Yeah this painting is awesome

Thanks, I’ll definitely include that kind of dock/railings, still figuring out how to add greenery. I might shuffle the buildings around to make some room for a park

This is really cool! I really appreciate the history and the way they changed things around them, along with changes in the way they’re perceived. I also think the distinction between the sort of black box device and the focal thing, directly used and serviced by people, is worth considering.

I’m optimistic that solarpunk as a genre might be able to help with the aesthetic appreciation of modern windmills at least. They show up frequently in solarpunk art (though almost more often in the form of altaeros temporary windmill blimps):

I even included one in a scene of a ship at sea:

Its cool to think that the aesthetics of an optimistic genre/movement could help sway the culture in a way that helps support windmills. I also really like the author’s suggestions for education possibilities, helping people engage with them, feel a sense of ownership or pride in them, if they are so hard to ignore.

So this is a question that’s been in the back of my mind for awhile while seeing celebrations of dams being removed, no worries if you don’t want to be the one to answer it.

I think I understand the extent of the damage caused by the implementation of dams, but I guess my impression had been that that damage was done, and there wasn’t much of a timeline on fixing it. Like, after eighty years or so, are there fish still trying to get past it?

At the same time, we’re struggling (failing?) globally to get away from fossil fuels quickly enough to avoid the worst of climate collapse. It seems like hydro is one of the more reliable green power sources, and is compatible with old grid infrastructure that counts on fairly consistent power so there’s less than has to be overhauled in order to just keep using hydro for awhile longer.

So at first glance, it seems like new solar and wind etc production would be better prioritized in replacing oil, coal, natural gas. Prioritizing replacing hydro feels like letting the perfect be the enemy of the good.

I haven’t seen that discussion anywhere, so I genuinely expect I’m wrong about that, but I’m wondering why.

Nice! I’ll check that out!

Thanks, that makes sense on both topics, they’re definitely going on the list!

That’s a good list, thank you! I have a couple questions you might be able to answer:

Could you elaborate on the relays? I don’t know anything about them yet (in their intended use or alternatives). Though I am reading up on them.

I know there’s a some benefit in running 12v appliances (intended for campers) with solar panel setups because you don’t have to convert from DC to AC then back to DC at the appliance. Would that work for just using a car’s AC unit to cool a room, or are they built too specific to a car or not efficient enough to justify the work?

Thank you!!

That reminds me - inside the rubber squeegee part is a long thin strip of good quality spring steel. Lockpicking folks like it for making tools, diy gun folks sometimes use them to make the extractor. I honestly don’t know what to use the rest of the wiper for.

This is a great list with a bunch of stuff I wouldn’t have thought of - the transmission reuse is a cool idea!

I think some LED headlights are goood for growing plants. I remember some local news panic piece from years ago about how criminals were stealing headlights for their grow ops. A quick search online confirmed they work fine (probably not worth stealing though) and this post I think suggested a couple other car parts alternative uses I’ll have to go back and get later: https://www.rollitup.org/t/is-it-possible-to-convert-a-headlamp-into-a-grow-light.496815/

Thanks again!

That’s a great example, thank you!

Oh, one more to consider: Reckoning Press is more climate fiction than explicitly solarpunk, but it was one of the things that got me to give solarpunk a chance.

Ecotopia is a fun one because it hits all the notes but predates the genre.

Murder in the Tool Library is a favorite of mine because the setting is awesome and aspirational while feeling real and human, and because the murder mystery plot is a change from the usual ecofiction.

The solarpunk TTRPG Fully Automated! is free (libre and gratis) and has several sections devoted to its setting and worldbuilding that helped me understand a bunch of solarpunk concepts by seeing them in practice and to start thinking much bigger with my own fiction. It also has some good advice on creating engaging plots in an aspirational solarpunk setting where a lot of the usual problems have been solved.

That’s interesting, even going with modern tech, it’s a neat answer to preserving darkness. Military-grade passive night vision with the analogue tubes are ridiculously expensive but you wouldn’t need them just for walking around - simple infrared spotlight goggles are way cheaper, and probably lighter, especially if you remove extra binocular features. They could also be assisted by infrared streetlights if those wouldn’t mess up other animals. Downsides: I don’t think walking while wearing them would be fun, your depth perception and field of view takes a hit with most designs, and slow update of the screen can be disorienting. They’re also more complicated to make than flashlights.

That’s an interesting idea - instead of carrying a flashlight you might carry an RFID transponder. They’d need to not be linked to any personal records (such as purchase) to protect anonymity and prevent tracking. And a personal flashlight might still be useful.

I’m not sure I love the idea of lights flicking on, identifying where I am to someone waiting in the dark. Maybe it would turn on lights for a block length on the street or something? I’m also wondering if the reduced on-off cycling would wear out lights faster and, if so, how replacing them more often stacks up to more energy spent running them all the time.

Still it’s an interesting compromise position on the light pollution situation.

This is really cool! It sounds like it’s operating a bit like the Grain De Sail II carrying high value cargoes (campaign and cognac) which probably offset the somewhat higher operating costs. The Grain De Sail at least was transporting French wines to the US on one leg of the journey and raw coffee and cocoa for processing in Europe on the way back (I think another article was claiming they were planning to transfer aid supplies from the US to ports south on some runs but this article doesn’t mention it).

It seems like sail ships might still be viable for some of what they were traditionally used for - luxury goods and necessities that could only be acquired elsewhere. Container ships made it profitable to ship everything and more and more I’m wondering if that’s part of the problem.

Also I love all the upgrades and improvements they’ve made to sail ship designs for safety and to reduce the number of crew they need. These things are exactly the kind of anachronisms I feel like we’d see a lot of in a solarpunk world.

The question of how to make migrations as pleasant as possible and rebuild as much of the physically embodied culture that was left behind as possible is one that is very relevant right now, so I would love to see you make a postcard of a migrant town, if you don’t already have one. If you can show how even migration can be a place of solarpunk joy, then suddenly the people of New Orleans do have a realistic joyful future despite the bleak prospect of evacuation.

This is a heavy topic with some pretty high stakes but it’s going on my list. You’re right that it’s something worth rendering, it’s art we might need, though TBH I hope someone better qualified than me gets to it first.

If you’d like to discuss how these places and experiences should be represented sometime, I’d definitely be interested. I know I’m usually unqualified to make these scenes (aspirational fiction requires so much more knowledge to do well and solarpunk scenes often involve a terrifying mix of civil engineering, history, cultural knowledge, plant knowledge, city planning, accessibility outreach, vehicle infrastructure, and more) but I’m profoundly unqualified to say much of anything about the experiences of refugees and migrants. That’ll be something to work towards through research and conversation, and perhaps to carefully reference in small scenes in prose fiction etc at first. References to Little New Orleanses and similar neighborhoods seem like a good place to start, with more detail in time.

Thanks for talking about this stuff with me. I really appreciate it!

That’s something I’ve been wondering about - I live in a place with lots of ledge to anchor foundations to (or to get in the way of basements, depending on your situation and budget). I know skyscrapers drive in huge piles for support which I think aims for that supportive material underground? I know from researching bunkers that in other places the ground is kinda moving steadily, which can roll or twist unprepared or poorly designed structures. I’ve seen that New Orleans for example has some skyscrapers but just having them doesn’t necessarily mean building them is a good long term plan and that the ground will support those kind of structures.

This is so cool! Thank you - this definitely gives me a place to start

I don’t disagree - I don’t tend to have much sympathy for folks who build in flood planes and end up getting wet, but then again, I’m blessed to live in a region largely free from hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, wildfires, volcanos, and floods. I suppose much of the United States wouldn’t pass my ‘‘so don’t build there, idiot’’ test. The folks who do obviously look at those risks differently than I do, consider their needs, their love of a place, a lack of available housing, opportunities, etc, and probably dozens of other factors when making that decision. I definitely understand loving a place and wanting to preserve it.

I think we’ve also seen the way culture fragments and changes and is lost when its place vanishes. I don’t know that a New Orleans diaspora would be able to preserve or rebuild everything that makes the city special to the people who live there now, and I’m not comfortable just kind of telling them to deal with it, even if it seems inevitable to me now.

I’m not sure what degree of realism I’m aiming for in this art, even after a doing this series for a year. My outlook on our near term future, (when I let myself think about it) is quite bleak. The postcards are kind of an attempt to focus on the potential for something better, to talk about possible options, and to emphasize the aspects of solarpunk I love and to introduce people to them. I want the scenes to feel aspirational and attainable. And in a place (country/national discourse) where a large swath of the population is fearfully/enthusiasticly examining any leftist media for glimmers of top-down, authoritarian conspiracies, I’m aware that pointing out ways things are going to get bad looks to them like a celebration of the end of their comforts etc. And that that can drive people away from solarpunk and from possible solutions. So I don’t know, I guess from a messaging standpoint, at the moment, I’d rather emphasize adapting to changing conditions and reconsidering our current ways of doing things in order to talk about those impending problems and what we’ll do in response. I’ve done some other scenes of deconstruction and rewilding but I try to keep them mostly to cultureless mcmansion suburbs rather than working class cities. I’m not really comfortable shrugging and saying it’s pointless to try to preserve what we can of something parts of the audience care about.

I want to emphasize that I’m talking about the tone of this particular postcard art series, and trying to find my own goals for it, and that I don’t think you’re being unrealistic, exactly. I’ll keep the difficulties of the preservation aspect in mind.

I’ve seen raised houses but not many versions of bigger city buildings - if you find any I’d love to reference more examples in the art!

I’ve seen a few examples of parking garage conversions. I think all are top-down professional things so they don’t have the same range of materials or casual attitude towards building load as this one, but some look a bit similar.

https://www.axios.com/2019/10/30/the-future-of-parking-garages

https://www.reddit.com/r/repurposedbuildings/comments/zoaec8/parking_garage_turned_into_44_apartments_in/#lightbox

There’s also this interesting one that goes less dense on the interior space in favor of more common areas, almost like tiny yards to go with the tiny houses: https://www.axios.com/2019/10/30/the-future-of-parking-garages