1. Data portrait of a potato
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[NL] De verse aardappel die we op de markt kopen heeft hoogstwaarschijnlijk heel andere sporen nagelaten in onze digitale data-architecturen dan de ingevroren aardappel waarmee de fameuse 'Mitraillette' wordt gemaakt in de snackbar verderop. Ook de zoete aardappel, aardappelzetmeel of de machines waarmee de aardappels worden gerooid, en oh ja, ook de mensen die ze telen en verkopen; allen zijn ze vertegenwoordigd met labels en cijfers in databanken over export en import in de Europese Unie, in België, in het Brussels Gewest en misschien ook wel in de gemeente Brussel. Op basis van die cijfers worden grote verdragen onderhandeld zoals onder andere het TTIP, het Trans-Atlantisch Vrijhandels- en Investeringsverdrag tussen Europa en de VS. In samenwerking met mensen uit de buurt, maar ook met een experte als Karin Ulmer, die al meer dan tien jaar de Europese en internationale voedingspolitiek op de voet volgt, creëren we speelse maar kritische portretten van de aardappel in al zijn data-connecties en -disconnecties.
[ENG] The fresh potato we buy at the market will most probably have left very different traces in our digital data-architectures than the frozen sliced potato that is used for the famous 'Mitraillette' in the closest snackbar. Also the sweet potato, the potato flour or the machines that are used to harvest the potato, and oh yes, the people who cultivate and distribute them, all of them are represented with labels and numbers in databases about export and import in the European Union, in Belgium, in the Region of Brussels and who knows, also in the town of Brussels? Big treaties are being negociated based ont hese numbers, like f.e. the TTIP, The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership between Europe and the US.
In collaboration with people from the neighbourhood, but also with an expert like Karin Ulmer, who has been following the European and international food policies for more than ten years, we will create playful but critical portraits of the potato in all its data connections and disconnections.
do we take a political stand in here? is it possible not to take position?
we need clear reason why we want to work on this
"a portrait of the potato"
as a way to interrogate the agreement/the neighbourhood.... tools is the statistics potato as methodology.
-> can be abstract work on the statistics
-> interview people who grow them, fight against GMO-potato
present as a game: look at potato & all its data-attachments/detachments
go in the neighbourhood, look at different species present, if they're represented in the statistics
Karin talking about the context of the TTIP agreement
0701 Potatoes, fresh or chilled
0701 potatoes, fresh or chilled
0710 Vegetables (uncooked or cooked by steaming or boiling in water), frozen0710 10 potatoes
0712 Dried vegetables, whole, cut, sliced, broken or in powder, but not further prepared
0712 90 05 potatoes, whether or not cut or sliced but not further prepared
0714 Manioc, arrowroot, salep, Jerusalem artichokes, sweet potatoes and similar roots and tubers with high starch or inulin content, fresh, chilled, frozen or dried, whether or not sliced or in the form of pellets; sago pith
0714 Manioc, arrowroot, salep, Jerusalem artichokes, sweet potatoes and similar roots and tubers with high starch or inulin content, fresh, chilled, frozen or dried, whether or not sliced or in the form of pellets; sago pith
0714 20 Sweet potatoes
1105 Flour, meal, powder, flakes, granules and pellets of potatoes
1105 Flour, meal, powder, flakes, granules and pellets of potatoes
1108 Starches; inulin
1108 13 potato starch
2001 Vegetables, fruit, nuts and other edible parts of plants, prepared or preserved by vinegar or acetic acid
2001 90 40 Yams, sweet potatoes and similar edible parts of plants containing 5 % or more by weight of starch
2001 90 97 81 potatoes and products thereof
2004 Other vegetables prepared or preserved otherwise than by vinegar or acetic acid, frozen, other than products of heading 2006
2004 10 potatoes
2005 Other vegetables prepared or preserved otherwise than by vinegar or acetic acid, not frozen, other than products of heading 2006
2005 20 potatoes
2008 Fruit, nuts and other edible parts of plants, otherwise prepared or preserved, whether or not containing added sugar or other sweetening matter or spirit, not elsewhere specified or included
2008 99 91 Yams, sweet potatoes and similar edible parts of plants, containing 5 % or more by weight of starch
8433 Harvesting or threshing machinery, including straw or fodder balers; grass or hay mowers; machines for cleaning, sorting or grading eggs, fruit or other agricultural produce, other than machinery of heading 8437
8433 53 10 potato diggers and potato harvesters
http://exporthelp.europa.eu/thdapp/comext/ComextServlet?action=output&viewName=eur_partners&simDate=20130101&languageId=en&ahscode1=20019040&cb_reporters=000&cb_partners=all&list_years=2013&measureList=iv&measureList=ev
Meeting Karin 20-10
http://www.grain.org/
website on cqrrelations-TTIP
* before: people read documents with the basics of TTIP (Q&A by the Greens), maybe choose their own dataset to bring (experiences, sentiments, games, and numbers...)
check/find Human Scale Development (Barefoot Economics) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manfred_Max_Neef
* look at one product in detail & gather the data: ex. potato vs corn/gmo ('mais has a lot of data') or trademark seeds
http://exporthelp.europa.eu
http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu
http://www.ustr.gov/
on seeds: http://www.worldseed.org/isf/home.html
http://www.euroseeds.org/
http://www.amseed.org/
neonicotinoide (?) (bees dying) // link to film about people pollinizing
* media coverage : bilaterals.org
Departing of TTIP and going plurilateral, Pierre Defraignet
Karin working for Aprodev (member of Concord), in your own capacity
http://www.concordeurope.org/
Karel De Gucht on Gemran TV: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vnOTyOjV4I4
Starting point is a dataset that is used in policy making/regulations & practises
Proposal by Karin Ulmer
http://www.aprodev.eu/
prepare some cases that are taken into the TTIP http://ec.europa.eu/trade/policy/in-focus/ttip/
Negociations are lead from an ideological model that puts € up front - economics of scale-, and leads to more distance between humans and nature, the products that feed them and the way they are produced (based on ideas by Jan Douwe Vanderploeg, Universiteit Wageningen http://www.jandouwevanderploeg.com). All trade is measured by only one criteria: the yield of corn (opbrengst); are not taken into account : the amount of insecticide, the amount of soil, water needed to produce it...). Also a kilo of potatoes has a an ecological footprint. And what if we would look at the true cost of agricultural production? It would show how inefficient the current TTIP is.
Proposal to look at other patterns for growth.
Karin mail: "... Am re-reading a bit of Tony Lawson, Cambridge based economist - the key problem for any change of economic politics is to go beyond the models ie data fed, computerised mathematical general equilibrium models. Hence, art needs or could come in. Ideology won’t help. He said that at any university these days, you could teach leftish or right-ish economics, nobody really cares, but you MUST USE COMPUTERISED MODELs as a method!
On the data, there is much more. I can do a bit of research beforehand on the food streams and food production and energy systems, which would be worthwhile or could be used by myself for other purposes as well, so could be done.
And yes, I’m in this with much of myself, keen to see or explore what ways and means can crack the ‘machine’ (at risk of becoming a totalitarian system), expose the naked emperor, or as you put it – de-throne the algorithm. "
'Brussels Fritten':
Pommes have 5568 CO2 units while an organic potatoe has 138 CO2 emissions. Hence, 40 times as much. Conclusion: Kartoffelsuppe essen! J
Source: eco institute in Darmstadt, Germany
Es gäbe aber auch eine einfachere Faustformel: Mit jeder Verarbeitungsstufe eines Lebensmittels verschlechtert sich die Ökobilanz. So hat nach Untersuchungen des Ökoinstituts Darmstadt eine Biokartoffel einen geradezu babyhaften CO2-Fußabdruck von 138 CO2-Äquivalenten. Als Trockenpulver für Kartoffelpüree ist der Abdruck schon ausgewachsene 3354 Einheiten groß. Und in Form von Pommes aus der Tiefkühltruhe ist die Klima-Fußspur riesenhaft: 5568 Einheiten, das ist 40 Mal so viel wie im Rohzustand. Egal also, wie groß das Biosiegel auf der Pommes-Packung leuchtet, nachhaltig sind Tiefkühl-Pommes nie.
http://www.wiwo.de/unternehmen/energie/lebensmittel-wie-gut-ist-bio-wirklich-seite-4/5154090-4.html
-> idea to go into discussion with Kate Rich, Barbara Van Dyck
Both seems a bit out of focus for Karin
Kate's Feral Trade project seems to be more about an alternative informal way of distribution, can be interesting as an alternative to work with http://www.feraltrade.org
GMO's are a domain in itself, on which there is an ongoing non-discussion with very clear arguments contra and pro; the risk is high that focus will be displaced http://www.fieldliberation.org/en/
-> if Karin is interested in artist perspective, there need to be her expertise present every day, in order to keep exchanging, discussing.... (Karin could possibly come for 1 h a day if it is early morning or late afternoon...)
-> proposal to work on it all together, for 1 week and to organise different subgroups, a department of mapping f.i.
-> the link to Brussels starts to feel a bit artificial (30-9)
De thema's draaien rond de verschillende soorten data die door een stad stromen en die de dagelijkse realiteit vormen waar we deel van uitmaken; de recursieve impact van data op de realiteit die ze vertegenwoordigd is verschillend, links kunnen bestaan van lokaal, Europees naar globaal
Possible 'departments/guests' could be mapping/quantification/regeneration departments or:
* local
Le Début des Haricots? Citymined (water/garden)
Calafou river analysis: http://biolab.tachanka.org/river.html // http://hackteria.org/wiki/DIY_Fluids_Narratives
Rafaela's maps for Parlez-vous St Gilles?
* policy making
Parl-track
EPFSUG
NURPA
* mapping -> routes in the city (who has the dataset? who is the data-expert)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geographic_information_system
It might be interesting to look at how Gis systems are apparently already widely used in policy making on the territory..
geographical tool like Open Street Map is not linked to qualitative data, like f.ex. most current names in certain neighbourhood
-> Pierre Huyghebaert, Pierre Marchand - worked with Olivier Bastin on linking geographical and cadastral data
dataset: BIS/surveillance maps/Open Street Map
-> League de Droits de l'Homme & Antoinette Rouvroy
Martino: I had a chat with a classmate of mine who is also architect, we
talked about GIS systems, which is mapping the city with data basically.
He explained that in Berlin it's apparently already used a lot, the new
developments plan are drawn on the basis of GIS mapping of a
naieghbourhood.. (ie. cost per sq meter, income of residents, etc..)
I find it quite interesting, I'm trying to get him involved cos it would
be nice to revive the "city" track http://www.mybrugis.irisnet.be/MyBruGIS/brugis/
meanwhile in berlin: http://www.stadtentwicklung.berlin.de/geoinformation/fis-broker/
some propaganda on big data and a big city: http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2013/03/big_data_excerpt_how_mike_flowers_revolutionized_new_york_s_building_inspections.html
"Their method was inherently inexact, but the vast amount of data they were able to use more than compensated for the imperfections"
* ecological
-> VTI???
Communicatienetwerken
Sociale media, privacy, telefoon, internet, maar ook: mond op mond - word to mouth - bouche à l'oreille :
Wie bezit de communicatiekanalen ? (Telekommunisten), ? Hoe ziet fysiek condities van een datapakket eruit (Bitnik + Assange)
Hoe komen we aan datasets :-) ?
Mogelijke 'kerngasten'
Seda Gürses, Bits of Freedom, Dimitry Kleiner
Joey de Jong (Waag Society) works on the project Open Kaart (being honest) where they have built a website to make comprehensible what actually happens to your data. Answer a few questions and discover how many agencies know you and what happens with your information.
http://www.newhorizonsfestival.nl/nhf_programma/wat-weet-de-stad-van-jou/
Other possiblities:
Energie:
Verkeer, aanpassing van leefritmes en routines, bio-energie, aardstralen, brandstof, grote bedrijven, electrabel, audio volkswagen ford ... windenergie
Misschien leent dit thema zich voor het genereren van data ? (windmolen, EMF stralen .. )
hmmm ik denk dat we nog even over de relevantie moeten nadenken
Voorbeeldproject, maar niet zo positief: dirtyenergymoney.com
Transport
We hebben hte gehad over de stoplichten politiek en het hacken van flitscamera's omdat hun ip adres op de box genoteerd staat.
Als 'transport' anders zou heten: 'mobiliteit' .. misschien kunnen we dan kijken of Open Streetmap open data in de aanbieding heeft ? of de stad Brussel ?
of naar de datapolitiek van STIB ?
look for databike ...
harley davidson bikers and data truckers ?
Migratie (this seems a large and complicated topic, well known, risk to fall into what we know already, proposal to stay on sthg light)
Een groot voordeel van dit thema is dat de data direct een politieke kleur heeft, en ook dat het over mensen gaat. Wie woont hier al dan niet legaal, waarvandaan en waarheen, hoe definieer je afkomst religie recht in cijfers ?
Met migratie als thema halen we een mogelijkheid binnen om het te hebben over EU werkers versus sans papiers. Misschien vinden we actiegroepen, stadsdiensten die over cijfers beschikken (BIS, .... )