Remember the good ole days of being seven and building forts in the living room with sheets and sofa cushions?  There is something about some of us that doesn’t want to grow up and continue the good times like finding unwanted items and building boats out of them.  Just as we still like to make immature perverted jokes and laugh with our crows feet creasing.  A well known street artist,  Swoon’s, has brought together a crew to join the swimming cities by building art boats that will perform Serenissima “the dreamy story of a drifting metropolis during the Venice Biennale.”

They blog their journey and  encounters with musicians, bird spotting, and technical problems of their motor dipping in and out of the water due to the shifty seas.  Much like the younger version of me sitting with my dreams of spotting dragons and wielding my magical sword awaiting the giants to summon me for afternoon cleanup.

From mystical craft and artistry to a ship important to the econominc machine, a commercial voyager and an article posted by The Guardian has something that could tug on your fog horn.  While these artistic gypsies construct ships out of an over abundance of material possessions, the cargo ships are moving to replace the unwanted wastes and are reportedly putting more SOx and NOx pollution in the air than our vehicles on the road.  From what estimates speculate 15 of the worlds largest cargo ships produce more pollution than 750 million cars.  The pollution being sulfur and nitrous oxide produced from the sludge like diesel fuel that powers these super tankers. The International Maritime Organization recognizes these problems and will hopefully be putting measures into place, because strong accusations of 60,000 deaths in America that result 330bn in health care costs from the pollution may be a strong enough indicator to get some policy makers rolling.  There are some proposed measures to keep the cargo ships at a farther distance from shore, to dissipate the density of the pollution when it reaches land.

These sea vessels are interconnected and a necessary part of our lives. Both illustrate our needs and our consumerism.  Swoon’s vessel, being abstract, and displaying a story of unwanted materials being collected and shaped into a swimming city that approaches Venice, to be admired, and a cargo ship distributing the new desired materials for our daily consumption.

While a group of artists collect wastes and make them into entertainment another sea-going vessel, distributing these new products and future wastes, are roaming the seas pumping pollution in the air.  Now these aren’t directly related and are on polar opposites, but there message is similar.   When does our enjoyment of being a creative youth either with production of the new or old go and harm the world? Were we innocently blind with our fantasies and didn’t see the outcome or was it purely economic?

VIA The Guardian

VIA Swimming Cities

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