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The Glass Plate

sgknowles
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By Scott G. Knowles: As part of the STL Anthropocene Field Campus the research team visited the Wood Refinery Refinery History Museum on March 9, 2019. This museum is located on the grounds of the Wood River Refinery, a Shell Oil refinery built in 1917 and today owned by Phillips 66. The site is Roxana, Illinois, just upriver from Granite City, and just over two miles from the convergence of the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers. Sitting on the actual grounds of the refinery, the museum is an invitation to think across the micro, meso, and macro scales of the Quotidian Anthropocene, in terms of geography and also in terms of time. This refinery was built at the crux of the WWI, at a time when United States petrochemical production was entering an intensive phase of production, invention, corporate structuring, and global engagement. The museum is an invitation to think across temporal scales, backwards to the start of the refinery--through the individual lives of the workers and engineers whose lives defined the refinery--and forward to indeterminate points of future memory. This photo captures a key moment in an informal interview we did with one of the history guides. He had worked in the museum for decades before retiring. He explained to us that the museum sits in the former research facility of the refinery--and the glass plat he is showing reveals a beautiful artifact, a photograph made of the complex when it was built. Our guide only showed us this collection of slides after our conversation had advanced, perhaps after he was sure we were truly interested in his story, and the deeper history of the refinery. The pride in the place, the community of workers, and the teaching ability of the museum was manifest. The research team felt impressed, but also concerned about the health impacts (and naturally the environmental impacts as well) of the refinery. There was a mismatch in the scales--the memory of the individual tied to emotions of pride and knowledge of hard work done there--and the Anthropocene, global scale of petrochemicals. How do we resolve this mismatch? The glass plate is somehow a clue.

Private Digital Data

AmandaWindle
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This is very hard to say upfront. I'm not an advocate for saving data for the sake of it.

Understanding and having the option to have some data open and some data restricted ongoing. The button at the bottom of the Annotate tool is helpful in this respect. 

Pre and During Covid-19

AmandaWindle
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As an academic that has recently left the institutional belonging for a moment to a university, I can answer this from two perspectives.

All of my digital design research projects have very specifc ways of digitally managing data, including building platforms for researchers in tech corporations (climate change or for spaces for protecting endangered species beyond borders). To manage digital data in their platforms.

Working with women-in-tech on their public leadership. The group required data to be shared and sjupport for one another via WhatsApp. This supported their Twitter and public TV experiences live.

Or working with those not engaging in multi-arts venues via building together an app - the process being the most successful outcome. We used the data management processes the funder  required and also the design adn tech partners were using.

During Covid-19 digital data flows in the usual ways, but we're discussion new CRMs for fundraising right now. We share data in the usual way, but Zoom, WhatsApp and Skype scaffold a lot of our emphasis on face-to-face community engagement. We don't share data outside of the homeless charity on interaction numbers on the street etc, because like many charities it need not report data to the government. The charity does not share homeless data with governmental departements that share their data in ways we would not advocate for, unless it is required by law,— like auditing and tax. 

Digital Tools I use and those that complement digital tools

AmandaWindle
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Bullet Journal (handwritten with dotted pages for designing).

Trello for project management unless on a specific project that requires other software for gantt charts, workplans, etc.

Adobe Suite (Indesign, Illustrator etc.)

Email (usually Outlook)

DTP - Microsoft Word, Excel etc. but also using online free platforms like Google Docs and Sheets.

Text Edit - all the time for cleaning up text and embedded coding.

Headspace - meditation.

WhatsApp - for sharing.

Audible for music.

Photos and video on my phone.

Twitter - social media and outreach.

Signal  - for better encryption.

Pocket casts – podcasts for inspiration and research

NCVO platform and .gov.uk and other websites using Chrome or Signal.

Bookends - bibliography.

Skype / Zoom - remote working during covid-19 mostly.

and more...

UK Food Bank

AmandaWindle
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https://twitter.com/bateswalsall1/status/1264308701269233665?s=20

The twitter link above shows a video of a foodbank near where I live in London in a shopping centre in Elephant and Castle. This is a foodbank queue for the unemployed and those receiving benefits. This is not a queue for the homeless. It also shows close proximity and in some places the inability to distance and follow national guidance.

Additional information from WHO - Compound Vulnerabilities

AmandaWindle
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"Currently, there are no studies on the survival of the COVID-19 virus in drinking-water or sewage. The morphology and chemical structure of this virus are similar to those of other coronavirusesa for which there are data about both survival in the environment and effective inactivation measures. This guidance draws on the existing evidence base and current WHO guidance on how to protect against viruses in sewage and drinking-water."

and 

"The COVID-19 virus is enveloped and thus less stable in the environment compared to non-enveloped human enteric viruses with known waterborne transmission (such as adenoviruses, norovirus, rotavirus and hepatitis A). "

Link: Water, sanitation, hygiene, and waste management for the COVID-19 virus, Interim guidance, 23 April 2020 by WHO and UNICEF: https://www.who.int/publications-detail/water-sanitation-hygiene-and-wa…

These excerpts from WHO regs, relate to Aalok Khandekar’s draft commentary, “Heat and Contagion in the Off-Grid City”  in relation to mentioning hepatitis.

And, also to a comment in previous weeks around air transmission and sewage across the border in north and south America made by Kim Fortun