Wellington, and I have been disappointed to see best practices in the area have been so far, not so great. Thrilled to find a team from Victoria University has designed a beautiful, energy-efficient, fully solar-powered bach (NZ summer vacation house) called First Light House that’s been selected as the first Southern Hemisphere contender in the U.S. Department of Energy Solar Decathlon 2011.

   First Light pushes the edge in renewability, and most excitingly, has done it by partnering with local providers and manufacturers. Which means the capability is here, and it’s up to all of us to demand it in our designs and purchases going forward. Alas, the audio in the video of my tour of the house’s impressive systems by Victoria University student Zach was hard to hear due to the NORML concert taking place across the park (which is kind of excellent in its own way). So check out the intro to First Light House yourself in their video below, updates on their blog, and in person at Frank Kitt’s Park in Wellington through May 24 and in Washington D.C., USA Sept 23—Oct 2, 2011.

3. Our Choice, the follow up to An Inconvenient Truth by Al Gore, transformed from book to app by Push Pop Press, for an excellent interactive reading experience on the iPad. The interface that strives to emulate printed books disappears, and the interaction begins to feel native and intuitive. All media flow into one seamless whole; the project envelops text, image, interactive graphics, audio, animations and video as appropriate to communicate the message and further the narrative. It’s also important and worth your time for all the actionable solutions for renewable energy, conservation, business, and governance it offers. Mike Matas of Push Pop Press gives a compelling demo below. Kudos to all involved, and I hope their creation software becomes widely available, soon!

    

4. Louie Schwartzberg’s TED Talk on the hidden beauty of pollination
   I spent a lot of time in the Sonoran Desert last summer, photographing cacti blossoms and even a few bats. But never once did I see their amazing pollination ritual, featured in Schwartzberg’s video below along with hummingbirds, monarch butterflies and more. Schwartzberg says “Beauty and seduction, I believe, is nature’s tool for survival, because we will protect what we fall in love with.” I dare you to watch the video below and not fall in love with everything in it.

5. Long Now talk with Tim Flannery on evolution.
   This episode of The Long Now’s Seminars about Long Term Thinking, one of my favorite podcasts, introduced me to Australian biologist, Tim Flannery, and now I can’t wait to read his books: The Weather Makers: How Man Is Changing the Climate and What It Means for Life on Earth, The Future Eaters: An Ecological History of the Australasian Lands and People, The Eternal Frontier: An Ecological History of North America and Its Peoples, and Here on Earth: A Natural History of the Planet. Yes, I’ve ordered them all. 

   There’s so much richness in his talk, it’s worth at least a couple of listens. But my favorite parts come in the question and answer period, when Tim Flannery explains that love is an evolutionary outcome:

   “There are powerful forces at work that result from that cruel and amoral mechanism called ‘evolution by natural selection’ that creates this thing we call love between human beings. The bonds between species and the bonds between individuals. All of that — that’s an evolutionary outcome.”

   Stewart Brand: “That sounds a little warm and fuzzy.”

   Tim Flannery: “Well, why should it? Everything about us, every manifestation of life is a result of evolution by natural selection. Love is a part of that. It’s part of the bond that keeps civilizations together. We can have love of country, love of our environment, love of other people. This is part of the evolutionary outcome.”

   He then goes on to explain that we’ve gone through a period of being “future eaters,” expanding our powers and capacities without having awareness, wisdom or understanding how the global system works. We’re in a race between true intelligence and our technical capacity.

   Here’s to expanding our wisdom and intelligence to create happy outcome for living beings!

Wellington is blessed with relatively abundant water, and therefore most people take it for granted and spare it little thought. I just returned from the Sonoran Desert, where it is always top of mind that water equals life, and started to wonder about the water sources in my new home. Where does it come from? How does it get to us? What happens in between? I was excited to discover a municipal water tasting as part of the Wellington on a Plate Festival, and that it was moderated by Simon Woolley, whose Antipodes Water was a happy discovery on a reconnaissance trip through New Zealand to decide whether I’d want to live here. Abundantly wonderful water was one of the reasons I did.

Where does it come from?

Wellington draws water from different sources for delivery throughout the region, using waters from the Tararuas and also the Pakuratahi Forest catchment in the Rimutakas via a tunnel through Wainuiomata. The Kapiti Coast is supplied from bores and rivers.

Petone’s untreated artesian water is a source of pride for its residents, and Te Puna Wai Ora (Spring of Life), the Petone municipal public bore, is used night and day by people who lug 20 litre containers to fill for domestic use.

Sculpture fountain over spring water bore at Moore Wilson store on Tory Street, Wellington, New Zealand

Tory Street in central Wellington features a 470 feet bore that was once used as the basis for a soft drink factory. A magnificent bronze fish and tree sculpture marks the spot where the bore has been reopened for public use at Moore Wilson’s. (Water carrying vessels may be found upstairs for purchase in the variety store.)

How does it get here?

The Greater Wellington Regional Council collects and treats drinking water and sells it to the city councils that supply water to homes and businesses in each city. Water, wastewater and stormwater services are actively managed by Capacity Infrastructure Services Ltd, a CCTO (Council Controlled Trading Organization) jointly owned by Wellington City Council and Hutt City Council. Homeowners pay a targeted rate annually for water based on property capital value but can choose to install a water meter and pay for actual usage.

How does it taste?

I had heard that Wellington has the best tap water in New Zealand, Petone has the best tap water in Wellington and the Buick St fountain has the best artesian water in Petone. Is all our regional water the same? We blind-tasted 12 waters at room temperature, all gathered within a day in glass tester bottles and served in wine glasses at the lovely Osteria del Toro. We were provided with helpful tasting notes on what to look for:

1. Clarity. Is it bright and sparkling? Are there any particulates in suspension? When swirled does the clarity change?
2. Aroma. Are there any obvious chemical odours? Some can be introduced for purification process. Some are innate such as hydrogen Sulphide – which can indicate volcanic activity.
3. Taste – Mouth feel. Does it coat the mouth evenly or are there sharp notes in the water?
4. Flavour. We taste sweet, sour, bitter, salty and umami. What flavours can you taste? Are there flavours of chemicals or is there a metallic taste?
5. Natural flavour. Is there any indication of the presence of these flavours – such as what you experience when you drink from a stream in the bush?
6. Length of the flavour. Can we taste the flavour long after we have swallowed? Does it linger or does it disappear immediately?

Though I had hoped to suss out subtle differences in terroir, feeling the variations in pH and mineral components, my palate’s vocabulary consisted mostly of lovely, nasty, burning, soft, heavy, salty and furry. Our wonderful host Simon found a leathery note with many of them, but I didn’t get that either. The unanimous winner was a selection from the untreated private bore at Ruth Pretty‘s home property in Te Horo, Waikanae. This may be the secret to her successful catering and food business — it definitely makes me want to attend one of the Wellington on a Plate events or cooking school at her place.

Nice (the top 3 are the picks from the whole group tasting… My personal order was 1,3,5,4,2):
1. Spring at Ruth Pretty’s home in Te Horo, Waikanae untreated. Notes: mild, alkaline, soft
2. Lower Hutt tap – aquifer, ph adjusted slightly with lime, unfiltered. Notes: heavier water, sweet aftertaste
3. Tory St bore at Moore Wilson’s. Notes: soft, lovely
4. Petone Buick St bore. Notes: no nose, lab-like, distilled water
5. Brooklyn Spring, untreated private spring. Notes: nice, syrupy

Neutral:
6. Pump bottled water, a wild card selection Coca-cola from Blue Springs in Putaruru Notes: not clean, unpleasing
7. Upper Hutt – collected surface water, treated. Notes: crisp chlorine nose, gentle taste, something not so nice at the the end note.

Nasty:
8. Karori, Wellington treated tap water. Notes: salty, heavily treated
9. Otaki, Kapiti Coast treated tap water. Notes: chlorine nose, burns my nose, unanimously disliked
10. Waikanae, Kapiti Coast – highly treated tap water. Notes: chemical sweetness, universally disliked
11. Whakatane – Braemar Springs – another wild card selection of treated tap water from up North. Notes: furry on the palate, chlorine nose
12. Carterton, Wairarapa – treated tap water. Notes: Janola nose but mild on the palate

Why so nasty?

The chemical smell and taste of the treated tap water comes from chlorine, which the Greater Wellington Council typically adds at 0.6 to 0.8 mg/L, acknowledging the aesthetic guideline value for adversely affecting the taste and odour is 0.6 mg/L. Lucky Lower Hutt has chosen to opt out of treatment as the water comes from a secure underground aquifer. While chlorine’s effectiveness in killing bacteria that cause water-borne diseases like typhoid and cholera has saved lives, chlorine also attacks our beneficial internal bacteria, disrupting our digestive and immune systems. When chlorine interacts with organic matter, it creates disinfection byproducts which are associated with bladder and colorectal cancer (the most frequently diagnosed and second most common cause of cancer death in NZ) and linked to artherosclerosis.

Another troubling component that you can’t smell or taste is fluoride, which gets added at the GWRC water treatment facilities Te Marua, Wainuiomata and Waterloo treatment plants. Only Petone and Korokoro, supplied from Hutt City Council’s Rahui reservoir receive unfluoridated water. New Zealand was the second country to begin fluoridating their water to improve dental health, but scientific evidence now points to swallowed fluoride causing harm and providing no benefits. (A rational compliation of research is available at Second Look.) Many dentists who once advocated for fluoridation now oppose it.

Wellington’s mayoral election is coming up in October, 2010, and I have read each candidate’s reassuring positions against water privatization. The folks from Capacity I talked with at the event said privatization of water here was simply a non-starter, there was no mandate for it. I’d love to know if any support ending spending taxpayer money on mass medication with fluoride and exploring healthier alternatives to chlorine treatment (such as ozone or UV).

Until that happens, the best options for health and taste are to collect your water from a private or public bore, live in Petone or Korokoro to receive untreated water, or install a reverse osmosis or distillation system to the water coming into your home. I was surprised to see Kapiti voted to continue fluoridating water in June, and that it’s become such an emotive issue rather than one based on scientific evidence. I’d love to read your comments on Wellington water quality and policies.

Other interesting droplets from discussion with Simon and the table while tasting:
• With sparkling water, the amount of bubbles are usually more an indication of how clean the glass is rather than how much carbonation the water has. If the glass is truly clean, you won’t see many bubbles at all.
• Even more than the total amount of dissolved solids, water flavor is affected by how much salt. Fiji and Evian have about the same amount of solids, but Evian tastes much saltier and heavier.
• Old pipes and fittings can leach heavy metals into your water. Let it flow for about 60 seconds to flush them or at least enough to fill up a mug before using to drink or in food.
• Heat is the major factor in delaminating plastic containers, therefore the concern of water bottles sitting in cars. Many pasteurized products are also heat treated in their plastic packaging – what are the effects? And will plastic water pipes turn out to be better or even more problematic than metal over time?

Constructed landscape with lightweight architecture from Micro-urbanism: the Maori pā and architecture as a generative landscape by Amanda Yates

What resonated most is a series of Maori design principles shared by Amanda Yates and Shaun Awatere:

1. Kotahitanga – Cohesion and collaboration. Collective cooperative and effective partnerships and collaboration with community.
2. Wairuatanga – Embedded emotion and spirit.  
   Everything should support our spiritual well being and consciousness. Emotional connection with the environment that links people.
3. Manaakitanga – Hospitality and security.
   Embracing and welcoming visitors, and protection and security of community.
4. Whanaugatanga – Participation and membership in the community and social setting
5. Kaitiakitanga – Sustainable resource management. Protection of significant landscape features and natural enviornment.
6. Rangatiratanga – Leadership, identity, self-determination. Community can lead and take responsibility for creating and determining their own future.
7. Matauranga – Knowledge and understanding. Understanding of community history, identities, character.
8. Orangatanga – Maintain health and well being
9. Mauritanga – Essence or life-force of a natural environment. To identify and promote the maintenance or restoration of a mauri (the life force which all objects contain). e.g. rain-tank collection systems, grey-water recycling systems, passive solar design.

In addition to enjoying the presentations, this was the first event I attended with the Livescribe, an amazing pen/paper system that records notes as you take them and allows you to play them back. Both the presentations and my full notes with audio are available online:

• Amanda Yates, registered architect and academic: Micro-urbanism: the Maori pā and architecture as a generative landscape PDF, Livescribe pencast
• Shaun Awatere (Ngati Porou) is a resource economist: Developing Maori urban design principles PDF, Livescribe pencast
• Wiki Walker, Ngati Hine, Manukau City Council Environmental Policy Planner (tangata whenua): Tangata Whenua and the landscape PDF, Livescribe pencast
• Ngarimu Blair, is a Trustee on the Ngati Whatua o Orakei Maori Trust Board: Orakei papakainga PDF, Livescribe pencast

Further reading: Ngā hua papakāinga: Habitation design principles by Shadrach Rolleston and Shaun Awatere

I love Bruce Sterling’s closing talk for Reboot “action” edition conference that took place in Copenhagen on June 26. Bruce lays out his vision for the next ten years of dark euphoria, favela-chic, gothic high tech and stuffed animal frontiers. (His talk references a photoset, studies in atemporality, (featuring examples from Wellington when he was here speaking at Webstock on What comes after Web 2.0). Here’s what really resonated:

Objects are printouts – not treasures, not things to stocpkpile.

Our posessions are frozen social relationships. Think of them as hours of time and volumes of space.

Reassess the objects in your space and time. What is most important?

1. What you use all the time. Get the best possible common everyday objects. Your bed! You’re spending a third of your life in the thing – you should go out and buy the best bed you can get. The sheets, the pillows, they’re pretty high up there too. And a chair.
2. Things that are beautiful
• Is it so beautiful you’re going to show it to your friends?
• Is it on display?
3. Things that have emotional meaning
• Are you going to tell anybody else about it?
• Does it have a narrative?
• Or are you its slave?
4. Tools
• Have high technical standards
• Be very demanding
• Don’t make do with broken stuff

And everything else? (probably 80% of your stuff)?

1. Virtualize it.
2. Store the data.
3. Get rid of it.

I did a big reset one year ago moving from New York to New Zealand, and was surprised by the euphoria of liberation from so much stuff I thought I loved. Below are a few tools and resources that were awesome for virtualizing, storing data and getting rid of my stuff – perhaps they may help when it’s your turn.

For virtualizing books and almost anything with a barcode then managing and visualizing the data, Delicious Library makes it easy and fun. You hold the item’s bar code up to your camera, then see all the data about it. You can even see what the item resells for on Amazon and post it for sale there in a couple of clicks. It’s amazing to see my old library visually on the screen as I once knew it physically and to often be able to access the sections I want to reference through either Google or Amazon book search even though I no longer have the book physically before me.

If you’re in NYC and don’t have time or desire for selling on Amazon, The Strand pays fairly for used books, and Housing Works accepts donations that are tax deductible and for a great cause.

For furniture, electronics, etc, I took photos and made a catalog document linked to a live Google Docs spreadsheet that had up-to-date pricing and availability. Cocktail evenings (needed to empty my liquor cabinet) helped move the goods. Most items sold to friends, friends of friends and then lovely random people through Craigslist who would likely have become dear friends had I stayed. (We have the same taste!)

Purchasers arranged their own pickup/delivery, often after getting quotes from multiple providers through CityMove.

For the bulk of the other stuff that’s not exactly marketable yet still usable, Freecycle connected the stuff with the people who want it. As a safety for moving day, I selected a couple of large furniture items to donate to Housing Works in advance and scheduled a free pickup through them so any last items that didn’t sell could be donated and removed at the same time.

Last Friday, I attended XMediaLab (X stands for “Cross”) in Auckland, a combination think-tank and creative workshop with a focus on the design, development and business of digital media ideas across multiple platforms. The talks were exciting, inspiring and filled my head with ideas. So much so that I’ve exported my brain of links and notes for later reference. Perhaps you’ll find them useful as well.

Here’s a summary of what stood out for me along with some possible points of entry:

Parmesh Shahani filled the room with the dynamic energy and pop cosmopolitanism of Mumbai along with tons of examples of emerging creative ecosystems and entry points to the Indian startup economy. I think about his framing questions a lot: “What does it means to be local in a global world? What does it meant to be global in a local world?” He and Vishal Gondal of India Games both extolled India’s virtue of jugaad – the can-do spirit of adaptive improvisational ingenuity which maps well to New Zealand’s “Number 8 Wire.”

“Games will save us all” emerged as a major recurring theme and wish. Zhan Ye illuminated the history and emerging trends and opportunities of the online game market in China and offered lessons for abroad. Susan Bonds of 42 Entertainment shared lessons from the ARGs (Alternative Reality Games) she’s produced, including ilovebees for Halo 2 and Year Zero for Nine Inch Nails. I loved her vision of the world as a platform for storytelling and method of writing a linear story then throwing it away and providing evidence that it actually happened. Rajat Paharia taught how to use game mechanics to create zombie armies.

Other themes included how we interact with “whatever wherever screens” (public/tv/personal) using distance and touch gestures. Dale Herigstad designed the interfaces for “Minority Report”, and now he’s designed some interesting new ways to visualize and organize time as well as space. He encourages the rapid sketching of ideas, blowing me away with what he created using Apple’s Keynote.

Getting down to business, it’s all about the hybrid media and business model with multiple revenue streams; no one’s thriving on ad revenue alone. Adrian Sexton addresses hybrid media from a media+entertainment perspective. Richard Cardran explores hybrid business models in depth, and there are lots of good examples in Parmesh Shahani and Zhan Ye’s talks. “Jadedly optimistic” (in his own words) Tim Chang of Norwest Partners gave a nutritionally dense talk on what he sees unfolding in the next few years and spilled some VC secrets.

Vincent Heeringa, the thoughtful director of HB Media which publishes the excellent Idealog, Good, and Inspire, shared how he launches stuff and also his concerns about the future of business, attention and longform writing with great photography in printed form distributed by post. He bravely open sourced his challenges and raised some great questions.

Juliette Powell addressed bravery directly in a moving talk that cut to the heart – investing in people. She highlighted ways to build and develop social and cultural capital and take responsibility for our dreams, even when funding’s hard to find.

Mike McGraw’s building bridges from people stories to product stories with lots of examples of what’s working now.

Even though the title was “commercialising ideas,” I was surprised that so few presentations addressed social and environmental concerns in any context. Parmesh Shahani and Juliette Powell stood out as exceptions, looking at companies that do well and good and creating value through authenticity.

The convergence of tools, media and knowledge available to all of us now is so awesome, harnessing it to create zombie armies hungry for more snack chips chaps my soul. I’d like to see and be commercializing ideas that improve lives and empower citizens rather than just entice consumers. Many of the lab project teams are doing just that, like BrightMind Labs, focused on improving lives of children with mental health issues, and Minimonos, a virtual world of fun for kids with core values of generosity and sustainability.

For what it’s worth (in any currency), this was the first conference where I’ve heard people qualify using US dollars as reference in measuring and comparing business: “it’s still worth something,” “…since we don’t have another standard.”

Overall, a fantastic day of learning from and connecting with some great creative people. If this touches your areas of interest and you have the opportunity to participate in a future XMediaLab, do it.

Full list of speakers linked to notes on their talks:
Susan Bonds, Richard Cardran, Tim Chang, Vishal Gondal, Andrew Hamilton, Vincent Heeringa, Dale Herigstad, Hugh Mason, Mike McGraw, Rajat Paharia, Juliette Powell, Greg Seuss, Adrian Sexton, Parmesh Shahani, Doug Whatley, Zhan Ye

I had been seduced by a terroirist network known as New Zealand Artisan Honey, made up of passionate beekeepers producing honeys in small, quality batches from specific varietal sources among some of New Zealand’s most spectactular locations.

Sadly, most bees and beekeepers are not having such a romantic experience. I had noticed my previous honey brands losing their organic status as the varroa mite has spread south through New Zealand. There is evidence that CCD (Colony Collapse Disorder) has arrived in New Zealand, and it’s likely due to the strong neonicotinoids, a class of systemic insecticides which France, Italy and Switzerland have banned because of its effects on bees.

• C,mm,n is a sustainable mobility concept; a collaborative open-source way of developing, manufacturing and using cars. C,mm,n 2.0 has just been released along with web based development platform. Participate in helping build car of the future in the development wiki. C,mm,n makes the blueprint of the c,mm,n car publicly available under an open-source licence, and just like open-source software, focuses on services around the product. (Thanks, Springwise.)
• Interesting “Anatomy of Sharing” interview with Robin Chase on the Association of College and Research Librarians podcast, covering collaborative production, collaborative consumption, cooperative capitalism and excess capacity.
• Adam Greenfield’s 14 Elements of networked urbanism resonate:
  1. From latent to explicit;
  2. From browse to search;
  3. From held to shared;
  4. From expiring to persistent;
  5. From deferred to real-time;
  6. From passive to interactive;
  7. From component to resource;
  8. From constant to variable;
  9. From wayfinding to wayshowing;
  10. From object to service;
  11. From vehicle to mobility;
  12. From community to social network;
  13. From ownership to use;
  14. From consumer to constituent.

What is temporary and what is of enduring value? What is a true store of wealth? Fiona Hall’s “Force Field” exhibition at Wellington City Gallery blew me away and left me pondering those questions when I first saw it in July, 2008. It keeps coming back to mind as I read the news these days. (The exhibition is currently open at Christchurch Art Gallery through February 15, 2009. See it if you can!)

One piece, called “When My Boat Comes in,” (featured in the first part of the video), consists of a whole room filled with botanical leaf paintings on global bank notes past and present. The paintings each illustrate a plant that has economic significance to the land where the bank note is from: camellia sinesis for China, cacao for Brazil, cetraria islandica for Iceland, and so forth. Each bill has a visible ship representing the thread of trade that connects them all. Mesmerizing to look closely at so many currencies – countries – that no longer exist juxtaposed with the leaves of these plants – the leaves that are so ephemeral, the plants that have brought so much wealth to these countries, the trade that’s wasted the environments of so many the plants.

“Tender”, another unforgettable installation, consists of giant vitrines with meticulously crafted birds’ nests made from shredded U.S. dollar bills. Etched into one side of the glass is the serial number from each dollar used in it. On the other side is the bird species that corresponds with the nest. Fiona Hall talks about this piece in the second part of the video above.

• Fiona Hall “Force Field” install and process photo set on Flickr
• MCA Artist’s Voice Fiona Hall: Force Field video
• Tender at Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery in Sydney