Those sounds as incredulous as anything else and I know for sure that I never thought I would even make up a sentence like that. It is pretty amazing, but in all reality it is very simple. The boat is not in water but in an art gallery and the pictures are hanging on the wall. If you row the boat, then it will not move an inch, but it would light up the LEDs present in the pictures and you can view them and see for yourself what the display is all about. So you row the boat while I take a look at the stuff hanging on the wall!
Maria Michails-Posidis made this exhibition, called “Emergy,” as her MFA thesis. It’s a modified rowing machine inside a hand-crafted boat that powers the LEDs on the wall. So if you wish to take a look at what is on display, be prepared to give those legs a bit of a workout. The purpose of this display being the usage of green energy. The boat uses kinetic energy and converts it in to energy which powers the LEDs. LEDs obviously consume 80% less energy than normal lighting and that means 80% less rowing for you while I view the photos.
The boat is also made by hand and with renewable material to make sure that the entire setting is clean and green. This is a real cool way of telling the world that it needs to ‘green up’ itself and it needs to make sure that we can use the available resources to the best possible extent. A very noble concept put in a very subtle and sublime fashion indeed. All power to Maria!
