Great to see the Nuna Green Wall Irrigation System going up over the Easter school holidays at Avenue Primary School. We have been working with Mac Van Dam with support from a UCL EPSRC Impact Acceleration Account (Circular Economy Innovation Challenge Grant Award) to add in some edge AI to their design. This first step was getting a monolithic off grid pumping system working, next up is creating a modular system.

We have been documenting the project as we go to remind ourselves of the different off-grid approaches we are experimenting with. Initial tests involved working out the power requirements needed to pump water up a height of 7m - turns out gravity does have an impact on lifting a head of water. (Video from tests a month or so ago)

We used the DJI Mini 4 to get some footage of the install process. The second day of filming was quite windy making getting slow close up shots of the planters in the wall tricky. Ended up shooting way more footage than I would have liked (3 batteries worth) but did some experimenting with vertical filming and filming in D-Log. Results below.

3 minute landscape

30 second portrait

Looking forward to working on the distributed micro version of this over the next few months.

Joined the launch of BBC Arena in London map launch by Leah and Duncan. I liked the idea of remixing in “time and space” - remixing the Arena archive to explore the content in different contexts. Night and Day remixed clips from the 700+ films into a 24 hour program where time in film reflects time in real life. The spatial history launched at the event creates a different way to explore the stories in the context of space.

From the launch blurb:

“BBC Arena in London launch Celebrate the launch of Arena in London, a digital resource showing the contribution the series has made to the city’s cultural landscape. From its beginnings in 1975, BBC Arena’s filmic essays pioneered a new form of cultural storytelling to become the most influential and innovative arts programme ever made for television. This project has been timed to commemorate BBC Arena’s 50th anniversary, and brings together archival material, location‑based stories and newly recorded interviews to offer unique insights into the programme’s contribution to the city’s cultural landscape. This event will introduce you to a new UCL digital humanities project created in collaboration with the BBC Arena team from its extensive programme archive.

• Anthony Wall, distinguished filmmaker and the longest‑serving editor of BBC Arena, reflecting on his many years shaping the series;
• Finbarr Whooley, Director of Content at Museum of London, discussing the use of mapping and filmic material in curating London’s cultural history
• Michael Hrebeniak, discussing the research informing Bottled Neon, his forthcoming BFI book on the cultural history of Arena and the making of the BBC Arena London Memory Map
• The team behind Memory Mapper, an open-source digital tool for mapping cultural heritage and stories of places, which has been responsible for City of Women London (2022) and Lost & Found: A European Literary Map of London (2024).”

More on the Night and Day folms here: https://nightandday.arenahotel.tv/garfield

Also some work on project Yeo, tinkering with a new Arduino UNO Q And getting big panel connected to power RPi5. The UNO Q seems to be ok running acoupi - some mixed success (worked for a while, then I managed to crash it and it didn’t recover!)- looks like it could be a useful for birdnet installs

Looking at links.duncanwilson.com, these parts of the internet crossed my path this week:

• some food recipes! pancakes