WARNING: this recording is meant to be listened to at this location.

Within the Western mindset, I think we have a tendency to see history through what physically remains.  The monuments, the artifacts, and the bones.  Like imperialistic explorers who plundered the tombs and ruins of civilizations around the world as they projected their materialistic understanding of the world onto those they sought to understand and judged accordingly.  Even early linguists who came to preserve, record, and collect the words of the indigenous peoples of the Pacific Coast without understanding the context within which they were set. These are two examples of the sort of reductionist thinking present within aspects of Western analytical thought that run entirely contrary to the systems of understanding time, place, and person within indigenous cultures. It is funny how ‘forward thinking’ or ‘innovative’ the idea of interactivity or contextualization can be in modern museums and exhibits where, historically, and even still currently in many large, modern museums, so much is simply tagged and numbered.  While this may in some cases be due more to a lack of understanding rather than an exclusion, it still pales in comparison to the levels of embedded understanding that cultures with a prominent oral history are able to weave together through time, place, and person.  While Western cultures certainly have narratives that persist and are deeply embedded, they tend to be highly generalized and it seems to me that even these traditional narratives of nationalism, religion, patriotism, and even communal identity for example are fading away more rapidly than ever with the rise of the internet.  Ashes on the Water was an utterly profound experience for me where I truly felt that power of a story to link these two moments within one place.  Their words provided an overlay for the raw sensory data I received from outside of the recording.  It was a powerful statement of the intimate relation between a story and a place.

This piece was also a powerful vision of the positive synergies that arise from the alignment of theater/story telling, cyberspace, and physical space.  Quelemia Sparrow has created an excellent example of an emerging medium where a story passed down through oral traditions was transcribed into cyberspace while preserving the intimate connections between story and space. However, by combining these mediums it is possible to achieve different or additional goals than what they would be able to accomplish separately. A story told in a place from one human to another is only able to be transmitted very slowly and is liable to have cumulative errors as it is transmitted though this does allow for the story to grow and evolve.  If this story is transcribed into cyberspace in sound only, as in a radio theater production, then the connection to land can be lost though it is much more permanent and can be shared rapidly.  Additionally, the listener is still engaged by trying to visualize the story.  When a video is added then the story can be again linked to visual progression that the one who is doing the transcribing can match to the original intention of the story as in the case of any movie or film.  Video games can take this another step forward and reintroduce a level of interactivity with the story and video while maintaining the easy of transmission and high fidelity of modern recordings. While there are some examples of audio/video stories that involve the reader in what Neal Stephenson referred to as a ‘ractive,’ the podplay Ashes in the Water accomplishes something very similar.  Here, the audience is embedded in the physical setting while listening to an oral story that has been transcribed into cyberspace.  This allows for the story to be experienced by anyone who is able to access it online and make the trip to crab park.  This seems to be the greatest balance currently achievable with the limits of our technology – not yet are we able to send and receive live sensory information from Crab Park from a remote location beyond audio and video.  I think that this issue of medium and interface will be critical moving forward as we continue to analyze the potential of digital space to accurately represent physical space or even to replace it in some cases and contexts – what is lost and what is gained?

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Image taken from controversial 2014 Ralph Lauren ad shared on Twitter via the hyperlink attached to the image. This image was chosen to show how modern casual cultural genocide is still present in our society. Text added, see below.

Image taken from the Vancouver Media Co-op’s coverage of the 2013 Truth and Reconciliation March via the hyperlink attached to the image. This image was chosen to represent the strength of modern indigenous groups to stand up for their rights and cultural identity in the face of forced assimilation. Text added, see below.

Image taken from Squamish Lil’wat cultural center website via the hyperlink attached to the image. This image was chosen to provide one of many examples of how indigenous culture is still thriving and advancing in the territories it did for thousands of years before European settlers arrived. Text from Leslie Marmon Silko (Laguna Pueblo) as recorded in the book Coded Territories.

After watching this video for the first time, I admit, I had a great deal of difficulty deciphering the message behind the medium.  Even after reading the excerpt from Coded Territories about the piece, while I certainly understood the methodology, it was not until the class discussion and a closer look at the reading that it began to become clear to me.  Clearly, this installation is a heavily layered piece with the intention of conveying a great deal through these discordant sounds.  Walter Benjamin’s “Theses on the Philosophy of History” was quoted as follows:

To articulate what is past, [does not simply mean] to recognize ‘how it really was,’ it means to take control of a memory, as it flashes in a moment of danger.

Postcommodity is accomplishing much more here than simply conveying a message translated from another time.  By translating it into this format, these artists are changing the narrative and actively contributing to the stewardship of this knowledge for the community in Santa Fe. They are able to “negotiate cultural space” (from the excerpt provided on connect) within the current era to provide a narrative to the events that occurred when the town of Santa Fe “essentially fell out of history”  (Coded Territories)  in terms of how history is traditionally understood in Western cultures.  That is to say, this group has created a narrative that represents and advances indigenous understanding of this key period in time when Settler culture and ‘civilization’ was renounced and an attempt to reclaim cultural and physical territory was made and then held for twelve years after nearly eighty years of oppression according to Coded Territories. To me, this highlights the relevance of indigenous artists working with all kinds of media.

What Postcommodity and others are doing to not only preserve historical cultural knowledge, but also to carefully and painstakingly translate it into a media that can be understood in the current cultural context is a stunning act of decolonization and cultural sovereignty. Their contribution, through their art, has enriched and fundamentally changed the dialogue around indigenous life and culture for all those who are effected by this piece or by those influenced by it.  This ripple effect is emulated by all of the other artists and artisans working within this field.  Their propagation and translation bridges the gap between cultures and times. While some may say that perception of history is based on our weapons, maybe it is time to challenge that analysis.

In this information era, could it not be instead stated that history moves at the speed of its words?  Propaganda and censorship have long been a part of the international discussion around individual freedoms and liberties. Now that more and more time is spent by millions of individuals in an online space that can be more directly monitored and controlled than at any time before, perhaps it is the words, sounds, and images that will define our understanding of the progression of history rather than the analog weapons we decreasingly bare. Or perhaps the pen has become the sword?

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Some of the links in this post may lead to sites with NSFW content

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I hope that you enjoyed some of those links – I wanted to share a few of the more creative ways of organizing a information

Electric circuitry profoundly involves men with one another. Information pours upon us, instantaneously and continuously. As soon as information is acquired it is very rapidly replaced by still newer information. Our electrically-configured world has forced us to move from the habit of data classification to the mode of pattern recognition.  We can no longer build serially, block-by-block, step-by-step because instant communication insures that all factors of the environment and of experience co-exist in a state of active interplay.

When Marshall McLuhan wrote this statement (sans hyperlinks) in his book, the first thing that my mind went to was the concept of news media.  In the world today, companies based in both the new and the old media have assembled vast arrays of data input systems in order to gather and display (generally for profit) information about the many sights and sounds of the world (with more sensual data coming soon?).  Google, for example, has built itself on the concept of gathering data by providing services where people want to input the data for free – such as web browsers, maps, social media, and much more.  By creating the medium, these companies are able to profit greatly from the messages being sent through it.  Similarly, the Net Neutrality debate has revealed how eager many are to control this vast new medium – due in no small part to the fact that it is still so much in it’s infancy that many potential profit streams or other uses remain unexplored – especially as new information interfaces/data inputs are developed….and bought.

But are these risks worth it? Have we really ‘democratized information‘ or are we simply tricking ourselves to think that we are this….

Ozymandias, the King of Kings

when in reality it is more like this…

Sheep puppets

However, even as this medium which seems to embody the freedom to find information, it is this very enigma that could lead to assumptions of freedom and openness when we are, in reality, becoming even more confined in what we see and how we see it.

While I feel most people are aware of how important terminology can be in the media with most political parties loading up on loaded vocabulary during campaign speeches, I feel that this issue calls for deeper exploration. We have come a long way from the Acta Diurna of Rome where the news was literally carved into stone to an era where our major news agencies put views and profits first.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x5U_XD4kDJ4

However, there are those who (rightly in my opinion) claim that the internet is a powerful force for the dissemination of hidden information (though the impact can be varied…).  Even as the major news media producers try master the art of attracting viewers at all costs and even so-called new-media sources fall to censorship and regulation, the internet still remains a place where people can come together in a huge variety of ways to share and discuss information.  There remain new opportunities for free and unmoderated interaction and new mediums will, hopefully continue to mean new freedoms as well.

As more and more users continue to come online  and resistance is shown to the notion of restraining the internet into a more traditionally profitable model, the internet certainly offers a way for people to empower themselves both online and in the world around them.  The online dialectics that have formed around concepts of freedom of information and interaction  and self-sufficiency (to name a few) are examples of concepts that are highly translatable – just as previous forms of media have been.  Now, information and ideas are spread even faster on concise youtube videos, images with text, or things that are ‘trending’ on social media.  While such memetic concepts can have a high velocity – they tend to also have a short lifetime and issues with openness and validity. While there are still many online media communities that operate under different structures and values, the potential diversity of interaction can be greatly limited by these very social structures.  Many online sites such as Reddit, Digg, 4chan, or others make use of highly specified vocabularies, images, and reactions as a potential reaction to the desire to be part of the cultural ‘in-group’ that is present in these communities – especially where there is strong opposition to those who would interact differently.

In summary, McLuhan would surely have felt validated today to see the clear correlation between interface and interaction – between required format and the resulting inputs.  What will certainly be interesting to moving forward is how these new platforms will effect the physical world.  Or maybe the luddites are right and we’ve all just had a bit too much instant orange juice.

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As this term comes to a close, I am left more than ever with a stronger drive for community engagement. I was greatly inspired by the Think&EatGreen@School project in particular – the chance to actually provide a learning experience to members of the community was terrific! While it is true that we have engaged the community in the past such as during the farm visits, this trip seemed far less passive than previously.  It also helped that my group felt extremely confident and cohesive so stress was not much of a factor during or leading up to the workshop despite the increased participation.

The Think&EatGreen@School project really highlighted my experience so far with GRS so far.  After learning so much about food citizenship, food security, food systems, community development, and much else besides, this brought all of these abstract concepts into the real world for the first time.  I feel strongly that the experience I gained applying systems thinking principals to the school food community bolstered with additional readings from the literature review (especially those of David Orr) helped to solidify the importance of systems thinking in my mind.  Now it seems hard to look at analyze any complex system or community and not draw it back to land and food – not that that is a bad thing.

As I continue on into the summer to pursue my interests in grocery retail, permaculture, and aquaponics, I know already that systems thinking will be at the core of these initiatives.  Especially in regards to grocery retail, I feel that I have SO much more to bring not only to my workplace and coworkers, but also to my own interactions with the system.  I am greatly looking forward to discussing these concepts with my coworkers and finding new depth and application for them.

I am also greatly looking forward to what next year may hold in LFS 350 and 450 as we continue to dig deeper into food systems and community!

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December 2013,

As this year draws to a close, I would like to take a moment to reflect on what I believe has been some of the most important learning from LFS and GRS for me personally.

For the first several weeks of LFS, we explored the idea of learning. We talked about the different learning systems and environments that we are a part of and how they impact the way in which we receive, make use of, and distribute knowledge. For most of my life growing up in the Bible Belt, I was a strict skeptic fueled by experiences with antagonistic expressions of belief from others and a love for empirical evidence. I was polarized towards one way of acquiring knowledge by the equally and ‘oppositely’ extreme views of some of the people in my life – or so I thought. As I got older and became immersed in a more diverse community I began to grasp the idea that there is no right or wrong way – there are no real opposites. Certainly methodology differs, but I now believe that the emergent benefits of considering a variety of ‘tools’ can be the most beneficial.
It was powerful to see this notion recognized in an actual classroom setting in a university (the traditional seat of science) – and not to do just that, but to spend an entire unit examining it! Through seeing this way of learning actively put into place in GRS provided some real context to the value of interdisciplinary study. GRS has actively encouraged me to reassess my traditional sources of knowledge and look to both my peers and to other cultures when learning. For example, when we talked about development we discussed the relative importance of accomplishing the scientific goals (scientific knowledge such as global warming or crop fertility) of a project as opposed to what was ultimately beneficial for the people in a given region (cultural knowledge such as community involvement and traditional practices). We were then given a variety of sources of basing this discussion on from reading scientific papers to learning from those directly involved with development to discussing it with our peers to reflecting on it and coming up with our own definition. This multifaceted approach will be something that I will remember whenever I am studying.

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December 2013,

The main focus of this blog will be to explore interactions between people and the food that they eat in urban areas. With that in mind, I would like to start off the main discussion by examining what I believe to be one of the most interesting solutions to the problems of urban food sovereignty – aquaponics. I will soon be embarking on a nearly year long exploration of the world of urban aquaponics as part of an independent study here at UBC in order to learn more about their possible applications regarding not only food sovereignty, but sustainable fish farming and local market awareness as well.
While some may see cities as intrinsically unable to be self-sustainable, I believe that this is more a result of our societal values than it is the nature of cities themselves. Rapid population growth and poor planning have led to the rapid expansion of cities on their peripheries through urban sprawl. After World War two, owning your own home was seen to be extremely desirable and with an improved highway system and low-cost mortgages from he GI. Bill, affordable housing systems such as Levittown, Pennsylvania were very popular. At that time urban decay and redlining also served as push factors as cities rapidly increased and blurred their borders. Today, many people still make the decision to move to more affordable suburbs and commute rather than paying a high price for city living. The end result is that the farms that used to line the periphery of many cities have closed shop as skyrocketing land values give aging and indebted farmers an incentive to sell their land to property developers. This once vibrant source of local food has fallen to the wayside as neoliberal trade policies opt for greater food security at the cost of sovereignty.
Consumer demand is also a large part of the equation. While times may be changing now as shoppers seek lower food miles and more trustworthy supply chains, the fact remains that people have grown accustomed to cheap food available regardless of season. This has a huge variety of negative impacts on farmers, the environment, and public health, but in regards to local food sovereignty it primarily means that the majority are unwilling to pay for the cost of having reduced economics of scale and having to grow products in non-optimal climates with vastly higher labor expenses among other cost-increasing factors. Recently, as I mentioned, there has been an upsurge in demand for local, primarily organic, food that has allowed farmers to turn economic disadvantage into added value.
Without comprehensive policy reform and a reigning in on the market for land development, it is unlikely that enough farms on the urban edge will be able to make a significant contribution to the urban food supply unless they are able to find ways to increase the profitability of their product and have a larger stake in the industry. The two ways that I believe this would be most likely to occur are dependent on crop value and market demand – in addition to the possibility that the externalities being created by the industrial food system began to impact the price of industrial food (climate change, soil fertility, energy cost, etc) and lower their market advantage. However, there are the two more optimistic approaches to consider – by identifying markets for key items farmers can hope to stay competitive. There are many local, higher cost agricultural products that are able to remain competitive due to their higher quality (due either to production practices or high spoilage rate) such as berries and summer stone fruits (peaches, plums, etc). In addition to the product quality, it can have many other marketable traits to add value such as organic certification and consumer trust.
Aquaponics is another product that I believe could be competitive in an urban setting due to what it is and how it is being produced. As global wild fish stocks decline, farmed fish will most likely come to replace them. Wild fish have traditionally been a far less complex and expensive source of product, but decreasing availability and harsher restrictions will make farming more profitable comparatively (think along the lines of the oil sands – another previously unprofitable industry). As the industry develops, I believe that farmed fish will ultimately be more preferable to processing companies as they favor uniformity and steady supply. While small-scale aquaponic production may initially seem uncompetitive due again to its lower economy of scale and higher labor costs, there are also many added value techniques that could make it very competitive. Freshness, trustworthy practices, 3rd party environmental certification, novelty, and the local label could all make it profitable enough to compete with industrial suppliers. In this way, aquaponics could contribute to urban food stability and sovereignty.

I am really looking forward to examining these and other issues regarding the growing aquaponic industry in the coming year!

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October, 2013
I would like to start off this blog by talking about a very inspiring conference that I had the opportunity to attend last weekend. I was invited to attend Whole Foods Vision Day in Seattle to discuss and learn about the long-term vision of the company as it expands throughout the PNW. While I could go on about what it’s like to work for a company that sponsors events like this or how my work will be effected by what I learned, what I would like to focus on are the guest speakers the event and how they effected me personally and how I interact with food in an urban setting.

While there were a wide range of speakers including the founder and CEO of Pacific Foods, micro-loan project leaders from Africa, and the leader of a store located in downtown Detroit that is part of the new Whole City Foundation, there was one who stood out to me in particular. Chef Ann Couper, aka The Renegade Lunch Lady, once spent her time “bumming” around ski slopes and moving from job to job to becoming an internationally renowned Chef was incredibly inspiring. Her most prominent message about this part of her life was that it does not matter where you came from or how little experience you have, as long as you are driven by something you truly believe in anything as possible. As corny as that sounds, she was not alone in this respect. Multiple speakers had founded their companies or non-profit organizations on their vision, personal drive, and, not much else. It really spoke to me regarding the impact that an individual can have on the world regardless of any seemingly insurmountable boundaries.

After becoming a respected chef, Chef Ann’s primary goal was to re-evaluate the diet of schoolchildren. After having success working with a private elementary school to redesign school meals with a greater emphasis on nutrition, she set out to fight for a paradigm shift for school lunches. As someone who grew up eating things like ‘fruit’ cups and greasy pizza in public school, I can definitely see the value in encouraging healthy eating by having a salad bar. Through her work, Chef Ann has encouraged healthy eating and granted nearly 3000 salad bars to schools across the US through information databases like The Lunchbox and the Salad Bars 2 Schools organization.

Chef Ann’s work has truly inspired me. She saw the terrible state of what is passing for food for thousands of students and decided to do something about it herself and, in doing so, contributed to a movement that will teach these thousands of students the value of healthy eating. In many ways, our society is like a city. An individual living in a city can often feel a sense of isolation and confusion – all around are complex processes and interactions that, without greater understanding, can be completely dumbfounding. In psychology, the concepts of social loafing and the bystander effect detail the notion that in large groups there is a diffusion of responsibility – the larger the group the greater the diffusion. In a city the degree of diffusion is so great that it is often forgotten all together. Most people choose to focus on their own lives and ignore their role as individuals in a community. On a nation wide scale, the diffusion is far greater – indeed it is only thanks to patriotic symbols as well as a common culture and language that individuals are able to grapple with nation-wide issues at all. The majority simply goes about their lives with an exponentially decreasing level of interaction as their lives are examined from a local perspective to a national perspective. That is why those an individual that chooses to tackle such an institutionalized issue as school meals really stands out to me. While it is true that our small daily activities can aggregate into a much larger impact on the world (think globally, act locally), it is important to remember that our society is flexible.

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