Bird Box Club (cat version)

I definitely think there's something we should do here as an experiment in surveillance. I propose that we hook up a webcam in mine and Matt's front window, and RFID Inky so that the camera videos the view when he's sat there. I think we'll get some nice footage of pedestrians looking in at him. Mostly people smile when they see him...

So it's him, looking out at them [and other stuff] providing entertainment for them looking in. It's also, obviously, a camera watching outside our house and so it retains a primary function as a surveillance camera. But Inky's in control of it. He might see something important, and if he does then we will know. He'll be able to tell us, a bit like Lassie, only not as smart.

RE: Another CCTV bird box

Jimmy via email:

yes he's got that freedom oppression thing going on but without the middle-class thrill or urban right-on-ness pro activity voice of dissent...however the oppression/freedom thing is a useful system or ruse for lots of good reasons...i still think the bird box is good because its mainstream and immediately gettable by whoever we show to...but if the bracket comes into the picture it can effectively be anything that's good/nice and sticks it gently to the man.

Another CCTV bird box

I just found this. It's by a guy named Colin Matthes. This is his website. We need to know about all of these things, because it helps us define our project more effectively. We need to know why we are not doing this, nor are we doing Celine Shenton's project (the metal-roofed camera box). It's also a strong signifier that we need to move away from just birds. BBC isn't really about bird boxes; right now we have 4 because we need to prototype the act. But there's a different end-point waiting for us somewhere...

From the Seeing Green website Nicolas Lampert writes:
Colin Matthes’ surveillance camera birdhouse is now up. Matthes researched and designed a birdhouse suitable for birds in Wisconsin, constructed it out of wood, and placed it in a river corridor in Milwaukee. For birds, it serves as a perfect home for finches. For people who stumble upon it while walking down the path through the woods, the sight of the surveillance camera mounted to a tree is completely unexpected and raises a myriad of questions about the priorities people place on property, competition and issues of fear and security that dominate city living. The fact that the menacing form of the surveillance camera is humbled and made into a home for finches only serves to further subvert the camera’s original connotation and adds to the surprise of encountering Matthes’ public intervention.

bird house instructions

the tool list according to a reputable bird box building blog

Tools Hand saw Coping saw Hammer Brace and bit (or power drill ) Screwdriver Tape measure Carpenter's square Paintbrush Goggles Dust mask

Materials (1) 2' x 4' x1/2" exterior grade plywood (1) 6 1/2" x 1/4" wooden dowel (6) 3/4" hot-dipped galvanized screws 1" galvanized brads or 3d nails Wood glue Sandpaper Exterior paint Polyurethane finish.

Bees

I was just thinking about the bee-house. Bees like holes to burrow into. Then I was thinking about urban street things that have these holes already. I quite like how LED signs are made up of a hole 'matrix' (albeit the holes all have LEDs in rather than being tunnels). Some nice images in case there's anything in this.

These are solar powered

I think we should just be helping sparrows

Our bird boxes should just be for sparrows. The "Cockney" connection is just too tempting. Obviously we can help other wildlife in future if necessary... I just think these are right because they used to thrive in urban areas but even they are being forced out.

Tuesday, 26 November, 2002, 12:17 GMT
R.I.P. Cockney Sparrow
COCKNEY SPARROW, the once ubiquitous London bird, is brown bread.

The cheerful chirps and twitters of the common house sparrow can no longer be heard in many parts of London, according to a new survey. The house sparrow, or passer domesticus, is one of Britain's best-loved native birds; a gregarious creature with a penchant for dust baths and feasting on insects.

Cockney is survived by house sparrows outside the capital and wider kin such as the hedge sparrow, swamp sparrow, field sparrow and mountain sparrow.

The Cockney sobriquet came about in the 19th Century when the gregarious creature was a fixture of the capital's parks, gardens and squares. Its first decline in numbers came between the wars, as horse transportation gave way to the motor car. The birds had enjoyed feeding on grain spilt from nosebags or undigested in dung.

Whole article from BBC

Turf wars

It's a shame this guy didn't just do the turf hair-do. I wonder if he would have been jailed just for that? Not entirely useful for our project, but I wonder if just adding the sod (no damage really) would have been an offense.

An ex-soldier has been sentenced to 30 days' imprisonment for defacing the statue of Winston Churchill during May Day demonstrations in central London.

Cambridge-based student James Matthews, 25, was also ordered to pay £250 in compensation to the Royal Parks Agency for the damage he caused. He pleaded guilty at Horseferry Road Magistrates' Court to intentionally or recklessly damaging the statue in Parliament Square.

His defacement of the statue happened on the same day as rioting on 1 May, which saw damage estimated at thousands of pounds caused to central London property.

The figure, which stands in Parliament Square, was made to look as though blood was dripping from its mouth. Graffiti was sprayed on the plinth and a turf mohican was added to the statue's head.

Source BBC News

Legal Eagle

Neither of you will be surprised to know that I am currently on the case with regard to legal issues surrounding benevolent vandalism. Not being the sort to take risks (don't laugh) I feel it is my duty to at least know what the most likely charge would be if we got into hot water.

Right now I must apologise to Jimmy because I didn't take his Health and Safety comment seriously. I think it's spot on, but while we were in the car I couldn't understand why anyone would "hang off" the things we are talking about putting up. You couldn't "hang off" one of those flat sheet street signs either, so it was the "hanging off" bit that threw me. But, the "safety" thing is 100% right. If any of these things cause personal damage to anyone (fall off and hit them etc.) we'd be liable. We'd need to look at Public Liability if we were in any way worried about covering ourselves on this.

Public liability insurance
If members of the public or customers come to your premises or you go to theirs (including if you work from home), you should think about taking out public liability (PL) insurance.

Otherwise we'd be Negligent:

Negligence is a legal concept in the common law legal systems usually used to achieve compensation for injuries (not accidents).

Other than this I'm really struggling to find anything to worry about. These are the only possible clauses or categories under which we might be committing offence, but none of them really cover covert bird box installation.

Graffiti and Fly Posting
But definitions don't include the installation of physical things. It's a graphics crime.
Litter
Well it could be I suppose.
Trespass
It's tinkering with/on someone else's property [Council]. But trespass normally has to have caused measurable damage.
Vandalism (the text is from Wikipedia, but it does give the overall gist)

Private citizens commit vandalism when they willfully damage or deface the property of others or the commons. Some vandalism qualifies as culture jamming or sniggling – it is artistic in nature as well as being carried out illegally or without the property owner's permission. Examples include at least some graffiti art, billboard liberation and possibly crop circles, Criminal vandalism has many forms, graffiti on public property is common in many inner cities as part of a gang culture, however other more devastating forms such as those involved with public unrest, such as rioting, involve the willful destruction of public and private property.

My bold in this because that's what I think we are doing at worst. If we were in Scotland it might qualify as this:

Malicious mischief is an offence under the common law of Scotland. It does not require actual damage to property for the offence to be committed, financial damage consequential to the act is sufficient, unlike vandalism which requires actual damage to property to form the offence, the latter being defined by section 52 of the Criminal Law (Consolidation) (Scotland) Act 1995; the two are different offences.

We aren't going to damage anything directly (this is very important when we design the brackets). But there's something here for me about money. If what we do ends up costing anyone money, or hurting anyone, we are liable for the damages. If someone has to pay to have the things taken down then they will look for whoever put them up to recoup the bill. Other than this I can't see any grounds for trouble.

And I will blame you two anyway.

later today i will be mainly making this

Witnessing the [almost] impossible

Spinning off from the Reiffel Tower, what other spectacular things would tourists want to see? I think it could fall into two main categories; extreme & rare natural phenomenon and extreme, rare and new science.

Natural Phenomenon

Since the dawn of man people have put special value on seeing rare and extreme events of nature - from the mythical powers of the eclipse to the spectacle of lightning. Today we have a more commodified version of it - travel companies tailor holidays around the notion of 'extreme tourism' - whether its visiting an active volcano, ice diving or flying over the Chernobyl zone. Maybe we have to unite 'conventional' and 'extreme' tourism with a series of proposals and parasitic structures.

Extreme Science

This category is a hybrid between the demonstrations from the Royal Institution Christmas Lectures and the witnessing of nuclear testing. In an age were we can't distinguish between reality and special effects, we should try to design experiences to cause awe and amazement in the audiences. It should also capture the feeling you had when you played with your chemistry set... i guess its trying to capture Arthur C Clark's Third Law of Predication - Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

OK so I may be going really OTT with the cat thing

but he's really good.

There are some nice and some not so nice things on this page, including him at the end. It's from a site called Modern Cat, in the "DIY" section. I found it by typing "cat shelf" into Google.

This is one of the nicer things. It originally came from here.

Animal vision

Not sure where this is going, but this is apparently how dogs and cats see:

The position of the eyes within the head determines the degree of peripheral vision as well as the amount of the visual field that is seen simultaneously with both eyes. This binocular vision is necessary for judgment of distances. Dogs have eyes which are placed on the sides of the head, resulting in a visual field of 240 degrees compared with the human field of 200 degrees. The central, binocular field of vision in dogs and cats is approximately half that possessed by humans.

The eyes of dogs and cats have many of the modifications typically seen in animals which evolved as nighttime hunters. The pupil functions much as the aperture for a camera and can dilate for maximal light capturing ability in dogs and cats. In addition, there is a reflective layer under the retina called the tapetum which serves to intensify vision in dim light. The "mirror" effect of the tapetum results in the "eye shine" observed when an animal looks into a car's headlights. While dim light vision is enhanced by the tapetum, scattering of the reflected light may result in reduced acuity.

Although it is commonly believed that dogs and cats see only in black and white, recent evidence suggests that animals may have some degree of useful color vision. The perception of color is determined by the presence of cone photoreceptors within the retina. These cone cells function in bright light conditions and comprise approximately 20% of the photoreceptors in the central retina of the dog. In humans, the central retina (macula) is 100% cones. Behavioral tests in dogs suggest that they can distinguish red and blue colors but often confuse green and red.

Us:
Them:
Us: Ink:
It's that blue car isn't it.

Surveillance cat

He must spend hours doing this. Exactly there, sat upright looking at stuff. Surely we can offer him some gadgets to assist him on his mission to sit and watch stuff. It may be going off the point I know, but he's sort of nature.

edit: Maybe we should set up a camera outside to observe his observations. Or, we need a little 'Inky-cam' fixed to his head so we can see what the hell it is he's looking at. Obviously it's probably just anything that moves and might be prey... but you never know. Maybe he knows something we don't?