wet dreams. living machines

so i looked at the superbowl ads based on ‘terrible terry tate.’ im not sure if you guys have seen them or not, but basically theyre about an office thats hired terry tate to help improve efficiency & productovoty. the thing i love about it is how it builds up a whole storyline and ‘real world’ to it….i think its a great example of what we’re trying to do with our story-telling: create a situation or ‘time/place’ where our ideas are used. i rekon its a great thing to look at to get inspired as to how to go about creating our ‘concept worlds’
here are some of the terry tate ads…check them out, coz theyre awsome

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dsFlR6RgZsc
p://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tvBE0618bfU&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vGieu_1oNDs
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K7e9Y7xo0no&feature=related

so yeah, theyre what i rekon is a great example of VERY effective ‘story-telling’

hey, so heres my flowchart from the presentation. like i said, id like to have something similar to this for my final piece (tho obviously more detailed and polished) keeping the cartoonish and light-hearted feel to it, as i think it suits my project well anyway, heres the flowchart from last week

ok. so i didnt have much luck finding the clip that i wanted, but ive decided to post some of the links ive been investigating. its interesting: from what ive looked at, it appears that there are already some mini-cows, whihch are apparently producing milk. they are called miniature zebu (tho im not sure if thats all of them, or just some specific breeds) theyre still much bigger than i imagined my ‘final product’ but the interseting thiing is that they arent genetically modified: theyre just bred small (kind of like chihuahuas) but yeah, if they do exist, then id like to try and take it further then (not really sure how as of yet, but still thinking on it ) im kinda looking at dog or maybe even cat sized cows at the end, but these cows are certainly very interesting

anyway, the links are:
http://bonzairanch.com/_wsn/page2.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-pZ_DKHstY this isnt really about info, its just to give an idea of the current size (as i said, till much bigger than i planned, but getting there )
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IhQaAmoSmB8&feature=related another to give size ideas
http://www.rollingprairiefarm.com/miniaturezebu.htm

hmmm…im currently trying to find a clip on youtube that has been an inspiration for me, but i thought id post about homework first so here i go…..

sustainability. i think this is like the major point of my whole idea/concept: to increase each persons level of self-sustainability. as boo said, sustainability isnt a set ‘number’ or ‘level’ that we need to achieve. instead its something that we just continually keep improving. i really like the idea that in the future each house will provide all (or at least, a lot of) the stuff that it needs to survive by itself. that each house will be able to survive by itself, and therefore reduce massively the amount of transport of goods etc that is required at the moment (to get foods etc to supermarkets etc) which should help reduce negative effects on the environment. i cant remeber who it was, but someone was talking about the natural diesel trees (i think it was diesel) which produce their own fuel….with much less negative effects on the environment. i find stuff like that really fascinating: just imagine…with some cultivating and research we may be able to grow these trees ourselves, and therefore produce our own fuel (i know theyre not producing enough fuel per tree at the moment, but im confident we can improve that over time) and stuff like this is really relevant to what im doing (altho down a bit of a different path, being fuel, not food) but yeah, i just love the idea of every house being self sustainable, which should make our country (and world) so much more efficient and wasteless than it is at the moment.

but yeah, thats just some thoughts ive been having on sustainability/ my project. i still havnt found the clip yet (not even sure it will be there…) but yeah, ill keep looking, and hoefully post it a bit later

hmmm…ok, so i need to do a mixed post for the last two weeks coz unfortunatly i missed class a few weeks back and never thought to check the blog for homework so yeah, im making up for it now

so, my basic concept/idea (like i said in class…..) that i want to explore is the idea of genetically modifying animals/plants to make mini versions of stuff, basically so that each house is self-sufficient (or at least more than they are currently) so what im thinking about is either making a plant that produces heaps of kinds of fruit/vegies (by grafting plants together or by some other technique) so that all ur non-meat foods are made by one plant, or looking at mini-animals (say for example a mini-cow) which every house would have so that they can provide their own milk/wool/whatever. im just starting to get into the specific research for it (before i was just looking at general stuff) but im basically taking my general idea from a number of ‘inspiratoins’….which are: 1. grafting of plants/trees, which has been going on for countless years (at least as early as biblical times, if not earlier). im basically looking at using modern technologies to improve the process and make it ‘bigger’ and more effective 2. shetland ponies. i guess this is a pretty random inspiration, but for me theyve always seemed like mini-horses, and i think it would be interesting to look at how we can make mini-somethingelses (tho i know thats not a word ) but yeah, im thinking about a range of techniques, ranging from breeding (tho im aware that that would be a very long process) to biologically modifying animals, and maybe even combining the two. but yeah, im just kinda scraping the tip of the ice burg at the moment, but im actually pretty excited about getting my teeth stuck into it.

with the final outcome, id probably prefer to talk to boo before i set anything in concrete, but id say that im looking more at a speculative idea (tho as boo said: id definitly like to ground it on current research/technologies etc) but yeah, then just thinking about some of the possible uses (what animals, what they can be used for etc)

hmmmm….yeah, thats basically where im at at the moment, but im really starting to look forward to getting into more specific research, and generating some more detailed conectps

Hmmmm… I’ve actually been thinking about this topic a fair bit, coz its definitely something I feel pretty passionate about… is it ethical for us to clone humans (or use similar technologies like stem cells etc.) to prolong our own lives, while disregarding the actual clones (and stem cells etc.)? Should we sacrifice other ‘people’ for our own sakes? Sadly, I don’t think that we should. While the prospect of longer lives surely appeals to some people, I don’t think we should be blindly trying to prolong our own lives at the sake of others. And if we do sacrifice others to gain a longer life, who’s to say it will have any benefit anyway? What happens when we walk out the door of the ‘cloning factory’ and get hit by a car? What benefit have we gained there? Life is unpredictable, and no one can say for certain what will happen. The fact of the matter is that we are MEANT to die… that’s how we were built, and that is what happens to us. We WILL die eventually, so instead of trying to prolong our lives I believe that we should be focusing on using this technology that we have to increase the standard of our lives (and of other less fortunate people in the world)

I know that people may say that by using clones we can increase people’s health etc. and therefore increase their standard of living, but at what cost? How many ‘people’ will be sacrificed per person to increase that standard? Is it worth sacrificing even one life for another? Of course not. And yet how many stem cells do we need to use to max out a person’s standard? And what about the stem cells or the clones…do we just disregard them, because all we care about is ourselves? Of course we don’t. They are people too, and as far as I’m concerned its an absolute disgrace to harvest their useful organs and then kill them because we don’t need the rest of them.

Having said all that, there is so much potential that biological technologies can be used for….we can increase so many poor people standard of living, and we can increase our own standard too. But what we NEED to do is to proceed with caution, and to think before we do, so that we don’t make mistakes that we will later regret. Think of the possibilities of using technologies to increase farm outputs, or to make tools that can make dangerous jobs so much easier and safer, and any number of other great uses that we can come up with. But it is up to us to make sure that we take it in the right direction, now, while we still have the chance to decide which way we will take it.

hmmmm…..to be honest, im feeling pretty overwhelmed by the prospects of this subject. while im really looking forward to doing it, and have found all the stuff ive looked at pretty interesting, this isnt the kinda thing that im usually into (i hated science at school and stopped it as soon as i could… ) so ive kinda got like no idea what most of the articles and stuff are talking about having said that, ive looked at a fair few of the links and articles, and i rekon im starting to get a vague idea of what id like to look at/ try and explore with it. i guess i wanna look at stuff like mixing machines/objects with living technologies to make society better….like trying to fix social problems with new biotechnologies and stuff….not sure exactly what i mean by that yet, and im not even sure that its possible to use this kinda stuff to do that, but i guess thats what i wanna explore to find out

and in regards to the reader thing….i definitly agree with the last bit especially: i dont think that the boundaries between all the fields should be broken down….but i think any boundaries that stop us from working together should be. its important that some level of separation is kept, so that we all keep thinking differently, to get different perspectives on stuff. but yeah, we should still work together tho with our different ideas and thoughts