An apparatus that will allow collection and temporary storage of gaseous fuels harvested from shallow waters.
Visually explained in the video below:
The bucket works as an underwater bell. After bleeding the air from it, it can be filled up with gas which can then be transferred to the condom without any pressure pump. In return, the condom can be used to find out if the gas contains energy and if so, as a makeshift container for later.
These problems we are dealing with, so-called wicked problems or hyper objects such as climate change, stay kind of vague and in the air. We know it is happening, however, we do not necessarily know how our own lifestyle is contributing to it. Collectively, we are the problem, but our individual life choices are just a thimble in the ocean. The scale of our society has become so big and ungraspable that we can’t even imagine that the most mundane things such as drinking coffee in the morning are directly contributing to the fact that climate change is happening. These processes, acts, lifestyles and consequences have become so intertwined and entangled with each other that we have become unable to digest them anymore and comprehend how they are related to each other and ourselves. It is not the individual act that creates a problem, it is the collective realization of our desires when it becomes problematic. But if so, how do we justify our material desires?
According to Buckminster Fuller; ‘Society operates on the theory that specialization is the key to success, not realizing that specialization precludes comprehensive thinking’. Outside of our specialized subjects, the work we perform daily in order to survive within this system, we are living in some sort of ‘‘groovy’’ dimension. One where we observe the things we do and use daily in a romantic way, only looking at them in terms of appearance and promises rather than their relationships within these bigger systems and the part that they (and thus we) play in it. We judge the new iPhone against the older model, instead of looking at the implications of another product that makes the older version obsolete.
As a result of the scale and entanglement of todays world, there is a collective feeling amongst us that the world outside of our own individual world is unchangeable. Because of this we have turned to ourselves and hope that our individual choices influence the world outside of our individual perception. Of course this has been fully encapsulated by the marketing machine that is omnipresent in our society, in the words of Hal Foster; ‘Desire is not only registered in products today, it is specified there: a self interpellation of ‘’hey, that’s me’’ greets the consumer in catalogues and on-line’.
We buy our own identities. If you want to change the world, all you have to do is buy yourself a sustainable lifestyle; biological meat, soap bars, ecological toilet paper, and of course an electric car. You can buy yourself a clean consciousness. But we are only looking at what the electric car itself is and compare it to the previous product, rather than what the implications of the product could be. ‘Everything we own contains traces of the vast, complex problem that is atmospheric pollution … and may help to problematize the part we all play in it.’* In order to become aware of the part that we all play in this, we should first of all become aware of our intimate relationship with it.
*Noortje Marres, Labour of Interpretation
From here, I would like to make a distinction between devices and things, according to Peter-Paul Verbeek. As I understand it; A wood stove is considered a thing, a thing you have to actively maintain while using it. You have to get wood, light the fire and maintain the fire to stay warm. The opposite of this is a central heating boiler. You set the temperature and it automatically warms your house and maintains all (hidden) infrastructure to do so. In the end, both of them will get the job done, but we all know which of the two will be the most rewarding.
No start button, no engine lights, everything in plain sight and accessible. The engine sound can either drive you crazy or make you feel comfortable and at home, depending on your experience. Built before emission standards, the smell of exhaust fumes lingers on your clothes after driving. A 0.6 liter single cillinder engine, pushing 40 horses, cooled by air and oil.
Unrefined yet refined enough to function. A thing, rather than a device. It needs to be operated with care. Nothing is telling you what is going on inside except the sound and the feeling of the cycle itself. You need to be aware of the consequences of your actions, know what the influence of your behaviour is on the system.
I have often heard the phrase: ‘‘this is the world we live in, deal with it.’’ But if this world we live in is the cause for global breakdown, over-extraction of resources and inequality all over the world, why do we keep holding on to this idea of progress by growth? By now, most of us are aware of the consequences but we also accept it as a given. As if the world around us is set in stone and history is not made by us. In some way, we could even say that some of us are pretending not to be the cause of it or trying our best to buy a different reality through mass consumption.
We are in a time and place where we should focus on imagining how we could change the way our society works, make it more inclusive and divide the wealth we have accumulated equally. But ’there are eras of human history in which the channels of thought have been too deeply cut … and best was a matter of dogma’.* Today, in 2021, I truly believe that the best we are striving for has become a dogma. A goal that we are blindly following without thinking about the consequences and counting on technology to save us.
*Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
‘Er was eens een man die achter zijn roeiboot een ton had vastgemaakt, met de opening onder water. Hij wierp zijn hengel uit en na een uurtje keerde hij huiswaarts met vis en gas om de beestjes op te bakken.’
Vereniging voor Brongas Nederland
‘There was once a man who had tied a barrel behind his rowboat with the opening facing down. He cast his fishing rod and after an hour he returned home with fish and gas to fry them.’
A local, sustainable and ethical source of fuel, imagine..