PROJECT DESCRIPTION

 

An enormous number of people in industrialized countries with sedentary jobs, health concerns, and/or obsessions about their physique voluntarily expend quantities of energy working out on cardiovascular machines, many of which plug into the wall. This is energy that we do not have to be paid to give up, in fact we happily pay for the privilege of expending it. In addition to the ubiquitous private gyms and YMCAs, with their banks of free laborers visible through plate glass windows overlooking a cafe, most universities, corporations, and hotels have their own hidden work-out rooms, with fleets of potential power-generators. Multiply all these gyms by the numbers of machines by the number of hours of average use, and think of the effects if the machines generated (rather than consumed) energy that could be collectively pooled.

 

This project solicits practical proposals:

·to convert power from single machines to a useful secondary purpose, or to divert it to a collective power storage device or to the grid, and/or

·to redesign gyms as power generating hubs, and/or

·to link together gym-powerhubs to create a massive power network.

The project also invites proposals that represent through diagram, image, conceptual text, story, or working model links between bodily expenditure and energy consumption in the current context of global environmental devastation and the US war in Iraq.

Pragmatic designs are requested. Less specifically pragmatic, and more speculative, symbolic, or even satirical, designs are also encouraged. In addition to seeking real solutions to supply energy, the initiative intends to draw attention to everyday energy use, and the links between daily practices and larger social and political events and policies.

This RFSP is not a competition, per se, but will result in a public exhibition of all the submissions. We will not choose, award, or realize a "winning" design.   However, the possibility that one or more of the designs might in fact be adapted is always possible and we will do our best to publicize the work. The incentive for entering might be a desire to contribute to collective problem-solving, to address a challenge with inventiveness, expertise, passion, humor, intelligence, playfulness, seriousness, sarcasm, or any combination of the above, and/or to have one's work presented publicly. All proposals remain the property of their creators.