still/open

SEED INFORMATION & PLANTING INSTRUCTIONS:

You received 7 different varieties of cottonseeds:

1) Sicot 75
2) Sicot 71
3) Sicot 81
4) Siokra 24
5) Siokra V-18
6) Sipima 280
7) Pima A8

At this point we don’t know which variety will work best for our ozone sensing purposes. This is a true experiment!

All seed varieties can go directly into the ground and don’t need any special starter procedures. However, you might want to start your seedlings in small containers (like yoghourt jars for example) before you replant them into bigger pots.

1) Plant at least 2 different plants of each variety (you might want to use a few seeds per location/pot).

2) Label each pot/location with the name of the variety you planted.

3) Water regularly and make sure they get plenty of sun exposure.

4) Take pictures of your plants/leaves once a week and email them to:
beatrizdacosta@earthlink.net

Make sure to include a date of the picture taken and clearly indicate which plant variety is depicted on your photograph. Take the first photographs on the day you planted the seeds. From there on take pictures every week on the same day for a period of 4 months.

For any questions/concerns/problems please email me.

I will collect photographs from all participation volunteers (Melbourne, Perth, Brisbane). At the end of the 4 months period (or maybe even earlier) I will post all the pictures with description of the experiment (as well as problems encountered etc…) online. These experiments are part of a larger plant/ozone sensing initiative I am about to embark on for next 9 months or so…. More info on that coming soon!

All the best and thanks for volunteering your time,
Beatriz

http://www.beatrizdacosta.net/stillopen/

I might include a “Part B” to this workshop, but I am working on finding the right materials. This part would involve some gardening and usage of ozone sensitive crops. Stay tuned for more info!

For my portion of the workshop, I developed a hands-on electronics workshop designed to allow participants to build their own air pollution monitoring device. We will use the Arduino open-source physical computing platform and integrate a GPS receiver, pollution sensor, external memory and “pollution readout” LEDs. I designed this workshop with the electronic novice in mind. No background in electronics is needed in order to participate. We will go through a few warm-up exercises first before we assemble our unit. Later during the day, or on day 2 we will take a walk/drive stroll in the city to see what kind of data we might get. The pollution + GPS data will be stored to our external memory. Once we return to the lab we will download the data and convert the file into a Google Earth readable format. This will allow us to retrace our steps and publish our findings online.

This is workshop is part of Preemptive Media’s AIR project.