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Ohm … Ohm

In the 21st century most people will interpret “Ohm … Ohm” as the exhalation in yoga  (Hatha yoga). Therefore, take a deep breath, hold it for a while (twice as long) and then exhale (thrice as long), for example. Now you are perfectly set up to read about Georg Simon Ohm (1789 – 1854), the physicist after whom Ohm’s law was named. In the “All electric society” Ohm’s law still plays a fundamental role for all households. The understanding of electric circuits is quite easy, just apply the basic relationship of Ohm’s law. In a resistor the current and voltage are proportional. The sign (SI) for resistance (R in physics) of a conductor is the Greek letter Ω. The proportionality is expressed as R = V/I where V is the Voltage and I the current through the conductor. The units are Ω, Volt V, Ampere A. All you need to know additionally is the calculation of the power P in Watt W where P = V x I for example. If you want or need to dig deeper into your home electricity just study a bit of electrical technology on the basics.
In our homes, apartments or offices we can apply this 200 years old knowledge to guide the safety and energy consumption of our electric installations. Maybe with the help of a spreadsheet programme like excel etc.

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Home cooling

In the summer months, in Europe, the concern shifts from heating your home to cooling your home. For generations this has been possible without use of air conditioning. A natural way of cooling has been for centuries to dig into earth to take advantage of the rather stable and cool temperatures underground. In home building this has also been a tradition for centuries to build cellars underneath a home.
Wine growing regions have used the cellar as a natural cooling facility for long and short term storage of wine. Digging into a mountain of a valley offered a natural cool storage solution for years without additional energy consumption. Modern buildings should return to this practice and gain cold from below the surface to cool buildings in the warm or hot seasons. Good isolation combined with the cool temperatures from below the surface in summer months will substantially save energy and thereby CO2 emissions. Circulation of the cool air from below to the upper floors is the issue as well as dealing with differential humidity levels. The wisdom of previous generations in home building with no access to air conditioning (avoiding the air conditioning paradox) is likely to experience a revival in the coming years.
Coolness is the new and old wisdom.

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Home extension

Most people think of home extension as some sort of extension of the roof, an additional room or the transformation of a garage into an additional room. However, the digital home requires a home extension of a different kind. In order for all rooms to be included into the digital home a range extender of your wireless might be necessary. Yes, this even includes the bathrooms, because otherwise you can no longer sing along your favourite tune under the shower if you are used to the streaming of the musical or orchestral accompaniment. Additionally, the immediate surroundings of a home with or without garden might make it necessary for your robot to mow properly or your digital letter box to send you the mail for the long awaited love letters while you out of home.
Being out of range in your home, is almost equal to not being home at all. Of course, you don’t have to automatically send an out of home message to all your contacts when you are too far away from your digital home for your digital device, but the comfort of a range extender may avoid the new “digital inequality” between adolescents in your home. Room choices are made according to wireless access points and signal strength rather than the room with the best view. Lots of new issues arise we did not even think we would have 10 years ago. Of course, we follow the suggestions of an AI chatbot that recommends the best location for us after we entered images and descriptions of the consistency of each wall into the system. Just a practical advice, install extensions out of reach of any toddler, because a sudden interruption of the connection will create very unpleasant surprises.

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Warming continues

The global warming continues to change our landscapes. Heat waves, droughts and flooding become more often. Average temperatures keep rising. The evidence from meteorological data is showing this beyond doubt. Our forest take the toll and reports document the worsening situation for many trees (Germany and Switzerland). An adaptation will take years if not decades. In the region around Paris some home owners have started or been forced to adapt their gardens to the warming weather conditions. Trees that do not support the consequences of warming die and we witness the changing of the landscape. Palm trees near Paris have survive for years by now near Paris and can grow rather tall.
Like it or not, the visual landscape will change despite the many great initiatives launched by the city of Paris to stop the warming of the city.

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Satie Popular

Erik Satie has been quite involved with the surrealist and Dada movement of his time. He personally knew the main proponents ranging from Breton to Magritte. He became one of the major figures applying the ideas of surrealism to music. His early compositions like the Gnossienne (extract of Nr. 1 below) are admired for their simplicity. They became popular only years later and have entered popular music repertoire through many retakes of the original tune in various styles ranging from jazz to rap. Many of Satie’s formative years he spent playing and performing popular music in the animated cafés, bars and shows of Montmartre in Paris. The making of a living based on music can be a challenge. Satie had to bear the full risk of a life in poverty at times to reserve sufficient time for his creative work.
He remained very much connected to the working class as his later membership of the Communist party after the Great War testifies. Composing for children and transmitting music to the next generation was equally close to his heart and mind, especially in his later years.
For him, popular music constituted a fountain of original tunes and a test with an intuitive audience rather than the academic circles. Maybe, with this attitude, he followed the footsteps of Flotow, Offenbach, Ravel and many others later on until pop music became the vastly dominant music in the late 20th and 21st centuries.

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Erik Satie Satisfied

The collection of letters from Erik Satie contains more than 1000 letters amongst them some in exchange with the best artists of his time. The range is largely due to the circle of artists who met at Montmartre in Paris before and during the Great War. We discover letters to Maurice Ravel, Claude Debussy, Pablo Picasso or Henri Matisse. For some artists there are 100+ letters preserved like to Jean Cocteau. In the 1920s he composed music for shows at Montmartre, where the scenario was painted by Pablo Picasso and costumes designed by Coco Chanel. The sculpture by Brancusi must have been familiar to him, just as much as the cubist paintings by Georges Braques, as there are also letters or references to such letters in the impressive 1000+ pages collection. Like Ravel he was rejected by the Conservatoire de Musique de Paris in his early days as student. Montmartre allowed to live and create at the same time while living on a minimal budget. Erik Satie signed his letters with ES. In German this denotes a “neutrum”, maybe, beyond male or female differentiation, but also a tonality in music (E flat). There is no trace that this was a conscious choice. It is just another unresolved puzzle about the self-declared “Gymnopédiste” and composer of the “Parade” and the popular piano music the “Gnossienne”. 100 years after his death on 1925-7-1 he (ES) could be rather satisfied with his impact on the course of music in the 20th century and beyond.

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Musician Historian

Musicians are usually perceived as “part of history” rather than being historians themselves. However, recent research on Bob Dylan has extended that view to portray Dylan in his role as historian as well. The issue here is more with the historical periods and references the musician, composer and song writer builds on and interprets historical events. Thereby, his thoughts and impressions on living through historical events enter into his work as an artist. Dylan is literally “doing history”. He puts events of past and present into perspective of his own making and reached authority through the non-conformist perspective, which connected him to as a performer to his various audiences. His approach to doing history consists in the re-presentation and re-creation of historical narratives. Nina Goss (2024) in her book review highlights the “irruptions of the past into the present unique in popular culture”. The re-arrangement of fact and fiction encourages us “to inhabit, question, and revise historical narratives and tropes” (p.399). Several musicians have specific ways of reflecting, sometimes critically, on history in their artistic work. Bob Dylan certainly is a very prominent example of this an has been honoured for this by the Nobel Prize for literature. It remains an interesting perspective to review composers and their choice of libretti for operas as a way of doing history. The shifts from royal drama to revolutions and popular scenes are in this line of interpreting musicians also as historians.

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Home security

Digitalization has made it possible to step up home security at reasonable costs. The video surveillance of homes inside and the immediate surroundings are feasible through the use of connected cameras. The footage can reach sizable amounts of data, but intermittent recordings reduce or the AI-assisted detection of movements on a person’s property have become standard home security. Even for apartments the video enabled door bells and digital locks have improved the security level for those who are willing to invest in home security. A good neighborhood watch system is, of course, in most cases a superior solution. But neighbors change and social interaction is often reduced to minimal contact in most suburban regions. As with heating of homes, home security is also depending on what makes you feel comfortable at home. For some 20 degrees Celsius is enough and a solid mechanical lock is sufficient. Others have made very different experiences and want their digital devices directly linked to a professional security or police service. Like it or not, home security is part of the modern home just like many other digital devices or TV sets. 

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Rainwater Use

The use of rainwater is fairly easy to realize. Most homes in Europe and beyond have a roof drainage system in place. However, for decades the only concern was to get rid of the water as soon as possible. Nowadays, we think twice about it. The recovery and storage of rainwater for a separate use in a household has become a substantial cost saving exercise. In the Paris region in France you can expect on average 650 liters of rainwater per year per square meter. For a roof size of, for example, 70 m2 this yields about 45.000 liters per year. If you take a shower using 40 liters this allows you and your household to take 1125 showers or 3 persons almost one shower every day. Average household consumption in Paris is 120L/day, which adds up to about 44.000 liters per year for washing and toilet use. On a monthly basis with a storage capacity of 4000 liters of rainwater per adult person you should be able to manage your own consumption with your own roof drainage system. It is a rather simple use case. Maybe during dry summer months the calculation is a bit too optimistic, but the potential for a water autonomy of households in Europe is an option. In addition to the dry January, the no mow May, we shall have the no shower July next. 

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Sunny future

The use of solar panels for energy production is a standardized process with decent returns on investment. Combined with heat pumps and the potential of decentralized energy production, storage and consumption makes jointly for reducing emissions. The planning, investment and installation with digital tools allows to reap further benefits through the ease of coordination of all processes. The « All electric society » will take hold of homes and mobility. The climate and business case for this societal change is obvious, but the risk of new forms of inequality may arise between the one able to make such transitions now and the ones without the means to shoulder investments at the same time with other budget restrictions. The change has to start in our minds first before action will follow. In any case, the solar future takes hold of more and more people. Have you checked your amount of solar energy production already today?

Solar panel energy
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