The Conservation Issue by Uon First Year Design Magazine Project

THE CONSERVATION ISSUE

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Faux: Conservation Issue 2016

CONTENTS 4

Environment

Politics

Industry

Culture

20 Nature 28 Society 30 Industry 34

Society

Contributors

E N VI P RONM T O LITEN IC S

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Laura Bradley

WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOUR DONE WITH IT?

rising mountain of hazardous electronic waste is putting workers in developing countries and the environment at risk. Some of the disused computers, cellphones, televisions and other products are locally generated, but the developed world especially the U.S. is responsible for sending many of the items. A study published by the Environmental Science and Technology in June 2014, states the developed world has in the past exported an estimated 23 percent of its electronic waste to seven developing countries. The growing demand for electronics and their increasingly short lifespans means e-waste isn’t going anywhere. Unfortunately, the problem is complex and solutions will not come quickly or easily.The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency states that the average American household owns more than 20 electronic products. Several states within the U.S. have banned the disposal of electronic products through conventional trash disposal methods, and the EPA strongly encourages recycling. However, when a person recycles a television, for instance, there’s a chance it could end up exported to a country like China, India or Nigeria, where workers in informal recycling operations often use crude and hazardous techniques to extract valuable metals from the equipment and then burn what’s left.

Recycling electronics, it’s been argued, could help developing nations transcend the “digital divide,” as well as grow information and communications technologies in places that need to catch up. Even if devices don’t work, some say recycling could provide spare parts and valuable metals like copper although the processes to get those valuable materials often entail exposure to heavy metals like lead and mercury, risking the lives of the workers. The EPA, one of the lead agencies on the Interagency Task Force on Electronics Stewardship - established by the Obama administration, recognises the potential benefits of e-recycling and encourages the practice rather than allowing electronic junk to pile up in landfills. E-waste is exported largely for the same reason manufacturing jobs have been sent overseas: lower labour costs and fewer regulatory burdens. Handling e-recycling domestically could ensure safer procedures for the environment and workers but would come at a price, as it often costs more to process these devices than the materials are worth.

“There are serious concerns about unsafe handling of used electronics, especially discarded electronics or e-waste, both domestically and overseas, that results in harm to human health and the environment” Cont. Environment and Health Hazards >

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“Globally, an estimated 50 MILLION TONNES of e-waste is produced annually” United Nations, 2015

“Children are digging in the ash from the burned plastics”

Jim Puckett, E.D. Basel Action Network

“A large number of what is labeled as "e-waste" is actually not waste” U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

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ENVIRONMENTAL AND HEALTH HAZARDS Jim Puckett, executive director of the nonprofit Basel Action Network, talks about how techniques and worker demographics vary across each country. In Ghana, Puckett has seen many orphans anywhere from 12 to 20 years old working in a slum, burning discarded electronics and releasing toxic fumes into the air. In Nigeria, Puckett watched workers of all ages throw electronics into dumps and burn them. They try to repair and recycle the equipment when possible, but many pieces are irreparable. In China, he saw children exposed to hazardous substances.

“They're breathing in the fumes. Sometimes it happens indoors when they cook the circuit boards. Children are breathing all this in”

The soil levels in areas of India still contain high quantities of heavy metals, such as lead, and other contaminants. Samples from Loni contain the highest level at almost 147 times higher than the control sample. Drinking water has also been contaminated with observable amounts of toxic metals. In Mandoli a sample contained mercury – 710 times higher than the Indian limit. India is second only to China in e-recycling volume, followed by Nigeria, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Benin, and Liberia. The exporting of e-waste to developing countries is prohibited in the European Union, but despite this, the practice remains legal within the United States. To legally export from the EU, Puckett said equipment must first be tested and proven functional.

A recent study from Toxics Link a nongovernment organisation, both at a global and local level, reported soil and water contamination in two regions in Delhi, India, that engage in e-recycling.

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P O LIT IC S

MALC IN T MID V

ictorian Premier Daniel Andrews has slammed Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull for promulgating “ignorant rubbish” in the South Australian energy debate, as Labor states and territories rejected the PM’s pitch for a standardised renewable energy target. Mr Turnbull, once known as the Coalition’s strongest advocate for redressing climate change, used Wednesday evening’s statewide blackout to condemn “extremely aggressive, extremely unrealistic” renewable energy targets set by Labor state governments. It followed comments from Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce, Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg and South Australian senator Nick Xenophon that conflated the power outage with the state’s heavy reliance on wind power - an explanation rejected by energy experts, who said the blackout was due to destructive, wild weather. The PM singled out Victoria and Queensland as other states he said had “paid little or no attention to energy security” in their pursuit of

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cleaner energy. But on Friday, Mr Andrews accused Mr Turnbull of spouting “anti-climate change, anti-fact nonsense” and of resembling his predecessor Tony Abbott, a climate change sceptic. “This is a natural disaster and the Prime Minister is peddling completely ill-informed rubbish about how we generate our energy,” the premier told ABC radio. “It seems Tony Abbott’s back.”

“I thought the Prime Minister wanted more renewables; at least that’s what he said at the election.” Mr Turnbull said the blackout, which plunged South Australia’s 1.6 million residents into darkness for at least several hours, was “a real wake-up call” and demonstrated the need for nationally consistent renewable energy targets. The Turnbull government’s target is to generate 23.5 percent of energy from renewable sources by 2020. But state and territory leaders indicated they were unlikely to co-operate with such a move. “I thought the Prime

Michael Koziol

COLM THE DDLE Minister wanted more renewables - at least that’s what he said at the election,” Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk told The Australian. While back in Victoria, Energy Minister Lily D’Ambrosio said states were picking up the slack left by the Commonwealth government. “At a federal level we don’t know what is going to happen post-2020,” she told ABC radio. “It’s a blank canvas.”

“It seems Tony Abbott’s back.” Mr Turnbull quickly hit back at his Victorian critics for spruiking ambitious targets without a plan for how they could achieve them. He accused Mr Andrews of “doing one-off deals here and there which are distorting the electricity market”, without regard for the main goal of protecting energy security. “I am a very strong supporter of renewable energy, always have been,” Mr Turnbull told 3AW radio on Friday. “We’ve got to reduce our emissions, that’s very important. But we have to maintain energy security

and reliability and we have to maintain affordability.” Mr Turnbull famously lost the Liberal leadership in 2009 after conservatives in the Coalition rose up against his endorsement of the Rudd government’s carbon pollution reduction scheme instead, installing Mr Abbott, who successfully brought down Kevin Rudd and won government in 2013 promising to abolish the much-maligned carbon tax. While in office, Mr Turnbull and Mr. Frydenberg signalled a pivot away from coal power, shifting the government’s rhetoric toward renewable energy. But Mr Andrews said Mr. Turnbull’s latest comments, lamenting the “ideological” pursuit of ambitious renewables targets, could have easily come out of Mr Abbott’s mouth. “It could have come from Tony Abbott,” he said. “[But] I don’t think Tony Abbott would have said it in the midst of one of the most significant events South Australians have had to deal with in a very long time.”

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RIDER OWNED VS. CORPORATE Bobby Pantano

here are some things in this world that cannot be fully understood by those who have never participated in them. Scootering is likely one of those things.Control and power are at the root of human social behaviour. We are constantly attempting to tame the untamable and place things under our thumbs that donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t belong there. The purpose of the scooter industry is to feed into the scooter community. There are two distinct entities involved in the scooter industry; rider owned companies and corporate (non-riderowned) companies. Generally speaking, rider owned are often more concerned with quality, whereas corporate are often more concerned with quantity.

â&#x20AC;&#x153;Sustainable and authentic ownership can only come from those who understand the nature of the thing they wish to control.â&#x20AC;?

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The dynamic of the scootering community works in an interesting way, making it difficult to determine what is best for it. It is both competitive and noncompetitive, at the same time. It is caught in between art and sport and is composed of individuals who fight a battle for progression within themselves so that scootering, as a whole, can a fight a battle for progression. The ultimate goal of scootering is the same as all human activity. Growth and development. This goal is seductive because where there is an opportunity for growth, there is money. And where there is money, there is power and ownership. Sustainable and authentic ownership can only come from those who understand the nature of the thing they wish to control. Only those who vibrate the energy of scootering within

their cells will receive the right to control or influence the direction it moves. Scootering is a new entity. It is a child to the world. And as that child, it needs parental figures to help it grow and develop. A suitable parent is one that has the best interest of its child at heart…despites any flaws or quirks. Rider owned companies are these parents. They know their child. Scootering is as much a part of these people as these people are a part of scootering. They believe in and trust scootering so much that they invest the better portion of their financial life into it. They hire scooter riders, sponsor scooter riders, and provide for scooter riders in responsive ways.

“Scootering is and will always be run by rider-owned companies.” That is not to say a parent is all a child needs, which is also not to say that corporate-like companies do not have their purpose. They are there to fill in the gaps and provide support when the parents need help. They are like babysitting relatives. They can help generate exposure and bring people into the sport, but once inside, you as a rider must always long for the touch of your true parents… and not confuse it with that of your wealthy relative. Corporate companies have value and help fuel scootering, but scootering is and will always be run by rider-owned companies.

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P O LIT IC S

CONSERVI NG BR I T AI N â&#x20AC;&#x2122; S C H A R A CTER Charlie Hebdo

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he British have voted to leave Europe. The most surprising part of this whole campaign has been the discovery of a clear and openly racist discourse in the UK. Right in front of microphones and cameras, a great many Brexit partisans were not at all shy about saying that there were too many foreigners and that immigration threatened their ‘identity’. Did this near hate-speech, traditionally the preserve of the far-right parties in France or Austrian neo-Nazis, not seem to lose something of its utter abjection when openly and audibly intoned in the country of Shakespeare and Isaac Newton? As though, in some variant of a Harry Potter magic spell, the horridness of continental-style racism disappears in a puff of respectability as soon as it crosses the Channel. For years now, we’ve had our noses rubbed in the incontrovertible fact that, over there, in England, there weren’t the same kinds of problems of integration as there are in France and the rest of Europe. That, across the water, multiculturalism was the winning recipe for allowing all identities the place and position they sought. That, in Britain, whether you wore a veil, a niqab, a turban or a bowler hat, everyone cohabited in perfect harmony in the enviable Kingdom of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

“Brexit partisans were not at all shy about saying that there were too many foreigners and that immigration threatened their ‘identity’.” The success of Brexit shows us just how bogus that notion was. A majority of the British (more particularly the English) are fed up with foreigners. They can no longer bear seeing their ‘identity’ making ever more concessions to the identities of the newly-arrived. It wasn’t Europe that burned down in the night between last Thursday and Friday, it was principally the dream-image of seamless Anglo-Saxon multiculturalism. And when you look at the success of the frankly racist discourse of Trump in the US, you can’t help but think that the failure of the English-speaking world’s model for dealing with migration has not yet reached its lowest point. There may be more ashes through which to sift.

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P O LIT IC S

So then, it seems that the majority of English people are racist and don’t want their borders open to all those grubby brown down-and-outs Europe. Who knew? To frighten the British voter (and most of Europe), the media have emphasized the Stock Exchange meltdown that would surely follow Brexit. It has been the dominant idiom. There’s been much too little talk about the more xenophobic and inhuman parts of the Brexit debate. But since racism isn’t listed on the Stock Exchange, it’s never considered a problem. According to the brilliant little wizards of the City, only the market can give value to things. There’s been too little talk about the

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xenophobic and inhuman parts of the Brexit debate. In reality, we can’t really give a damn about plunging currencies or stocks. Firstly because, before now, stocks and currencies have always managed to do lots of plunging all on their own without any help from referenda. And then, the markets are so profoundly and they’re guaranteed - and inherent - a mere function of the absurdity and madness of global

“There’s been too little talk about the xenophobic and inhuman parts of the Brexit debate.”

For much too long, we have refused to believe in the existence of a racism that wears the Made in England label. We thought England was the Sex Pistols, James Bond and the Beatles. This picturesque myth, this cute postcard that continentals have so thoroughly bought, has made us forget that England was, historically, a colonial country, dominating and exploiting multitudes of people across the globe, ‘those lawless and inferior peoples’ as Kipling would have it. A similar French postcard would show only croissants, Burgundy and

“We have refused to believe in the existence of a racism that wears the Made in England label.”

Monet. No place for military torture in the Algerian War of Independence, the Vichy Regime or the far-Right paramilitary OAS in the postcard and shown us the shameful face of England. Nigel Farage, the leader of the United Kingdom Independence Party, was exultant on that starkest of Friday mornings. He hailed the victory of ‘ordinary people’, of ‘honest folk’. According to him, the ‘real people’ had spoken. Fair enough, it’s all very well that the people should be ‘the people’ but that doesn’t stop them screwing up big time. If the elite sometimes talk a lot of crap, the people aren’t that far behind them in the bullshit

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P O LIT IC S

stakes. It was those same fabulous ‘people’ who burned books in 1930s Berlin because the authors were Jews. At the end of the Second World War in France, who was it that publicly shaved the heads of those French women who had slept with German soldiers? Yup, that’s right. Those wonderful ‘people’ again. This vote to quit Europe by the ‘people’ of Britain can go right on the shelf beside all those other manifestations of hatred and fear. For years now, we’ve been denouncing the European construct, the Commission and all its incoherence. We’ve heard repeatedly that the British couldn’t take it anymore. We’ve seen geniuses like Boris Johnson solemnly explaining

“Is being nationalist just a matter of preferring your own stupid stuff to the stupid stuff of foreigners?” that Brussels now regulated the permitted size of bananas. But sovereign, national legal codes also produce cumbersome and absurd regulations. Sticking exclusively to a national parliament rather than a European one is not going to stop the law being an ass. Is being nationalist just a matter of preferring your own stupid stuff to the stupid stuff of foreigners? The private joke of indigenous incompetence as opposed to all that messy foreign mayhem? Alas, the English want nothing to do with us.

They want nothing to do with foreigners. Even perhaps the Scottish. Those pesky Picts are probably now going to try to detach from this long-united Kingdom. The English will live on their steadily shrinking bit of island. And since they want to become once more foreigners to the continent of Europe, does that mean that we should block up the Channel Tunnel? Then when they want to visit the continent, theyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll have to narrow sea. Once at Calais, weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll give them hot coffee and blankets. Volunteers will take over, sort them and move them to reception centres for displaced (and unwanted) foreigners. That will make them feel right at home.

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C UL T U R E

By Tim Folger

PEOPLE OF THE WHALE. 18

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he ancient whale hunt here is not so ancient anymore. “Ah, the traditional loader,” one man mumbled irreverently. “Ah, the traditional forklift.”

Before the 19th century bowheads provided the central food, energy and spiritual sustenance for Eskimo villages. Families used the whales’ bones to frame sod houses and mark the graves of the dead.

That morning a crew of Inupiat Eskimos cruising the Arctic Ocean in a small powerboat spotted the whale’s spout, sped to the animal’s side harpoons at the ready to catch their prize.

The federal government and the International Whaling Commission allow the whale hunt to continue but under tight control as bowheads are an endangered species.

By lunchtime, children were tossing rocks at the animal’s blowhole while its limp body swayed in the shore break like so much seaweed. Blood seeped through its baleen as a bulldozer dragged all 28 feet of it across the rocky beach. At one point, one man, not Inupiat, posed beside the whale holding a small fishing rod, pretending for a camera that he had caught it on eight-pound line.

This year, Barrow’s quota, the largest given to Alaska’s whale-hunting villages, is 22 strikes, including the 9 by Barrow hunters as the animals migrated to summer feeding.

The heavy equipment gets the job done, and the whale is lowered onto the snow - and the shared joy is obvious. Within an hour, nice women are offering strangers boiled muktuk whale meat. People mingle and congratulate the hunting crew on their efforts. A young man bends over the liver and peels off the membrane so he can take it home to make a traditional drum. A row of Eskimo children slide on the slippery skull bone. A biologist and whale expert, Hans Thewissen, reaches into the whale’s eye sockets, making sure someone remembered to cut out its eyeballs so the lenses could be used to determine its age. Thewissen regularly travels from Northeastern Ohio and when asked if this is a good place to pursue his work his reply is “This is the only place.” The captains will open their houses over the next few days, distributing muktuk to the community, not so differently from the way their ancestors did before Arctic Alaska began being pulled into the developed world.

“No one can stop what our fathers and forefathers have done for thousands of years. But we’re highly adaptable people. We use what tools are available to us to make life easier.” Many hunters use more traditional methods in the spring, travelling across sea ice and paddling toward whales in sealskin boats. In the fall, the whales make their way west and south before the winter ice arrives. Experienced whalers say a combination of factors, including that relative ease and ice thinning in spring from climate change, have made the fall hunt more prominent. This year, it started on Oct. 8, the latest in memory. Here in Barrow, the snowy flats by the beach are splashed red with the blood of the whale until more snow falls. Some blubber ends up in the trash, no longer prized as fuel for heat and light when a drill rig nearby makes natural gas cheap and easy. The Inuit whale hunters know what some people think of their way of life, and many are wary when news crews show up knowing what the animal-rights activists will say about them and insist they misunderstand. “We’ll never stop doing this,” Fenton Rexford.

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N AT U R E CC Pollen Co.

HUMANS NEED BEES & FLOWERS!

ut wait a minute! The small little insect that works so tirelessly and quietly around us certainly is one of the reasons, if not the main reason, for the possibility of human development on earth. Without them, the development of life on earth, as we know it now, would have been much different and the conditions for human development may not have existed. The conditions we are talking about here are the appearance of the flower-bearing plants and pollinators, with the bees, being the crown jewel of the pollinators. The bees, the flowers, human beings and everything that developed alongside humans are all an interconnected series of events over an enormous amount of time. In the writings, artwork and symbolism of cultures and religions around the world from time immemorial are references to the bees and the substances they collect in Nature and make in their bodies, namely honey, bee pollen, bee propolis, royal jelly and wax. These substances, along with the bees and the beehive, have been held in high esteem throughout human history in every part of the world. The references are almost always of renewal, reinforcing things of life. They are gifts and blessings.

“Bread feeds the body, indeed, but flowers feed also the soul.” The Qur’an, some people believe that the bees and flowers developed at the same moment in time because they needed each other. Indeed, perhaps the beauty in flowers was developed as a mechanism to attract pollinators and lure them in their direction. The bees diet is flower based collecting pollen and nectar from the flower. Much of our diet is flower based in the fruits, nuts, seeds and vegetables we eat that the bees pollinate. Flowers represent and symbolize the very definition of beauty on earth. The colours of every kind and fragrances of flowers cannot be reproduced.They can only be imitated. It is nature and it is complex.That is where the bees go to work for their food.In “The Dalai Lama, A Policy of Kindness: An Anthology of Writings By and About the Dalai Lama”, His Holiness states;

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P O LIT IC S “I am attracted to bees because I like honey it is really delicious. Their product is something we cannot produce, very beautiful, isn’t it?” I exploit them too much, I think. Even these insects have certain responsibilities, they work together very nicely. They have no constitution, they have no law, no police, nothing, but they work together effectively. This is because of nature. Similarly, each part of a flower is not arranged by humans but by nature. The force of nature is something remarkable. We human beings, we have constitutions, we have laws, we have the police force, we have religion, we have many things. But in actual practice, I think we

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are behind those small insects.” Bernard Jensen, Ph.D., one of the founders of the “alternative health” movement states in his book,“Bee Well Bee Wise”,that, I believe sincerely that man will never progress until he gets into the work that will never harm his fellow man.”

“The bees are the greatest life workers of any community I have studied in nature.” You will understand why this statement was included in the following paragraphs. Most of nature lives in the “chase or be chased” or the“kill or be killed” life cycle of the food chain, where one thing is getting eaten by those things that are stronger and they, in turn, are getting eaten by the next stronger entity. This has taken

place over immense amounts of time and countless numbers of eating species. Everything is an eating machine and everything is eating each other up. Everything is preying on the things it can prey on. Taking life for one living thing to live and another living thing to die. Most all the eating species have evolved by the actual demise of other things. The metaphor here is, even the strongest die and become fodder for the weakest or lowest on the food chain. Nothing wrong with it. It is just the way it is. It is sometimes called the “Grand Design”. The bees follow another plan. It is, in many ways, the opposite of that “Grand Design”. Their relationship with their world is one of benefit and enhancement. The bees relationship with the plants it visits is mutually beneficial. The consequence of this relationship is the bees make more flowers by

cross pollination which, in turn, makes more food produced from those plants. Just a little different from the other species, including humans, that are in the “eating each other up” “Grand Design”. This is a statistically unique place the bees occupy. This is a statistically unique place the bees occupy. The bees are in a full blown embrace with Nature that is probably difficult for us in “the other cycle” to understand fully. The bees do not harm. How unique is that!? Everyone knows of the bees but few people actually know much about them. The historical reverence toward the bees, the beehive and the products of the beehive, as stated above, does not hold true in today’s world. In fact, the bees and the substances they collect have been forgotten or downgraded in the industrial and agricultural

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applications and salesmanship of the present day world. They are more an afterthought of little importance to most. Why? Could all the reverence of tribes and cultures, north and south, east and west, from the beginning, could they have been all wrong? Do we know more now? I don’t think so. It probably boils down in large part to the fact that, the industrialised world operates on patents or exclusive ownership of things for profitability. Anybody can own a beehive. It is non-patentable and non-exclusive. The industrialised world has no use for the beehive or the development of its products. The industrialised world has no use for the beehive or the development of its products. Bees fly to flowers, and inside this incredible

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‘‘If the earth were deprived of flowers, half its vitality would disappear.” environment, they search for their food, pollen and nectar. The pollen from the flower is the genetic material of the plant. This pollen is the basic primal energy representing one of the most powerful urges in nature, that is, the urge to reproduce. Pollen truly is the “gold dust of nature”. It is the culmination of the life force of plants. This life force, when unleashed through cross-pollination, is largely done by the bees, is the beginning of much of the foods that insects, birds, other animals and humans

have developed on. Bee Pollen is a biodiverse, complex substance of plant material that when a chemical analysis is done, it shows a wide array of components in the minerals, vitamins, proteins, enzymes and due to the complexity shown in nature, plenty of other things not yet identified by science. This biodiversity is represented by the bees visiting hundreds, if not thousands of different flowers of different species of plants. The bees gather pollen and nectar in the valleys, up the mountains, in the backyard, down the street, red flowers, blue, purple, white flowers. Where there are flowers you will find bees. These phytochemicals of plant origin, pollen and nectar, inherently contain a broad spectrum of components. Go to Arizona, go to

Uruguay, go to Sweden and Mozambique. The bees are collecting pollen and nectar in all these places from countless flowers, all different. This is called biodiversity. Bee pollen is possibly the most biodiverse substance on earth. The combined chemical composition of all those plants makes for a complexity and synergy that only nature can produce. In the book “Leaves of Morya’s Garden II (Illumination)” this is said about flowers and pollen, “earthly flowers are the sole living bond between Earth and Heaven. In the creation of floral pollen, there are precipitated, as it were, crystals of prana. Without frivolity, one can say that in flowers the Heaven settles down upon earth. THE CONSERVATION ISSUE

S OC IE T Y

Annie leonard

THE STORY OF STUFF

EXTRACTION

PRODUCTION

Extraction is a fancy word that describes the way the human population has exploited the natural resources of our planet. Forests are being wiped out, resulting in the demise of animals dependent upon them; the earth is being gutted for the valuable minerals it contains, leaving indelible scars and forever damaging our eco-system; and a vast percentage of our waterways have become either non-existent or so contaminated that they are undrinkable. All of this has been the result of humans wanting to have stuff, and more stuff, and even more stuff - to the extent that they are willing to risk making our planet a barren waste where nothing will survive. The first humans on our planet used only what they themselves needed, and being nomadic, would move from place to place to give the earth time to replenish itself eg. hunting and gathering foods. When humans stopped their nomadic lifestyle and entered into an existence more fixed to set locations, this started to impact on the resources within their immediate areas. Instead of giving the earth time to regrow and replenish, the resources were continuously used until there was nothing left. When humans realised that wealth and status could be gained from having and using more and more of these resources, they stopped just using what they needed and started using more than their share.

The trees, the minerals and other plundered resources then moved to the â&#x20AC;&#x153;production stageâ&#x20AC;?. During the early production years, untested chemicals were mixed in with the natural resources resulting in toxic contaminated by-products being produced. These could be seen being pumped into the atmosphere from tall chimney stacks and smelter works around the world. This continued until some of the effects they were having on human health were realised, however, the damage had already been done. The gases and fumes and the water run-offs from these processes not only poisoned humans but poisoned and contaminated our air, water and earth. The big factories where these products were being made, used energy from burnt fossil fuel, and this has contributed to the holes in our planetâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s ozone layer. Some of the actual physical products being produced that humans took into their homes, offices or schools, also contained contaminants detrimental to their health.

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DISTRIBUTION

CONSUMTION

DISPOSAL

At the end of the production process, the products start moving around the world for distribution. The idea of distribution is to sell as much of a product as fast as possible, so you can keep making more of it and make more money. That’s fine if you own the company, but if you’re a worker on the lowest level of the production line, you will be working for the lowest wage the company can pay you. The final cost of a product to the consumer will never reflect the true value of how much it cost to produce.

Despite the cost of products, humans worldwide have become known collectively as consumers. The advancement of technology into stuff – including TV, Phones, gadgets, appliances, cars and all the other mod cons, has had a never ending effect on consumers. Instead of purchasing one item to last for some years, we now purchase more than one item and if it lasts 1 year we’re happy. The distribution process blasts us with advertising on a regular basis to update our stuff and we do it. We have become a ‘throw away and get another one’ society. It comes to the stage where we are left with a lot of stuff and nowhere to put it, as the average family home can only hold so much.

Disposal of stuff is the last resort for getting rid of the ‘unwanteds’ from your possession. Humans rely on garbage collection days to dispose of their unwanted stuff, and ritually take out their bins on the designated days. With a bit of luck, some of the stuff will be recycled and re-used to make other things. However, the vast majority will be either burned and dumped in a landfill or just dumped in a landfill and buried. This causes even more pollution to be released into the air, land and water.

“Our whole economy is based on planned obsolescence.” Brook Stevens, Industrial Designers Assoc.

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I ND U S T RY Axel Pegus

CONCRETE EXISTENCE

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF VIDEO PARTS

s human beings, regardless of nationality or socioeconomic status, we are seen as a race that creates culture. Whether it be music, sport, business, war, the culture of human beings is diverse the world over. Individually we discover our own interests, form beliefs and identities, and evidently assimilate to the culture that best suits our own interests. A significant part of the building of societal culture is the ability to document the process. Whether it be in classical texts, recording music, writing books, paintings, etc., having documentation is a source of inspiration and information surrounding our roots and history, has been paramount to the development of modern day society.

â&#x20AC;&#x153;Video parts are like albums.â&#x20AC;? 30

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Realistically within the action sports industries (surfing, skateboarding, BMX, scootering, inline skating, snowboarding, surfing etc.) the use of such visual mediums as photography and cinematography is understood as a standard content form of information. By employing these visual technologies, we are able to capture moments of great magnitude, and further gain inspiration to push the barriers of what is physical capability. Visual documentation within action sports has allowed us to understand various aspects of riding, only better explained by EMERICA and Baker skateboards pioneer, Andrew Reynolds “Imagine if you took videos parts away, It would be like saying “hey have you heard this band. They are pretty good, you can’t listen to them though, no one recorded it. You had to be there”. Skate videos are like our albums. They represent everything about the person: the clothes the wear, the music they like, the tricks they like to do, what they look like. How could you have a favourite skater without a skate video?

“How could you have a favourite skater without a skate video?” They represent everything about the person: the clothes the wear, the music they like, the tricks they like to do, what they look like. How could you have a favourite skater without a skate video? The value that footage holds within action sport as a source of information, is infinite. Without footage, the only proof of events would form in the form of word of mouth and forever remain questionable. Growing up through scootering from the age of 11 to now almost 21, primarily video parts were stimuli for inspiration to keep riding and develop my own riding style and identity. The website YouTube was like a handbook for learning new tricks, in times of frustration and struggle, I would always search up a tutorial on the specific trick. And in the event I couldn’t find one, I would watch a video in which the trick was performed, over and over again. Paying close attention to each movement the rider made, the way they would manoeuvre the scooter, carve and pump transitions to best maintain speed. By studying and gaining information through videos, as a beginner, I was able to advance more and more.

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“Put down the IPhone & pick up a VX”

FAUX 2016

To Scootering as a scene and industry, the development and growth of the internet has proved extremely beneficial. Through sites like Facebook and various online blogs, companies are now able to reach a far wider customer and fan base to better promote the content of their riders and sell and ship products throughout the world. More so recently, Instagram has thrived as a source for content, more so allowing insight and individuality

“BRING BACK VIDEO PARTS.” of riders themselves as opposed to the sites of the companies they represent. On the daily, Instagram allows riders to promote themselves and their companies more frequently, evidently building a fan base than previously allowed by filming for months and months for infrequent releases on YouTube. Instagram has upped the saturation of scootering content and brought companies and riders massive audiences and exposure. Now, Instagram can, of course, be seen as a massive positive for the development of freestyle scootering, but like physics predicts, for every positive, there is a negative. Scootering content in 2016 is skyrocketing to new levels, but the love for classic video parts, past and present, has shifted. Video parts are not entirely redundant, but with the ability to upload a minute’s worth of footage on Instagram every day has created an oversaturation of content. The end result being that once a video part is released on YouTube, more often than not, someone else has done the same trick on Instagram a week or so before. The tricks in the video parts lose their magnitude, they become stale. It’s like having three litres of milk in your fridge that you have to drink alone in the space of a week. There is just too much to get through and the remainder only goes to waste. Everyday riders land world firsts for their Instagram feed, and of course, it creates hype, and pushes everyone else to tap into their competitive side and be better at scootering, but if everything is amazing, what do we consider amazing anymore. A classic example is Ryan Williams, a month or he released a clip almost landing the world’s first 540 double flair (540-degree spin double backflip) on his Instagram, World number one Jordan Clark (UK), actually landed it for his own Instagram feed.

Ryan then claimed openly in a Vault Pro Scooters interview, this as the reason for the further delay of his long awaited web edit 3. He had to “step it up”, his previous efforts made a waste of time. Instagram has become a central focus churning over an entire scenes content as quick as you can flick through your news feed and double each image that comes next. “Inastaclips” have a damage to traditional video parts similar to that incurred upon graffiti works by petty tagging. It’s like sifting through and sand to and find something different. Sponsor me tapes are being replaced by a strong Instagram feed, originality has become more scarce than ever before. However, there is a solution; BRING BACK VIDEO PARTS. Ultimately, the restoration of traditional value surrounding footage is only something achievable by mass individual contribution. The focus needs to shift from creating content to satisfy the daily dose of Instagram likes and followers, back to the collections of documented battles for tricks video parts represent. By all means, I am not suggesting abolishing Instagram, but it must be understood that Insight that is provided toward an individual’s riding through minute long Instagram footage, will never be the same experience video parts present. To enrich the scenes original identity and values is to start filming for video parts once again. Put down the IPhone and pick up a VX or Canon 60DSLR, push once again to document the and understand the full experience had on the scooter by one another.

“A good Instaclip will only last a minute in the never ending feed. A good video part can rewrite history” Start telling whole stories again, not just short snippets from day to day. A good Instaclip will only last a minute in the never ending feed. A good video part can potentially rewrite history, and last forever and the stuff of legend.

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URBAN S

S OC IE T Y

It’s In Our Hand

ith state governments across Australia acknowledging the need to limit urban sprawl, fill the gaps within existing metropolitan areas and build higher-density housing on selected sites, many opportunities have opened up. Demonstration projects are key to ensuring quality outcomes, and the government has a leading role to play.

The Western Australian target for urban infill is at the lower end compared to other states. In August 2010, the Department of Planning and the Western Australian Planning Commission released “Directions 2031 and Beyond” a proposal for a more consolidated Perth, with an infill target of 47% of new housing. The proposal stated that 328,000 new dwellings would be needed by 2031. In 2015, the same two government agencies released the draft document, “Perth and Peel at 3.5 million”, which again nominated the 47% infill target. However, the authors acknowledged that urban infill rates had reached only 28% in 2014. This means that, to reach the 47% goal, an increase in development of 68% was needed to reach the infill goal. This is a substantial change, and one that will require significant shifts including communities accepting higher residential densities. There is still a level of resistance from the community about higher residential density and infill. Some of this though is justified, in that much of the completed suburban infill is of a poor quality and too fragmented to deliver the positive changes and level of amenity that higher density can bring.

FAUX 2016

A quick Google Maps scan across the middle suburbs of Perth shows the dominant form of suburban infill in the city - a compressed suburbia. Large houses are squeezed together onto small sites, shrinking usable private outdoor space, reducing access to sun and cross-ventilation, and diminishing existing tree canopy. Driveways, car courts, and double garage doors engage with the street. The strategies to overcome this include: • • • •

Going above a single story, Allocating usable private courtyards to each unit, Providing good solar access, and crossventilation; and Developing a car-parking strategy that can change over time.

SPRAWL By Kate Burke

ds.

“There are infill projects being built in Perth that demonstrate what is possible when real design intelligence is at play.”

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In addition, the idea is for units to have a degree of inbuilt flexibility so they can adapt to changing household circumstances. While this work remains diagrammatic, it nevertheless demonstrates that, with a clear focus on how design can enable amenity to be optimised, suburban infill can provide attractive housing options. For example, LandCorp’s stage 1 development of Knutsford (1.5 kilometrers from the centre of Fremantle) provides a mix of well-considered housing types. These feature impressive indoor-outdoor relationships and clever spatial strategies to enable a high degree of internal flexibility. We need more good examples like this, with a greater diversity of housing types. The potential that is implicit in higher-density housing – opportunities for social engagement, sharing of facilities, fewer cars, richer urban potential, better public space and urban realm – needs to be made explicit.

“For more than 50 years, display villages have been used to promote and sell detached project housing. These displays have enabled buyers to see what they are buying and to understand the potential of the broader setting of the house.” Historically, display villages would promote, through built example, the houses that eventually form a suburbia. In the same way, a display village for higher-density housing units could promote options that are not currently on offer in the housing market. With display villages open potential buyers would be able to experience and understand the qualities of the housing on display. A higher-density display village would demonstrate how, with intelligent design, these units can be spacious, adaptable and work effectively with outdoor space. For Perth, such a display village would provide a valuable means for industry to innovate with housing types and forms of construction. A government imprimatur and the willingness to underwrite the first projects should ensure this outcome.

FAUX 2016

The village would offer design diversity in terms of type and form, construction innovation including modular and prefabrication techniques, use of new materials, and the ability to test new strategies for utilities and waste. It would showcase design for low energy use on a precinct scale and for reduced car dependency. It would take advantage of Perth’s climate and allow a fluid relationship between indoors and outdoors, creating a sense of space, light and air. Government and industry would plan and promote the project. Government would provide the land and industry would build the housing. The display housing would be open to the public for a period of time, and then sold to individual buyers. Affordability remains a major obstacle to broader acceptance of higher-density housing. This is because selling prices per square metre are considerably more than those of a detached new house on the suburban fringes. The display village could explore alternative forms of land and house delivery and ownership. Higher-density housing isn’t necessarily a threat to the traditional Australian notion of suburbia. It need not be seen as a denigration of the values that recognise suburbia as having a particular quality that helps establish the idea of an Australian way of life based on the detached house and its backyard. There is a vast existing stock to ensure those values will remain in place. The development of well-designed, highperforming and higher-density infill housing will, in fact, protect existing suburbs from the poorer-quality infill that is occurring, while allowing the benefits of an enhanced public realm to be shared. The WA government has a major challenge in meeting its infill targets. It can help meet this challenge by initiating a governmentassisted display village of quality higher-density housing. It would be the first state government in Australia to do so.

“We’ll have to find more creative ways to cut a house into two...”

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In Order of Appearance

CONTRIBUTORS

Larry Osborne 38

Reid McManus Axel Pegus Brooke Reeves Jay Muldoon

University of Newcastle Semester 2, Design Projects Bachelor of Visual Communication Design 2016

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CONSERVATION ISSUE 2016