Google Maps Dowsing

ISEA2008 Juried Exhibition
'Sourcing Water'

Water in Singapore can never be taken for granted. Most of it is brought into the country from Malaysia, but the city-state is always looking for ways to produce its own supplies, with reverse osmosis being the most recent method. Mindful of this situation, the artists will be sourcing for water across Singapore in the weeks prior to the exhibition using an ancient, albeit completely un-scientific technique. Dowsing is the practice of using a rod or specially shaped stick to 'divine' the location of water underground. It was believed that magnetic energy would animate the rod if the dowser walks above a natural well. Despite numerous tests, no one has ever been able to prove that it actually works, but many continue to believe in its power - just like Homeopathy. As a fusion of body, instrument and landscape, dowsing was an pre-scientific form of location-positioning technology, and so for the artwork, the artists will try to combine this age old 'technology' with modern sensoring methods. The dowsing rods will be enhanced with GPS and Motion Sensors, allowing data to be collected to create a map of potential water sources that will be presented in the gallery. And if all goes well, we could end up with 'new' newater!

Georg Tremmel (Austria/Japan), Shiho Fukuhara (Japan) & Yousuke Nagao (Japan)
Collaborating with: Singapore-Delft Water Alliance (SDWA)

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• Biopresence
• water
• dowsing
• science
• art
• ISEA
• DIY
• Environment
• Google
• Maps

[BiopresenceBCL]

Google seems to have all the answers, which are globally asked; it's seems a logical step, that Google Maps must also be able to answer our questions.

[BiopresenceBCL]

Map Dowsing works on the assumption, that a pendulum (or any other swinging object) can respond to questions in the mind of the dowsing with binary (that is: Yes/No) answers. So once can - for example - ask, whether above a certain location underground freshwater is located, and the pendulum will present it's answer by the direction of it's swinging movements.

[BiopresenceBCL]

Because standard Map Dowsing is soooooo 20th. Welcome to the 21st century, welcome to Google Map Dowsing.

[BiopresenceBCL]

Where underground freshwater is located in Singapore?

[ytgetter8758]

@BiopresenceBCL That is not how dowsing works. A question is asked and the subconscious moves the muscles minutely to make the pendulum swing in the direction where the subconscious has already been programmed to respond in a certain way. It is called L-Rod or Pendulum training, but is actually subconscious training

[19ufo47]

Did you turn your monitor over on it's back to do this? Good idea.

[pouceeter]

Awesome idea thank you sooooo Much!!!