by Steve Selden | Jun 23, 2017 | Churchill News
Churchill has been through some tough times lately. Floods resulting from two huge March blizzards have eroded nearly 20 sections of train track from Gillam to Churchill. Eighteen artists from around the world have journeyed to Churchill for the ocean conservation event known as Sea Walls Festival. A couple of the artists have come from as far away as Brazil and New Zealand. With them comes the hope and inspiration this town needs!
Sea Walls mural in Churchill. Alex De Vries – Magnifico photo.
“I just think it’s really amazing to be mindful of communities like this,” said New Zealand artist Elliot O’Donnell, who makes art under the name Askew One.
“We live in a world that is increasingly refocused around city life, and we forget sometimes about the people who live in these really remote places and just kind of how delicate the situation is.”
The artists involved in this project hope to bring awareness to the importance and urgency of protecting the world’s oceans. Part of that protection process involves global warming and its effects on the rest of our habitat.
A grand mural takes shape in Churchill. Alex De Vries – Magnifico photo.
“It’s the ocean that connects us so our relationship with the ocean is very important, and it’s also a very precarious sort of relationship,” stated O’Donnell.
Churchill, on the edge of civilization in the north of Manitoba, has had extreme weather conditions this spring leading to the destruction of a major lifeline of the town, the Hudson Bay Line.Without this transport mode Churchill faces rising costs in food, fuel and other vital supplies to the community. With airplanes the only mode of transportation at the moment, costs will rise for shipping.
A mural adorns Miss Piggy outside of Churchill. Alex De Vries – Magnifico photo.
The delicate relationship between community and environment is something many of the artists are portraying in their murals. And with the current conditions getting worse we need all the extra motivation and inspiration we can get. Happiness through hope can be conveyed through these unique artworks.
“That’s the underlying tension in this town. It’s the drama under all the stories. It’s really about this kind of symbiotic relationship between man and nature here,” he said.
The Sea Walls festival will run through June 26.
by Steve Selden | Apr 3, 2017 | Conservation
Recently we reported on the deposit of 50,000 seeds into the “Doomsday Vault” on Svalbard Island in Norway. The vault is buried in the side of a snow packed mountainside and sealed to preserve the precious seeds that produce Earth’s food supply. In case of a catastrophic event jeopardizing our most fruitful plants and vegetables, these seeds are stored safely and can remain usable for nearly two centuries. The consistent cool temperatures resulting from the surrounding permafrost act as a built in refrigeration system.
Now, another similar storage system on the same island, Svalbard, is serving to protect the massive information files for humanity. The new “Digital Doomsday Vault” or Arctic World Archive, managed by Norwegian company Piql as well as a Norwegian coal mining company, will store data transferred to film for 1,000 years or more.
Global Doomsday seed vault on Svalbard Island. Global Crop Diversity Trust photo.
National Archives of Mexico and the National Archives of Brazil have sent data so far to be stored in the vault.The Brazilian constitution was one of the documents sent though the storage facility is open to any and all historic documents states Piql.
All data processed by Piql will be formatted to photosensitive film which is impossible to delete or manipulate and is able to resist heavy wear and tear. When data is stored in analog form the contents is protected from remote alteration or cyber attacks of any kind. Considered more future proof than digital, analog requires no special updates or codecs to read the information if some rest of catastrophic degree were to occur. As long as internet servers are functional all data will remain accessible online and digitally delivered or shipped by request of a user.
These film reels will be stored deep inside a permafrost encased abandoned mine with a consistent temperature of 0 degrees Celsius.
Photographers stationed outside the “Doomsday” seed vault in Svalbard at its opening in 2008. (AP Photo/John McConnico)
Having both the “Doomsday” seed vault and now, the “Doomsday” data vault on the same island, Svalbard, opens up discussion from critics on ease of terrorism or natural disaster implications. With the widespread and multi – level destabilization in our world today, these precious archives will help humans piece together a cultural puzzle should a catastrophe of mass proportions destroy large amounts of data.
