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Tele-Hydrology
Super-Versailles


To do:

1) Choose from any of these hyper-surveilled storage reservoirs in the Pacific Northwest.

2) Excavate “teacup” basins in a plaza. Downscale their dimensions in proportion to the reservoirs selected in (1) so they will all fit within the installation site.

3) Ring the basin interior with concentric steps-cum-seats.

4) Hack into the servers of the U.S. Department of the Interior where the data on water levels at the reservoirs is collected and parsed. (Or does the bureau have an API?)

5) Re-network the flow of data from these real-world reservoirs, so that not only will the numbers get rendered into info-porn, they will also determine the water levels of your simulant reservoirs.

5 COMMENTS —
  • Anonymous
  • April 23, 2009 at 10:22:00 PM CDT
  • Not quite sure what you mean by teacup basins, but the idea of (near) realtime visualization of natural resource data as public art is freaking AWESOME. Alternative projects could be the SNOTEL sensors or USGS Waterwatch.


  • Alexander Trevi
  • April 23, 2009 at 11:16:00 PM CDT
  • The term "teacup" is seen on the website I linked to first in the post. I just borrowed it to refer to the shape of the basins in section -- cones with their apices cut off (or a 3-sides-equal trapezium), exactly similar to the ones you see in the diagrams above, though it would be serrated because of the stairs.


  • Alexander Trevi
  • April 23, 2009 at 11:33:00 PM CDT
  • And by the way, thanks, Anonymous, for the links!


  • Anonymous
  • April 28, 2009 at 11:25:00 AM CDT
  • Cool blog, we need more people working to help us live greener. I entered this competition last year and while I didn't win, the ones who did made some great work:

    http://www.tomorrowsworldcompetition.com/

    It was all about motivating young people to send scripts or videos on water efficiency or flooding from global warming. Worthy causes for sure. Check them out! If you like them, spread the word cause these kids deserve to have their work seen.


  • ChrisC
  • April 30, 2009 at 2:53:00 PM CDT
  • try rivergages.com for real-time and historical river and waterway water level data from the army corps of engineers. Don't know about an API, but the site is basically a front end to a live db.


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