Project Description

A collection of mobile “desert islands” will be constructed with the help of the public during the Green Prix workshop. Each island will carry empty bottles and writing materials and circulate through the city. A participant can create an anonymous “message in a bottle” which asks for help, whether for romantic advice or philosophical guidance. The author can later log onto the project website to see what solutions people have offered.

Sustainable locomotion is not just about lowering energy consumption and reducing pollution, it is also an opportunity to redefine the social paradigm of transportation. In a car-based culture, we have sacrificed sociability in the way we travel for an ideal of “individual convenience” which ironically impedes rather than promotes mobility in our congested cities.

Archipelago seeks to address issues of urban isolation exacerbated by car culture. The islands act as “vehicles” which carry communication instead of people or goods.
They are nodes in an experimental “social network” created around empathy. Archipelago has no predefined destination. Its mobility is a strategy to initiate chance encounters and encourage people to leave the “desert island” of their normal routine.

Collaborators Needed

L.A. based collaborators are needed! The festival is in September but I would like to start working on it pretty soon.

Kinetic Sculptor:
All of the islands will participate in a green vehicle parade on September 18th in San Jose. I’m looking for someone with a metal shop and the skills to design and build a way for the islands to be mobile, the solution definitely has to be human-powered and/or alternative energy based and fairly reliable.

GPS expert:
Each islands will be fitted with a GPS module and be trackable from the project space. There will also be some workshops on hacking cellphones for GPS happening during 01SJ.

Web Designer:
We will be collaborating together to come up with a inventive and unusual website for this project.

Technical advisor:
I want to have a button you could push on each island which cause an empty bottle and a blank piece of paper slide out, a bit like a vending machine. I would love to find someone who’s technically oriented with awesome prototyping skills to get involved.

If you think you can contribute to this project in any way, or if you have any good ideas, I would love to hear from you: nova (dot) jiang (at) gmail (dot) com

Compensation:
The budget for the whole project is $5000, which isn’t a lot since this is a fairly ambitious project. But if we spend it wisely we should have some left which we can use towards travel expenses to San Jose this September. You will also be credited as an artistic collaborator/ technical advisor on the 01SJ website and be included in all the press materials. Apparently the festival had over 25000 attendees in the last edition and is expecting more this year, so it’s a good opportunity to make work for a huge audience. Plus I really like the 01SJ theme this year, which is “build your own world”. The work they are showing is very oriented towards public participation, urban design and play-all the themes close to my heart.