Y H 09 // 2012
PHOTO GRAPHIC
MILLIONS OF PEOPLE WILL READ IT SO MAKE IT GOOD
VOLUME II
MENTAL LANDSCAPES
MORITZ // ING
Find the cracks in the wall.
BEAT // NEVERBLINK
There are a very few lunatic entrepreneurs who will understand that culture and design are not about fatter wallets, but about creating a future. They will understand that wealth is means, not an end. Under other circumstances they may have turned out to be like you, creative lunatics. Believe me, they’re there and when you fi nd them, treat them well and use their money to change the world.
SILFRA
LIAM // NICKO
POEM BY THE UNRULY K
From the moment I read about it, I wanted to go there, wanted to make my way to the top part of the world so my body could glide through glacial meltwater.
Especially that meltwater, that silvered skein that runs through the between the rocky plates of North America and Europe. The thought was a glowed and constant illumination,
ďŹ ssure
incandescent in my brain. It happened, you know. I did go there. I did. I put on a drysuit and lay into the cold clarity; below the unroiled surface, a tectonic tumult of rock opened down and down. I did not let myself breathe; I only let myself kick a kick, strong and languid, then another, then many, so I could disappear into the cathedralled spill of geology far deep in the watered cold. To be and see where two realities converge. Yes. I did that. I saw there and I was there; I existed there and did not breathe for as long as I could manage. was in my ears; it was all I could The hear; it felt like being , with only water to hear between the chaosed towers of rock. To find ingress into a secret, I did that too. Found a question to an answer, with my heart quiet under the bony plate of my chest and the oxygen stilled, down deep in the top part of the world.
water
alive
Contained between continents, I left behind water from my .
eyes
Robert Zubrin of the Mars Society says there are three reasons we should go to Mars: The science, the challenge, the future.
Suburbs of the future: The case for colonizing Mars.
YH PG #2 sept 2012
MENTAL LANDSCAPES sekt / millions of people
Why should humans go to Mars? There are really three reasons: for the science, for the challenge, and for the future. As far as the science is concerned, Mars is the planet that is the closest to us that could have supported life in the past and may still do so in the present. And so by going to Mars and exploring those dried-up lakes and river valleys, and drilling into the subsurface groundwater on Mars, looking for fossils, looking for microbial life that may yet persist, we’ll be able to determine if life is a general phenomenon in the universe or if it is a phenomenon unique to the Earth. We’ll discover if we’re alone or not, because we now know that planets are plentiful in the galaxy. And if life evolved commonly, wherever there is a planet with reasonable conditions, and any star has reasonable conditions at an appropriate distance, then life is common. And since the entire history of life on Earth is one of development from simpler forms to more complex forms, displaying greater capacities for activities and intelligence and evermore rapid evolution, if life is everywhere, it means intelligence is everywhere. It means we’re not alone. This is something that thinking men and women have wondered about for thousands of years. It’s worth going there to find out. The second reason is the challenge. I think civilizations are like individuals. We grow when we’re challenged. We stagnate when we’re not. And a humans-to-Mars program would be an embracing challenge for our society, particularly for our youth. It would say to every young person: learn your science and you can be an explorer or pioneer of new worlds. And out of that challenge, we get millions of scientists, engineers, inventors, doctors, medical researchers, technological entrepreneurs. These are the kind of people that drive society forward. You might view it as a tremendously powerful investment in intellectual capital. And then, finally, we should go to Mars for the future. Earth is not the only world. And if we go to Mars, we’re beginning humanity’s career as a multi-planet, spacefaring species. If we do this, 500 years from now there will be new branches of
human civilization on Mars and, I believe, on many worlds beyond. When those people look back at our time, what will they consider of what we’re doing today to be significant? What we did to make their civilization possible – new worlds, new countries, new nations with new languages and new histories – that’s what’s important. By your estimation, what would it take to set up a human base on Mars? We need to develop a heavy lift vehicle, comparable to the Saturn V rockets that we had in the 1960s. And if we had such rockets, it would take two launches for each mission to Mars. The first sends a return vehicle to Mars with no one in it. And that goes and it lands on Mars, and it runs a pump and sucks in the Martian air and actually processes that into propellant for the return trip, using very well-understood chemical engineering processes that are described in my book The Case for Mars. We’ve done it in the lab, and other people have too. And then once that’s done, then the second rocket shoots a habitat rocket out to Mars with a crew in it. And they land near the Earth return vehicle. They use their habitat craft as their house while they’re on Mars, as their exploration base. At the end of a year and a half exploring Mars, they get back, they get in the Earth return vehicle and fly back to Earth. They leave their habitat on Mars. Each time you do this, you add another habitat to the base. And pretty soon, you have the beginning of the first human settlement on a new world. There’s nothing in this that’s fundamentally beyond our technology. Certainly there are challenges, but these challenges are not as great as those we faced going to the moon in the 1960s. Starting with near-zero space capability and experience, starting with a country that had not yet invented pushbutton telephones, and we made it to the moon. What is your vision of what people would actually do on Mars? What would a human settlement be like? The first people to go to Mars will not be settlers. They’ll be explorers. They’ll be exploring a number of things. They’ll explore for the resources that will support future human settlement.
Of immediate concern to most people will be to try and resolve key science questions about the existence of life on Mars, past or present. Mars is a cold and dry planet on its surface today. But it was once warm and wet. We know that because there are water erosion features all over the surface of Mars. On Earth, wherever you find liquid water, you find life. If we can explore these places and look for even fossils of of past life deposited there, we’ll know that Mars once had life. Furthermore, we now know that there is liquid water underground on Mars. And there are even some places where methane is being emitted from the surface. On Earth, methane only comes from two sources – from bacteria or from hydrothermal vents. And – if it’s bacteria, it’s life. If it’s a hydrothermal vent, it’s an environment that can support life. So if we can go and drill down and get samples from places and take a look at what’s there – and perhaps even find existing Martian microbes – we can subject them to biochemical examination. We’ll be able to look at them and discover whether life on Mars is built on the same patterns as life on Earth, or whether it could be something entirely different. This is fundamental to understanding not just the diversity of life in the universe, but its very nature. That’s because all of life on Earth is built on one plan. We all use the same set of amino acids, the same RNA-DNA method of replicating information from one generation to the next. I don’t care whether you’re a bacteria, a mushroom, a crocodile, or a human being. We’re all alike in those respects. But does that have to be? Is life on Earth the pattern for all life everywhere? Or are we just one peculiar example, drawn from a much vaster tapestry of possibilities? This is really worth finding out. And that’s what these explorers going to Mars will be working for. Aerospace engineer and author Robert Zubrin is president and founder of the Mars Society, whose 4,000+ members promote the human exploration and settlement of Mars. A 15th anniversary edition of Zubrin’s book The Case for Mars came out in June 2011.
wasted space
MONTEZ // MADCAPPP
where is your shitty town’s shangri-la
?
DORNRADE // SANSTIAGO
ROBOT HOUSE // MAGNETIC
THE STORY GETS TOLD IN THE
NICKO // POEM BY THE UNRULY K
SPACE BETWEEN The story gets told in the space between. No space means no room and no room means just kudzu, so where the eye bends or the foot lands, only a rolling of monochromed tone. Too much of a good thing, that, like the extra cat you could build from the hair that emigrates from the back of your real cat to the front of your white shirt — you know, the shirt you planned to wear when you interviewed for that job you want. It’s a “fuck you”, that kudzu, serving one single story, sans secret, sans subtext. (Sans piss! Sans vinegar, too!) Pah. What use is that, that simple story? What’s the point? Who’s it good for? Simpletons, mainly. Small children too, I suppose. The story gets told in the space between. Through the trail in the wall the termite tooths through, or the pavemented passage fissured by flower, or the pinpricked place where a tear tumbles out.
DUDE DIGITAL // JAMESOMEGA
YH PG #2 sept 2012
MENTAL LANDSCAPES madcappp / millions of people
KLUSTER // PURE KREATION
“In the sweatof thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return�
Entering a new world: Mobilizing to save civilization Adapted from “Entering a New World,” in Lester R. Brown’s Plan B 3.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization
In our high-tech civilization, it is easy to forget that the economy, indeed our existence, is wholly dependent on the earth’s natural systems and resources. We depend on the climate system for an environment hospitable to agriculture, on the hydrological cycle to provide fresh water, and on long-term geological processes to convert rocks into the soil that has made the earth such a biologically productive planet. Overpopulation is placing such heavy demands on the earth that we are overwhelming its natural capacities. Forests are shrinking. Each year overgrazing converts vast areas of grassland into desert. The pumping of underground water exceeds natural recharge in countries containing half the world’s people, leaving many without adequate water. Each of us depends on the products and services provided by the earth’s ecosystems, from forest to wetlands, coral reefs to grasslands. Among the services these ecosystems provide are water purification, pollination, carbon sequestration, flood control, and soil conservation. A four-year study of the world’s ecosystems by 1,360 scientists, the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, reported that 15 of 24 primary ecosystem services are being degraded or pushed beyond their limits. For example, three quarters of oceanic fisheries are being fished at or beyond their limits, and many are headed toward collapse. Tropical rainforests are also under severe stress. Thus far roughly 20 percent of the rainforest has been cleared either for cattle ranching or soybean farming. Another 22 percent has been weakened by logging and road building, letting sunlight reach the forest floor, drying it out, and turning it into kindling. When it reaches this point, the rainforest loses its resistance to fire and begins to burn when ignited by
YH PG #2 sept 2012
MENTAL LANDSCAPES scruffics / millions of people
lightning strikes. Scientists believe that if half the Amazon is cleared or weakened, this may be the tipping point, the threshold beyond which the rainforest cannot be saved. Daniel Nepstad, an Amazon-based senior scientist from the Woods Hole Research Center, sees a future of “megafires” sweeping through the drying jungle. He notes that the carbon stored in the Amazon’s trees equals roughly 15 years of human-induced carbon emissions in the atmosphere. If we reach this tipping point we will have triggered a major climate feedback, another step that could help seal our fate as a civilization. The excessive pressures on a given resource typically begin in a few countries and then slowly spread to others. Nigeria and the Philippines, once net exporters of forest products, are now importers. Thailand, now largely deforested, has banned logging. So has China, which is turning to Siberia and to the few remaining forested countries in Southeast Asia, such as Myanmar and Papua New Guinea, for the logs it needs. As wells go dry, as grasslands are converted into desert, as fisheries are depleted, and as soils erode, people are forced to migrate elsewhere, either within their country or across national boundaries. As the earth’s natural capacities at the local level are exceeded, the declining economic possibilities generate a flow of environmental refugees. Countries today are facing several negative environmental trends simultaneously, some of which reinforce each other. The earlier civilizations such as the Sumerians and Mayans were often local, rising and falling in isolation from the rest of the world. In contrast, we will either mobilize together to save our global civilization, or we will all be potential victims of its disintegration.
MONTEZ // CORNHUSTLAH
LIVING WITH Historically, our settlements followed the coast and rivers, relying on proximity to water for food, irrigation, transport and leisure. Building design and day-to-day life reflected this close relationship. Our settlement and structures accommodated water, were resistant to flooding and, where necessary, were often temporary in nature to allow seasonal occupation. Only recently in human history have we sought to find solutions that permanently protect land on a large scale through fluvial engineering, claimed salt marshes and wetlands that provided softer natural barriers, and relied on concrete to ‘eliminate’ flood risk. We rely on our flood defences to protect not only people and private properties, but also vital amenities and public assets, including hospitals, the emergency services, schools, municipal buildings and the transport infrastructure. Disruption of these by flooding inevitably has major knock-on effects for business and society.
LIVING WITH WATER VISIONS OF A FLOODED FUTURE www.buildingfutures.org.uk
SOCK // BOSK
Perhaps we need to do more to curb our compulsive, singleminded efforts to control water through elaborate structural interventions, move away from bricks and mortar-based solutions. The challenges we face now and in the coming years may drive us back towards embracing the previously dynamic relation between land, water and communities. New challenges drive innovation in design and building construction. A more concerted approach that harnesses the drive and ambition of the private and public sector will be necessary to meet the climate change challenge, and that in itself is a potent mix. Longer-term vision begins to present new possibilities: the funding of infrastructure, delivering a consistent, long-term strategic vision, community planning and creation, coastal and fluvial engineering and possibly coastal retreat, design solutions, planning and development opportunities, and dealing with outdated perceptions of flood risk and water adjacency.
WATER
DH // KERSER
Disposable landscapes
of a throwaway culture.
Discarded television set. Original value: $499.00
Overgrown, disused plot. Estimated value: $225,000
Abandoned construction site. Last change: Feb 2011
DESTROY CREATE YH PG #2 sept 2012
MENTAL LANDSCAPES teepz / millions of people
Vacant business premises. Time vacant: 12 months.
Abandoned construction site. Last change: Feb 2011
CREATE DESTROY
BE NICE
Y H 09 // 2012
PHOTO GRAPHIC
MILLIONS OF PEOPLE WILL READ IT SO MAKE IT GOOD
VOLUME II
MENTAL LANDSCAPES