yesterday, the mermaid went to what landfolk call an ‘exhibition’. it was very interesting, indeed, and even featured a swarm of glass jellyfish! the mermaid is very pleased that climate change is now discussed so widely amongst landfolk. merfolk has been noticing it for quite sometime now. the exhibition also presents both mer- and landfolk with many surprising insights how landfolk interact with the planet. when the mermaid was there, they even had a water themed debate! the mermaid now feels inspired to do her own art, but first she must learn about this strange festival that is going on in her surroundings at the moment. it is called ‘christmas’, and the mermaid has been told she will be told how to sing some christmas corals – the poor corals!
‘earth’ is showing at the royal academy of arts until 31 january 2010. there is a debate between 6.30 – 10 pm on 22 january 2010 under the theme of water’s opposing element, fire!
the mermaid has just heard that the place she frequently performs in is to be knocked down to make space for a much less inviting building which will tower 18 stories high above the ancient st. agnes well. there are few places in london left for creatures such as the mermaid, the wormlady or similar gesture and soundmakers to present their work, so if you feel the same, and would like to see the world ocean day celebrations there again, please write to hackney council until 20 november 2009:
Hackney Planning Services
Dorothy Hodgkin House
12 Reading Lane
London E8 1HJ
floating things 1: the mermaid has retrieved this video from the wilds of the webocean. it tells the story of a man who gave up his comfortable occupation to dive in the sewers of his city. the mermaid finds this story remarkable. she has recently come across a lot of stories about floating human waste. anything from body wastes to plastics. she is monitoring several projects that are tracing how this stuff ends up with us aquatic folks. sometimes this happens in pretty unbelievable ways…
floating things 2: the mermaid has been show this campaign called ‘our rivers’. you can ‘adopt’ a part of your river and look after it. the mermaid wonders if any more landfolk will turn up at rivers because of this initiative. if yes, the mermaid shall greet them with some strange finds from her current home…
floating things 3: a floating events centre that has also been designed for promoting ocean conservation. the mermaid thinks that this is a fantastic idea. she wonders what other features this construct has apart from its ‘floatability’… will it have wastewater recycling? desalination facilities for generating cooking salt for events catering? a dolphin embassy?
a fellow researcher (thanks, cesar!) has told the mermaid about the facinating ways landfolk are making use of large bodies of water to create energy for their wondrous devices, for instance, the one i’m currently using! the project he came across is called ‘anaconda’. it is a prototype, as he calls it, for using the energy of waves. the mermaid finds this very exciting! she also wonders what it will be like for merfolk to suddenly find these floating hoses in the sea. at least, the mermaid will know what they are! the mermaid finds this particular relationship between landfolk and the sea very interesting. the name landfolk give to fields of such devides is ‘wave farms’. the mermaid has always found the concept of a farm very peculiar, but domesticating waves she finds particulary amusing. not that these things are a laughing matter for landfolk, which the mermaid has learned to understand.
and neither is whaling! the mermaid is very moved by these pictures of a vessel that landfolks have made to look after her song-loving companions. another example that not all landfolk are out to wreak havoc upon our habitat! ah, so much to learn, so much to understand!
during her research on merfolk-landfolk relationships, her landfolk colleagues have alerted her to the film ‘the cove’. one of the reasons the mermaid was sent on land is because of such goings-on. the mermaid finds that this film captures well that such activities not only harm merfolk, but landfolk in return, which is something that a lot of other examples she has seen have underemphasised.
the mermaid just came across some artwork that she found very fascinating. of course, it involves water, in this case ‘captured pools’. there is a very good article about it in the peculiarly titledhi-fructose magazine. as far as the mermaid understands, this artist called gregory euclide pours nasty paint or resin onto a piece of land to ‘captures’ and later embellish it to make other landfolk think about their relationship with nature. the mermaid thinks this is very clever and wonders if it could also be done on beaches or underwater.
recently, the mermaid has wondered whether the seas themselves might be involved in a campaign to ‘capture’ the relationship between themselves and humans, as documented in this article.
a friend (thanks, claire!) has alerted the mermaid to a very peculiar article that tells of the proposed banning of a children’s book about two male penguins hatching an egg. according to the article, it was written on the basis of a true story of a penguin couple at a zoo in new york. why, the mermaid thought, did so many landfolk want to ban a children’s book on penguins? the article explained that a lot of landfolk find the idea of two animals of the same sex hatching an egg and looking after the resulting penguin-chick disconcerting. the mermaid was explained by her friend that this also had to do with religious beliefs, most of which cast same-sex couplings as unnatural. having two male penguins and a chick form a ‘family’ would go against religious folks ideas of nature. the mermaid found this very hard to believe at first, but after some research had to accept this strange human behaviour as a fact – and as another project to work on. after all, the mermaid is working on changing people’s peculiar conceptions of ‘nature’ and what is allowed according to nature, what should be done with it etc.
the mermaid could tell so many stories from the oceans of how different kinds of merfolk produce young and look after them in so many different ways, even within the same species. the mermaid has been told that the problem is also that penguins have traditionally been portrayed as models for human relationships, because they appear to bond with one partner of the opposite sex for life. so two male penguins starting a family was particularly scandalous. as a mermaid, she can confirm that they are not the only ones, so she hopes that landfolk will use this as a model rather than the faulty one they currently have. after all, that’s what mermaids are there for – to dispel myths about life in and around the oceans.
here is the mermaid’s preliminary advice after counselling with her co-diplomats: as far as merfolk is aware, some religions also promote peaceful and happy living together and tolerance. the mermaid hopes that religious landfolk will listen to this other part of their religion. currently the merfolk is a bit concerned about landfolk starting to tell fish not to attach their egg sacks to rocks and plants and abandon them, because this is against their religion’s ideas of care of the young or similar actions. so far, we have had quite enough of ill-informed human interventions. thank you!
the mermaid has just returned from an exciting visit. she attended the ‘aqua-tecture’ talk and also visited an exhibition in the same place entitled ‘radical nature’. the talk was really two talks.
the first one was given by frank gutzeit who talked about biorock, which is not a music style, but a new principle of using the make-up of seawater itself to build structures which can sustain corals and possibly human populations. also dubbed ’sea cement’, it utilises electric currents to build limestone structures the way marine animals do. the mermaid was fascinated to hear about all those projects aimed at helping stray corals find a new home. the most mind-boggling thing was, however, the construction-in-progress of an entire ocean city called ‘autopia’ in the indian ocean.
the second talk was given by cesar harada and hiromi ozaki, initiators of the ‘open_sailing’ project, a research platform to create the first international ocean station. their project is explained really well in this video:
their idea is not to attract large sums of funding and build a flashy piece of architecture, but to construct the ‘nomadic ecosystem’ through the help of many amateurs. so, if you find their project inspiring, you can join them! the mermaid really liked the concept of this ocean station – how it houses people and gardens and how it spreads out and interacts with its environment and pulls together in adverse conditions. to the mermaid, this makes a lot of sense! the mermaid also liked the term ‘energy animal’, used for the experimental energy generation of the station. if you want to see hiromi’s and cesar’s talk, you can view their slides online.
inspired by the talk, the mermaid went one level deeper to the ‘radical nature’ exhibition, which featured more ideas on oceanic architecture. the mermaid was very amused by a group called ant farm who thought up a dolphin embassy which was supposed to be a true human-dolphin collaboration, but the way it was communicated to the dolphins had the mermaid in stitches. she truly hopes that the dolphins were entertained to a similar degree! who knows, one day, there will be an embassy as a platform for communication between sea creatures and humans. the merfolk are certainly working towards it, and, it seems, landfolk are, too!
