Blow up by Snibbe

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Blow Up records, amplifies, and projects human breath into a room-sized field of wind. The installation comprises two devices. The first is a rectangular array of twelve small impellers, which stands on a table on one side of the gallery. This small input device is electronically linked to a large wall of twelve electric fans, which divides the gallery in half. Each tabletop impeller is spatially and temporally synchronized to a corresponding fan in the wall, so that the speed and relative movements of each impeller are replicated by the fans’ speeds and movements. When “senders” blow into the first device, “receivers” experience the magnified breathing patterns with their entire bodies. When “senders” stop blowing, the wall continues to play back the most recent breathing pattern, captured in an amplified loop, until someone inspires a new pattern.

In the physical world, we become aware of our bodies through transactions with other phenomena. We hear our voices via the vibration of air, we see our faces via the bending of light, and we mark our comings and goings via the signs we leave on the furniture of our everyday lives. Breath is as essential attribute of one’s person, whose existence we may only infer through other media: the sight of our chest rising and falling, the sound of air rushing into our sinuses, the disturbance of the atmosphere near our skin. We mentally connect this evidence-of-breath into a coherent whole, and then label it “my breath”. Yet what distinguishes ”my breath“ from mere air and, further, what distinguishes this breath from my person?

Blow Up’s simultaneous processes of recording, translation and amplification is meant to increase the breath’s salience and legibility, while detaching the breath from the body that allegedly produced it. The process of observing this translation and translocation of respiratory activity may prompt the sender to consider the connection between one’s person and the air it exchanges, and, more broadly, the existence of any self independent of the air which signals its presence.

Circular Breathing, 2002

Circular Breathing is a personal breath recorder. By breathing and blowing into the mouthpiece, the viewer can record a breath pattern. After letting go of the button, the breath pattern plays back indefinitely, looping from start to finish. The piece amplifies the circular process of breathing into a circular recording. The work also mimics looped composition - the breath patterns are like break beats - the carefully chosen segments of sound that make up sampled music. With practice, viewers can also create seamless air loops. The breath impart to the fan a lifelike quality, which challenges viewers to contemplate the everyday equation of breath with life.

About the Breath Series

This series of works explore the recording, playback and amplification of breath through electromechanical processes. Each piece is a phenomenological experiment in pure body intelligence. How is the disembodied representation of breath still human? How is a breath truly ones own, if it can be precisely reproduced? What connects the airflow from one moment to the next as a perceived continuity we label as breath? What ownership do we have over breath, and how can we justly label a breath as my breath when it is an equal exchange - parts of ourselves continuously being exchanged for parts of our environment? What are the implications of imposing our bodies on technology rather than the inverted relationship we often experience? How small is the least measurable expression of life and personality?

How Turbines Work

Wind turbines today are more complex than windmills and simple wind turbines of the past. The image below shows the major components of a modern wind turbine.

[image from: Iowa Energy Center's Wind Energy Manual]

The rotor, which consists of wood or fiberglass blades, collects the energy of the wind. It is connected to hub which is connected to the main shaft, as shown. Most new turbines work on the principle of lift. Just as air flows over an airplane wing and causes the plane to lift, turbines used for power generation have wings that are shaped to allow air to flow over them in such a way that the wings are not pushed, but are caused to lift. This causes the rotor to turn.

Turbines use the principle of lift, which allows the rotational speed of the blades to actually surpass the wind speed. This is described quantitatively by the tip speed ratio: the ratio of the rotation blade speed to the wind speed. Turbines today that employ lift technology can reach tip speed ratios of approximately 10.

The generator is where the electricity is produced by rotating a coil of wires in a magnetic field. Depending on the turbine, either alternating current (AC) or direct current (DC) electricity is generated. A more in depth discussion of AC and DC is included later in the Converting Electricity part of this section.

There is some general terminology that is useful to know when discussing wind turbine technology. The cut-in speed, typically 7 to 10 mph, is the minimum wind speed required for the turbine to start generating electricity. Rated speed, generally 25 to 35 mph, is the minimum speed required for the turbine to generate at its rated power.

HOW DOES WIND ENERGY WORK?

Wind turbine blades capture wind energy, a form of mechanical energy, and put it to work turning a drive shaft, gearbox, and generator to produce electrical energy. Many factors affect wind turbine efficiency including turbine blade aerodynamics. Large utility-scale wind turbines can now generate more than a megawatt (1,000,000 watts) of electrical power each and deliver electricity directly into the electric grid. These turbines are over 200 feet high at the rotor hub and have blades which are 220 feet or more in diameter. Thus, the blades of a single turbine may sweep an area 80% of the size of a football field. Utility scale turbines are generally grouped together in “wind farms.” The turbines themselves take up little space, just the area of their bases and access roads, so they are compatible with other land uses including farming. Turbines may also be installed off-shore over water where there is higher and more consistent wind speed. Each wind turbine is controlled by computer and in large projects is connected to a central computer where the turbines can be monitored. Wind turbines are designed with cut-in wind speeds and cut-out speeds (i.e. the wind speeds when the turbines start turning or shut off to prevent drive train damage). Typically, maximum electric generation occurs at speeds of 30-35mph. Over the course of one year, well-sited wind power plants operate at an average of 30-35% of their rated capacity.

Europe: Alternative Energy Iceland - Geothermal

Japan's Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI) has won an order from Reykjavik Energy, a city-owned utility in Iceland, to build two 40 MW (megawatt) geothermal power plants at Hellisheidi, approximately 20 kilometers east of Reykjavik. The order marks the eighth geothermal power plant assigned to MHI by the utility provider.

Iceland, known as the "Land of Fire and Ice," is located where the Eurasian and North American plates meet. A country of numerous volcanoes, Iceland is well suited to use of geothermal energy. Because of abundant water supply, however, the country relies on hydroelectric generation to meet approximately 90% of its power demand, but the remainder depends chiefly on geothermal power. Very few plants use fossil fuels such as coal or oil as their energy source. In this way, Iceland obtains almost its entire power supply from clean energy resources.

Outside Japan, to date MHI has delivered geothermal power plants to 11 countries worldwide, including Iceland, the United States, Mexico, the Philippines, Indonesia, New Zealand, Costa Rica, El Salvador and Kenya. Their combined power output exceeds 2 GigaWatts.

Energy in Los Angeles

Two agreements have just been recently approved by the city council of Los Angeles. And this is part of their move towards making the city use more clean energy and because of the agreements, it does look like 70,000 would be given clean energy by the city. Such would be taking effect come April 1st.

H. David Nahai is the Board of Water and Power Commissioners’ president and head and he does express, “This is an excellent opportunity to immediately increase the amount of clean, renewable energy for the City of Los Angeles. LADWP is taking a multi-pronged approach to meeting its RPS commitment of 20% by 2010. The agency is utilizing power purchase agreements such as this as a bridge to increasing our supply of renewable energy in the short term, while pursuing plans to build renewable power generation for ownership over the long term.”

Human breathing

Human Respiratory Rate Variability File. Human breathing variability file used for the study. This is the raw data from a spontaneously breathing healthy female volunteer. The mean rate was 13.4 ± 2.0 breaths/min (shown as the red line). There are 1587 breaths in this file. With BVV, the ventilator is configured as a volume divider at a fixed minute ventilation so that respiratory rate × tidal volume product is constant. Thus the breath-by-breath volume related to instantaneous respiratory rate obtained from sequentially reading the above file in any given experiment is obtained from the minute ventilation/[(instantaneous breath rate/13.4) × chosen mean rate]. Analysis reveals that these data have fractal characteristics.