Running a Car from Vegetable Oil?
11.07.05Cultural Reflextions and Project Propositions
In the wake of moving from New York City and the ever increasing fuel prices it has become apparent to me that the American addiction to oil might have to go through a serious phase of withdrawal before it can begin the process of curing. Just as methadone might be thought of as an alternative to the highly addictive heroin, as a substitute and being less harmful it does its trick, weaning the patient from its self destructive opiate cousin.
The emergence of bio-diesel, an alternative to petroleum-based diesel fuel made from renewable resources such as vegetable oils or animal fats, might be just one of the methods used to wean our own energy addictions. At a 20% vegetable oil / 80% diesel fuel mixture, an analogy to the methadone/heroin example could easily be made, although there is still harm being done, it is much less harmful than a full non-renewable source of energy.
This I think gives a great opportunity for experimentation as an environmentalist, ecologist, inventor, artist etc. Vegetable oil as a fuel substitute is a non-political, bipartisan issue: good for farmers, good for the environment, good for renewing what was once thought of as waste (oil can be siphoned right out of the back of fast food restaurant into the gas tank of a car with a little engine modification). I have really become interested in this way vegetable oil can be used as fuel, even to the extent of "brewing" and experimentation with mixtures (vegetable oil can be used straight in the gas tank without a diesel mixture if "brewed properly - "brewing a mixture is supposedly very much like brewing beer).
As an educational devise I think that understanding that alternative fuels are available to the public is the first step in a transition form an addiction to a recovery. There are even high schools that teach how to run an engine off vegetable oil. Could this sort of fuel experimentation also be used in the arts? Shouldn’t the arts also be interested in the creative process, the experimentation, and the environmental and social impact that could emerge from such an economic and political transition from a reliance on foreign oil to a reliance on sustainable fuels and self-sufficiency?
EBay is a great way to find hard to located items. Lately I’ve been searching for old 1980's Mercedes Diesel cars - supposedly they run the best off vegetable oil. I have also heard that the public in Ithaca, NY (where I’m not that far from) has been using a lot of vegetable oil cars, taking the oil right from the back of Chinese food restaurants. A friend of mine ha a friend who has himself modified about 15 vehicles to run solely on vegetable oil. We have been talking about running a workshop that teaches how a modification can occur, hopefully recruiting some Cornell University students to join in on the education.
Some of my questions are these: as an artist, media artist and educator, how can an educational process like this relate to an artistic discourse? Can something like the process of a car modification to vegetable oil be a collaborative process that utilizes skills and theories from number of disciplines including art in order to create a less specialized, more substance oriented educational framework? Like timber frame building and organic farming is there a cumulative artwork that emerges that might not look like art on the surface but is nothing less than, as Bertolt Brecht said, an art that is "not a mirror to reflect reality, but a hammer with which to shape it"?
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