Pic Unit 2 Notes

[Kristin Banyas]

Ithink I just responded to your facebook post, but just in case its helpful for others here is a link to the digital notebook I made (based on one found elsewhere on this form and a notebook for CSA) for Unit 3. Feel free to make a copy if you think its useful!

For some context, students come in to school half the week and are home half the week, so every-other day or so in asynchronous. I have found its important to give a lot of specific directions for the async days - even if I preview the material in the classroom the day before! I tried to make all the days look the same in the notebook though (home or at school) so that they have the same rhythm in both locations. When possible, I still present from the slide deck for the unit provided by code.org.

Hello, I am on the AP Principles facebook and was able to get your Digital notebook for Unit 3. I know you mentioned you had others on Code.org but I have not been successful at locating them. Could you please help me.

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By eating, we digest territories. Initiated some 12,000 years ago, the food system is the first, and perhaps most successful, geoengineering project ever undertaken by our species.2 From the moment humans learned to harvest the power of the sun, agriculture and architecture have evolved in parallel, radically transforming our landscapes and cultures. Industrial society alienated the act of eating from the systems, landscapes, technologies, and bodies that must be exploited for it to happen. Even so, food mobilizes our societies, shapes our metropolises, and transforms our geographies more radically than any other human energy source.

In a world where the molecular is tectonic and every bite reverberates across the planet, we are urged to rethink the ecosystemic implications of our food systems. The architectural question of the agri-food system is not so much about its internal structure, but rather, how can we re-imagine and renew the constitutive layers of these systems? Can they be redesigned or repurposed to feed the world without depleting the planet?

Just a few centimeters beneath your feet, millions of creatures kill and eat one another, fight, reproduce, and forge alliances, implementing the myriad of processes that recompose death into life while purifying the water you drink, making the air you breathe breathable, and growing 95% of the food you eat. We are digested soil.4

The exhaustion of our soils and their loss of fertility is one of the main threats to the sustainable future of the food system. Over the past hundred years, soil fertility has been guaranteed thanks to the use of artificial fertilizer. This fertilizer allowed nitrogen fixation, an essential process in growing crops, to exponentially increase, enabling the production of enough food to allow for global demographic growth. It is calculated that half of the nitrogen atoms in our bodies today come from artificial nitrogen fixation.5 But this has all come at the expense of the biochemistry and multispecies relationships that take place in the soil.

With eight billion mouths that need to be fed, addressing the complexities of production is less about pursuing agrarian nostalgia and more about enhancing diversity in multiple dimensions. This diversity encompasses not only the biodiversity of species available for human consumption, but also a technodiversity of production methods that transcend the traditional dichotomy between natural and artificial systems.13 Moreover, it involves a geodiversity of solutions that leverage the performance of soils and climates to meet nutritional needs in a sustainable manner.

Technodiversity in agricultural production could include precision agriculture techniques, such as using satellite imagery and Internet-of-Things sensors to optimize crop health and yields, thereby reducing waste and the need for chemical inputs. But it could also mean more chemistry and biology, embracing innovative approaches for nutrient creation such as artificially enhanced plants, solar foods, and lab-grown meat, which have the potential to produce food more efficiently and with smaller environmental footprints.

Despite earnest attempts to embrace locavore diets, food systems remain deeply entrenched in global paradigms. An intricate logistical network functions as a distributed conveyor belt transporting billions of calories and linking tastes to diverse, distant locations. This includes the automated landscapes of container ports and the precarious labor underlying delivery platforms in the gig economy. The distribution layer of the food system encompasses the relationship between food and its movement, and weaves through various infrastructural, economic, and technological dynamics.

The evolution of distribution over time has been defined by a relentless battle against two physical foes: time and space. On the one hand, the creation of an extensive infrastructural network across the globe has facilitated the rapid spread of goods to the most remote corners, turning the exotic into the mundane and making global culinary diversity more of a casual decision than a marvel of technical ingenuity. This global network would not be possible without huge engineering projects, like the Suez Canal, which have become critical arteries for international trade. However, the vulnerability of these infrastructural giants and the fragility and complexity of our global distribution systems often remains unnoticed until incidents like the Evergreen crash occur.

However, the most sophisticated element of distribution is neither mechanical nor chemical, but optical: a visual infrastructure that creates aesthetically appealing images of food. Often, the images on labels, delivery apps, or television ads display succulent foods made of plastic or showcased in sensually lit scenes, where color, gloss, and freshness are enhanced to ignite our consumptive desires.15 It is ultimately this visual infrastructure, these aesthetic regimes that imprint food with motion, that are responsible for sparking the irresistible urges that drive food to our tables. Alongside fostering a collective awareness and adaptation towards more sustainable practices and technologies, we might also reshape aesthetics to intervene in the operational images that trigger movement.

Far more than a space for cooking and preparing meals, kitchens are sites of profound cultural and political significance; they are where our social realities are constructed.16 Kitchens have always been technical extensions of our stomachs. It could even be argued that digestions does not start in the mouth, but in the fires and on the cutting boards of these domestic laboratories. From prehistoric bonfires to molecular gastronomy, kitchens materialize our essential needs. Their architectures, spaces, and technologies are the product of histories, culture, language, identity, and senses of belonging.

At the core of the consumption layer of the food system is the power of kitchens as sites for political and social transformation. The redefinition of the kitchen can challenge established norms and hierarchies, creating more just and equitable social and ecological structures in the process. Current domestic kitchen models, while having undergone significant evolution over recent decades, still fundamentally respond to a family structure reminiscent of the nuclear family idealized by Western societies. These models have been artificially constructed and standardized, especially following World War II, through the rise of consumerism and the notion of the separate, appliance-laden kitchen as a domestic ideal. Historically, however, diverse kitchen models have existed, such as communal kitchens in the Soviet Union, which were designed to liberate women from domestic labor and foster a collective ethos. In many non-Western cultures, kitchens have traditionally been more integrated with communal living spaces, supporting extended family structures and fluid social interactions.

Prevalent kitchen models instrumentalize different kinds of bodies and operate both within and beyond domestic environments. They are sites of collective as well as often invisible labor. For instance, ghost kitchens have revolutionized food delivery, operating multiple culinary businesses within a single space, and taking over entire urban neighborhoods.17 Decoupling food preparation from consumption is not a new phenomenon, as was seen with the advent of ready-made meals and fast food. However, ghost kitchens refine and extend this separation to a new level. They operate by centralizing culinary production in hidden locations exclusively for delivery, effectively transforming urban neighborhoods without a direct consumer interface. This model capitalizes on the efficiencies of digital platforms and different urban mobility methods, connecting supply with demand through armies of human automata.18 In contrast, communal kitchens in Mexico and traditional Txokos in the Basque Country serve as vital community hubs, where collective cooking and eating practices strengthen social bonds and preserve cultural heritage. These spaces challenge the conventional restaurant model and promote a more sustainable and community-oriented approach to food consumption.

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