< a song for bela >

i’ve been documenting
all my life in dark black ink

you’ve been capturing me
all this while in your fiberous means

we’ve been collaborating
for so long that i failed to see

now we’re discussing
how to continue this beautiful thing

all the things that we make
we make in order to communicate
stories we want to tell
the ones that he doesn’t know so well

he’s been struggling
fifteen years to manage his team

they’re developing
a tool for us to make beautiful things

soon they’re releasing
the version that includes 3D things

all the things that they make
they make in order to communicate
stories they want to tell
the ones that she does not know so well

she’s been crocheting
late at night that her eyes are dim

surrounded by things that she likes
her hands love playing with fibers and spikes

all the things that she makes
she makes in order to communicate
stories she wants to tell
the ones that you don’t know so well

you’ve been jumping
up and and up and up and down

with every leap that you take
you transport us to a super soft space

all the things that you make
you make in order to communicate
stories you want to tell
the ones that i don’t know so well

Koh Lon, 6/7/2018

The Second Best Thing about Dinacon
Sitting on the porch
crochetting plarn
listening to friends talk
about why we’re all here
and why we’ll all come back
together again.

Koh Lon, 7/7/2018

The Third Best Thing about Dinacon
Is more important than the first
we’re in love
but still in the early stages of this relationship
learning to make meaningful connections
between zeros and cocoanuts
between dinaflagulance and ones

as love-affairs go
we worry about making this one last
our fear of rejection
growing every day we don’t act

but let us not expect
too much too soon
let us become great listeners
observers, smellers, touchers and feelers,
“amazing” organs
of a loving -ism.

Bangkok, 20/7/2018

The Least Best Thing about Dinacon
Were we just flirting with nature?
making believe
that it is on par with our art science technology mix
the cocktail that keeps us going
producing knowledge
and plastic.

Berlin, 30/8/2019

Originals:

>> https://www.dinacon.org/2018/08/03/ode-to-dinacon/

My plans for Dinacon were to develop An Underwater Studio Practice, but when I arrived and began going underwater to crochet and (thanks to Kitty) discovered plarn (plastic yarn), this practice lead me to write a story about ocean plastic as the result of our human ability to make.

>> https://www.dinacon.org/2018/07/24/crochetteering-a-tale-of-fishy-innovation/
>> https://www.dinacon.org/2018/06/02/an-underwater-studio-practice/
Flickr set >> https://www.flickr.com/photos/plusea/albums/72157696220704072

Chapter 1: The FPEA

One day all the fish in all the oceans complained to all the humans on all the lands about all the plastic in all the oceans. The humans were upset by this complaint be- cause although they had been suspecting for some time that all their plastic ending up in all the oceans was not a good thing, they had not done anything about it. The humans told the fish their complaint was unwarranted and continued to ignore a fact. The fish told the humans that they would result to drastic measures and threatened with bio-terrorism. Their equivalent of suicide bombing would mean swarms of fish would swim to highly toxic water to intoxicate themselves with pollution that would travel all the way up the food-chain to kill “innocent” humans.

This posed a serious thread that the humans could not choose to ignore. A committee was voted into action. This committee met for several week to come up with a very creative solution. And this was their conclusion:

Plastic is in fact a valuable resource and the fish have not been able to recognise this. Humans must educate fish on how they can use this resource to their own benefit.

As part of this Fish Plastics Education Act, makers and plastics technologists were recruited to go underwater and teach the fish how to make useful things from the plastics in their oceans.
After only a few months of running this programme it was deemed a huge success. This fish were thrilled by all the possibilities available to them and had many ideas for “up-cycling” the plastics in their oceans. But there was a problem, the fish were not able to make the things the humans were showing them themselves. Without hand and big enough brains, they could not man the machines or manipulate the materials. The human answer to this dilemma was to hire a fill-time crew of professional makers to spend their days underwater making whatever the fish told them to out of plastic.

Chapter 2: Plarn
Implementing the Fish Plastic Education Act was a huge undertaking that required all the humans in all the lands to cooperate. Although lands in which little or no fish were part of the traditional diet were reluctant to make as much effort.
Shortly after signing the Act, the trans-national Fish Plastic Education Association was founded and began recruiting maker all over the world. These makers put together a catalog of designs that could be made from the plastic in the oceans. The catalog was printed on recycled ocean plastic paper and posted in every body of water.
The orders division of the FPEA began taking orders right away and makers all over the world were put to work to fulfil these orders.
While the first edition of the order catalog contained designs for custom 3D printed prosthesis, sports equipment and educational games, it was soon updated with designs based on what the fish were actually ordering. More than 90% of all orders were for fashion items – clothing and accessories.
Among the first most popular rends were stripy tank tops and cuttlefish skirts crochet from plarn – a yarn made from discarded plastic bags. Especially in coastal regions with high fish populations the FPEA began recruiting large numbers of crochetteers to fulfil these orders.
Crochetteers, as they called themselves, established a whole new profession around the craft of crochet plarn fashion. Quickly moving on from stripy vests to high-tech wearables and PE-Textiles (Plastic Electronic Textiles).

Chapter 3: Crochetteering

Fish, it turned out, were much more tech-savvy than humans, within only a few years every fish in the ocean was a digital native. As a collective super-organism, fish were the first to adopt ocean-wide wearable technology which they used primarily for data collection. Just like everything else that they depended on in their lives, the data they collected, belonged to The Ocean. The Ocean accumulated this data and every fish had unrestricted access so that they could know the effects of their behaviour on their ecosystem.
Crochetteers were at the forefront of developing these underwater wearable technologies and the first makers to fully comply with the fish’s demand for a zero waste, fully circular innovation process. “Crochetteering” because the term used to describe this holistic techno-craft invention process that only considers solutions that solve for the Whole Earth Equation (WEE) with a time-factor of <5 years. This means that every design in the Ocean Plastic Design Catalog has it’s full life-cycle planned in ahead. Resources remain resources. Waste becomes obsolete.

Chapter 4: Fishy Factors

Crochetteering’s success relied on some fishy factors. These became more apparent, the harder humans tried (and failed) to replicate crochetteering’s success for themselves.
Most notable of these factors was the fish’s concept of “The Ocean” – their inability to perceive themselves as individual entities, separate from their habitat, and their inability to to comprehend the concept of waste – proved impossible for humans to replicate.
In attempts to attain such fish states of mind, humans tried many things. Some modified their genes, few went to live among them, many studid them intensely. But to this date human have not been successful in evolving their individuality back into a super-organismic state of mind.
With over 1/3 of the world’s human population now employed by the FPEA, global production of plastics has decreased by more than half, simply because makers are so busy making and remaking ocean plastic designs for fish that they don’t have time to make for humans.
While the majority of makers employed by the FPEA state they are happy living out their lives in service of the fish, there has recently been an increase in makers asking “What Next?” – must humans remain sub-servant to other life-forms in order to fulfil their role in the Whole Earth Equation?

Crochetteering – a tale of fishy innovation
A good-night story for Dinaconnaisseurs

europe is at peace here
i’m going to need to add wine to the stew
we should have our own ali express and sell our sinuses to china

we are sensors
squeeze, we need to squeeze
maybe there was another civilization before…

do you want to solder one?
yeah, yeah, yeah

i’m in love with machines but i’m fighting with it,
because what does it have to do with people

whatever is bitter is calming

you exhale all your breath and then we go in the water
the cold water helps the oxygen to go into every cell
every lazy cell

3D printing is all about making fast objects
ephimeral sculptures that grow

i’m not talking about the global dumpling
planetairy dumpings, every culture has their own fillings
food, a medium for understanding how we make sense of the world

sedimentation, fermentations, destillation
i thought they were green last night

observe what is happening right now
on the toilet, the seat keeps falling down
common sense

there’s an elegance to a circuit having minmal components
maybe the stop button can be added afterwards, this is just reset
i really like that machines run on electricity

psychoactive plants of the northern hemosphere are more demanding
i always imagine jumping into the other wall and bouncing off
the effect is more pleasant than the first one

can i have some of your thyme?

while downloading the plan we listen to radioactivity
it was really custom toys in russia, burning plastic bags and dripping
fermenting knowledge, to preserve it and make it more digestable

where does the abuse start?
power in the hands of a giant company
it’s nice to be important, but it’s more important to be nice

knowledge is value
i just want to enjoy
YOLO

soca souvenier
made by an artisan 3D printer
we created something that will be here for at least 100 000 years

tina, tina, what’s up?
we have a plan
next year we will sell out sinuses to china

i still have to shave

While running KOBAKANT’s KOBA ETextile Tailorshop, I attempted to capture a behind-the-scenes window into my expectations for the project and how they changed over time as we interacted with our customers and continued to dream about potential future customers.

I used my typewriter and twitter to write and publish these letters on an irregular, but sometimes weekly basis.

Links:
#dearFutureKobaCustomer >> https://twitter.com/hashtag/dearFutureKobaCustomer?src=hashtag_click
KOBA >> http://www.kobakant.at/KOBA/
Photos >> https://www.flickr.com/photos/plusea/sets/72157703356103685/

stars bright, threads alight
the tools we use are not all right.

the shuttle of progress wove traces that now control us
these powerful structures must come undone.

copper of thread, carbon of fiber, pigment of change
react to our heated resistance!

standing on common ground,
our bodies clad in textile sensors/electronic textiles,
we are shocked,
we are grounded.
glad to have founded
this wicked community.

our fabrics have power,
yet they resist
their capacity
to exploit.

when ends fray
there is cross-talk between traces.

the disconnected pin listens to noise
of angels dancing.

+ – + – + – + – + – + – + – + – + – + – + – + – + – + – + – + – + – +

the studio provides
infrastructure
shelter
space

outside these walls there are different materials
challenges
new places
improvised spaces
packing to leave should not be hard

as much as the act of making-is a form of creative expression
it’s also a means | of experiencing the world

shrinking tube, ripping seams, sewing circuits, planning projects
with my tools at hand i pay attention to things i’ve never seen before
my tools translate what i can not explain
i learn

my studio provides
infrastructure
shelter
space
and a means of experiencing the world

Making of >> https://www.kobakant.at/DIY/?p=5712

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