Hydraulikos: nature and technology and the centre for cyborg-environment interaction (CEI)

Abstract

Technology has put us out of touch with nature. A goal of the CCEI (the Centre for Nature and Technology) is to invent, research, study, and teach technologies that facilitate connection with our natural world. One project of CCEI is Hydraulikos, the Water Labs, for people to touch and be touched by the most primordial of all media = water. Hydraulikos aims to be a place where science, quantum physics, and fluid mechanics come together with nature, the environment, the arts, culture and society, health, wellness, and innovation, as therapy for the mind and body... where music meets math, and the compartmentalized silos of academia are washed away with lateral thinking in a setting where the boundary between work and play can also dissolve. Past projects include "Hands Across the Water" and "Hands Across the Harbour" using WOIP (Water Over Internet Protocol) to connect people through water as an Internet-connected medium that's at once both broad and deep. Ontario's Great Lakes hold 80% of North America's freshwater; it has often been said that Ontario is water capital of the world. Thus we need an Ontario-based entity like Hydraulikos that celebrates water at all ontological levels.