Wikitractatus spatial #2 – La fureur de lire

Après une première installation à Lausanne, le Wikitractatus a déployé ses branches sous le soleil de mai à Genève, à l’occasion de la Fureur de lire, adoptant deux formes, cette fois: une installation urbaine et un spectacle à trois voix. La performance s’est déroulée dans les combles du Collège Calvin du 16e s. Quand Genève […]

Wikitractatus spatial #1 – La Nuit de la lecture

Le Wikitractatus est un poème 2.0, dont le sens dépend de votre itinéraire, à l’instar du sens de n’importe quel territoire que vous créez par votre mouvement, par vos sensations, par les réflexions qui naissent en vous en marchant. Ce texte est né sur le papier il y a plus d’une dizaine d’années, comme une […]

A post-car world with the PodCar

The environmental and urbanistic reasons for getting rid of private individual car need no more to be listed. Known under the name of podcar, a promising car replacement solution consists of a driverless vehicle, usable on demand, and guided by an automatized navigation system (GPS, local terminals or combinations of both). It has first appeared […]

Four Music Videos for the End of the World

12/21/2012. Some say the end is near.  But there’s still time to watch the best music videos about Doomsday. Tool – Ænema “Some say the end is near. Some say we’ll see Armageddon soon – I certainly hope we will” sings Maynard James Keenan. Here, the end of the world means “fret for your figure […]

Switzerland discusses food sovereignty – a vegetarian diet might be the answer

“Nothing will benefit human health and increase chances for survival of life on Earth as much as the evolution to a vegetarian diet”, said Albert Einstein. This might also the answer to the questions discussed this Wednesday, September 19th in the Swiss parliament (both in the Conseil National and in the Conseil des États). “Food […]

The Islands of Jean-Jacques Rousseau

[Une version révisée, en français, de cet article, publiée dans Le Temps, Genève, en 2012, peut être téléchargée ici.] Jean-Jacques Rousseau would have been 300 years old today. He was already 53 in October 1765 when he left the waves of the Lake Bienne, heart-sick, expelled from the Island of St. Peter upon the order […]

A mobility network

Methods and tools After a day and a half of work and fine-tuning, here we go: the commuting network of all individuals either residing, working or studying in the canton Valais. I’ve used R, with the RStudio GUI, and the igraph library for R. My staring point was the mobility matrix between all communes, including […]

Fifty years of orbital tourism

Today, the United States are celebrating the 50th anniversary of John Glenn’s orbital flight: three tours of the globe in less than five hours. To mark the occasion, Craig Russell of Space Operations Inc., would have liked to see the mission replayed, but relying on private means only, this time. We get his point, because […]