WATER PURIFICATION SYSTEMS (WPS)

This is a replica of a homemade Water Purification System that I designed for myself to use last summer as I spent a month in the desert outside of Bend, Oregon. I wore a wearable home, equipped with a "toolbelt", a tazer and pack of 9V batteries, solar-recording equipment from sponsor companies like Spy Emporium, pockets for a month's worth of vitamins and other compact foodsource, compass, diary, analog camera, a prototype R.I.M. device coupled with a good sat phone. People joined me for days at a time, sometimes strangers and sometimes planned meetings, like John Barnes. The homemade WPS was made from three small plastic bottles I found on the way. With some lightweight fabric I made three pouches - the first held pebbles, the second - sand, and the third held carbon from crushed charcoal. (Carbon from a coconut shell is what I used in the replica at the Biennial.)
Partly, using myself as a control subject and nature as the variable was a way to experiment closely and see the results on a person as he or she uses these inventions. The homemade WPS will now go through a more conclusive scientific scrutiny and then I would like to make the plans accessible to the most virtually remote areas of the world. Places having problems with water privatization. One of my main concerns is the future of water. As we begin to commodify and privatize this natural resource, many things happen. In most cases it becomes cleaner and healthier. However, simultaneously, for many it becomes unaffordable. The plans for this sculpture will allow many people the ability and ease to drink cleaner water where once they could not afford it (in Bolivia, for example, 20% of a family’s income is put towards clean water even now after the local privatization scandal) through the reuse of everyday materials.
The wearable home that I show here is a prototype, to be used for the future of water navigation. Parts of the home will be tested this weekend. Our physical landscape is rapidly changing. When our land becomes a series of small islands, some will navigate with homemade (and cumbersome) floatation devices. Some will confine themselves to tiny quadrants of earth, some will use a wearable home that allows him or her to swiftly traverse through this new terrain.

- R&D NOTEBOOK PAGES FROM THE BADLANDS OUTSIDE OF BEND, OR. -

What happens in the water sector is to a large degree the consequence of decisions, activities, and progress in other sectors. Collaboration and exchanges across political borders and between sectors can generate benefits of multiple water availability and development options, and many transboundary/ transnational variations and rural/urban linkages. New technologies in communication and biotechnology has made more possibilities for monitoring and improving water conditions/wastewater treatment. Many positive advances continue to be made to protect this natural/necessary resource, however, continuing to raise consciousness and bring new ideas/strategies to the table is what we strive to do.