Laura Watts
Laura Watts is a form of modern Visionary, an ”Etnoprapher of Futures.” And she works with the method of writing to get a hold of that future. Laura works interdisciplinary since she is scientist, poet, artist and antropolog.
She has dedicated her professional career to trying to blend human worlds science, art, everyday life and history, both to make people get an insight in her most frequent field study, the Orkney islands, but also make us understand that the world is what we create. She means that writing is one of the main keys to what the future will bring. That is why we need to write about it.
Chosen Work
Doggerland Citizen
In the project Doggerland Citizen She takes upon herself the task of creating a new country on the plate that is called the ”real atlantis” by som scientists. Doggerland I is the highlands of the north sea and 10000 years ago doggerland was a place were people lived. A place that connected the British main island to the rest of Europe.
Doggerland probably got swiped away by a great tsunami caused by an earthquake that made the Storegga slide and got burry in the sea together with the civilisation that was there.
Laura describes in her website a Doggerland inhabited by the ocean. Inhabbited by the creatures connected to the ocean. The world under the surface is volatile and free. You can not capture the north sea or doggerland. And if you believe in it it can become a spearte country. A country for people who believe I
It is not hard to make a country. You just make a Flag, mark your teritory, create a university, baby also a government. And there you have it. It is a place for activity, both human and non human. It is the only country without boundrys, because you can not contain it. To me, the project is about borders and edges and how they are disolving in the north sea.
”Doggerland looks out and upwards, across the sea and towards the stars. Doggerland is a land that has no borders, that cannot be contained, its surface flows, sinks, and rises.” Laura Watts
Scientific background
Wave Energy
Wave power is the combined name for capturing the massive amount of energy that the ocean holds. Since the energy crisis in the seventies researchers have tried to get energy from this vast organsim, up until now there has been several attempts but the difficulty have lied in being able to harvest energy both in calm water and in storm. The biggest problems that the scientists have had is actually that the waves have been to high and thereby smashing the power plants or turbines
Energy removed from the waves may also affect the shoreline, resulting in a recommendation in many sites that the power plants remain a considerable distance from the shore wich is hard to do
Different types off wave power.
(in my opinion) the most promising ones
Oscillating water column (OWC)
This is a Wave energy converter that harness energy from the oscillation of the seawater inside a chamber that is hollow The air pressurs moves a turbine caused by the action of waves. OWCs have shown promise as a renewable energy source with low environmental impact. They are often placed on locations with a lot of weather to get as much waves as they can. But that can also be a problem if a storm comes. There is one well working OWC plant in scottland
PowerBuoy
This method uses the same tactics as a buoy in the ocean that is pulled up a down by the waves creating magnetism with can become power. This is sort of like the windmill of wave power. It could for example be placed in a group of many out on the ocean generating a lot of power. They have to be quite Multiplied to be efficient.
Pelamis Wave Power
designed and manufactured the Pelamis Wave Energy Converter – a technology that uses the motion of ocean surface waves to create electricity. The leading company that made these has gone ”bankrupt” and there are currently no active Pelamises
Wave power in Bergen
Toftestallen in Øygarden is a bay facing the North Sea. This has been a popular place for wave watching for a long time.
After the oil crisis in the seventies Norway started to look at new ways of utilizing there natural renewable resources.
1985. Two private companys built Wave power plants in Øygarden outside of bergen. One of the type OWC and one was made with ”kilerenneprinsippet”. The OWC one got broken in a storm 3 years after operations started in 1988. The other started in 1988, but had an accident with an explosion with did not get fixed after. That lead to an even worse decay made by the ruff weather
Right now there is not much happening for Norwegian wave power. But there is a Swedish company from Gothenburg that is testing the Power Buoy in the area of Trondheim
References and links
Sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wave_power
https://no.wikibooks.org/wiki/Bølgekraft/Bølgekraftens_grunnleggende_utfordringer
https://www.waves4power.com/waves4power-the-solution/
https://friskluft.ketilmo.no/bolgekraftverkene-i-oygarden/
Methods
Laura Watts always tries to mix her writing media. Never to get
stuck in one area. That is why she uses poems in her anthropology texts and scientific research in her arts. Going up and down between.
To change (alter/make) the future, we need to look at the present from different angles. Todays world have stagnated she says. Scientists work to optimize what is already there. Imagination has gone lost and we need to find it again.
This is why writing is so great, because it’s is very easy to explore new worlds. To paint a full blown senario that pops into peoples heads and becomes new ideas. It is In a way a bridge between here and the future
Laura has also been working more freely with art and future maps and actions. Tis is a project which method I would tried to copy from a 1 month residency at Seedbox
”A single handmade book with interventions and poems was created as part of my one month residency at Seedbox, Environmental Humanities Collaboratory. This included the ‘Seedbox by Starlight‘ poem sequence with a fold-out constellation map and transparent overlay to show the stars over planet Seedbox.
As part of my performance of poems at Seedbox, I also created a ‘seed tray’ of poems that were read, and then planted in soil in a jar, which has now been sealed and handed over to Seedbox researchers.” Laura Watts
Laura has also been working more freely with art and future maps and actions. Tis is a project which method I would tried to copy from a 1 month residency at Seedbox
Keywords
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Edge
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Middle
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Ethnography of the future
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Land-made People, People-made Land
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Harvest
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Entropy
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Local but Global
Own Exploration
