Thursday, June 17. 2010
-----
by Karen Cilento
The national cultural event, Imaginez Maintenant, features work of young multidisciplinary designers (all under the age of 30) in nine French cities. Finding inspiration in Gilles Clément’s description of “wandering plants phenomenon,” Nicolas Dorval-Bory and Raphaël Bétillon’s selected project creates an experimental journey, inviting visitors to explore an unlikely landscape. Open from July 1st through the 4th, the project consists of an artificial cloud, a long greenhouse and thousand of seedlings which will rest on the banks of the Garonne, next to the Hospital of La Grave.
The journey through this new landscape begins at the greenhouse, a 50m long space which includes a sampling of seedlings from the 5 continents ” as a reference to the wandering plants and to the curing function of the hospital.”
Garden
In this bright tunnel, visitors choose one of the 2000 plants to take with them on their journey. With seeds in hand, visitors penetrate a thick cloud formed from a dense mist from the spraying of the Garonne river through 1000 nozzles (installed by French company Dutrie, one the offices who carried out DS + R’s Blur Building). The cloud provides an eerie, distorting surrounding that will change colors in the night as it blankets the river.
Night View Rose Cloud
The 100 m long cloud experience allows the visitor to become a part of an abstract, disconcerting humid environment and upon reaching the end, a luscious garden beckons the visitior to plant his selected seedling.
The installation deals with ideas such as invisible landscapes and climatic distortion, combining them into a sensory experience that will surely captivate visitors.
Project name: AYSAGES EN EXIL
City, Country: Toulouse, France
Team: Nicolas Dorval-Bory, Raphaël Bétillon, Paula Gonzalez Balcarce
Status of project: Selected project, under construction, opening 1st of july 2010
Personal comment:
"Paysages en Exils", nice title for an interesting project. It reminds me so much of a project we did last year (unpublished on our website yet, unfortunately --but will soon be...--) that was named "Les Jours Migrants (Boréals/Australs)". The same sort of idea. Unrealised as usual... Or the project we are currently working on for the Frioul Islands in Marseille, "Fenêtre Arctique" (Arctic Opening) --even if this last one is only based on lighting, due to budget restrictions... (but should be realised therefore!)--.
It really triggers this idea of distortions, or spatial interferences that we try to develop in our own work for some time (RealRoom(s), Tower of Atmospheric Relations).
Of course, it also reminds us a bit of Blur, Diller & Scofidio iconic project in Yverdon. But it's quite different though.
Wednesday, June 09. 2010
Via Pruned
-----
by Alexander Trevi
(Image by Rael San Fratello Architects.)
What better way to introduce invasive species; cluster bomb pollens on nature-deprived asthmatic children and, to the delight of Big Pharma, Claritin-addicted allergy sufferers; and deplete the coffers of post-econopocalypse cities by littering their streets with fallen fruits and leafy detritus for their under budgeted public works department to clean up, than with a floating mobile garden.
(Image by Rael San Fratello Architects.)
As envisioned by Rael San Fratello Architects, these nomadic gardens “would be suspended in the air from large remotely controlled dirigibles. Each inflatable craft would house thousands of smaller plants attached to long vines. A family of dirigibles would migrate within a city, moving towards areas where the heat island effect is greatest, and also migrate seasonally, traveling to southern cities during winter months and northern cities during summer months.”
One wonders if there will be an outbreak of botanical piracy, whereby someone lassos in one of the floating mobile gardens by the tentacles and anchors it right above his house all summer long, its cooling shades cutting down his air conditioner use, not to mention his electricity bill.
Perhaps urban adventurers will also snag one of these gardens, but only temporarily, long enough for them to explore its feral tendrils and gelatinous parterres. They'll emerge out of their sewers and their abandoned hospitals, and, squinting hard at the fullness of the sun, they'll climb up, up, up, up towards the clouds, the heaviness of their claustrophobic playgrounds giving way to buoyancy and vistas.
Nearby, meanwhile, will be another parked garden crawling with Avatar cosplayers.
(Image by Rael San Fratello Architects.)
Finally, we read that “each plant is attached to an individual propelled device that allows it to be set free from it’s base. Controlled by GPS and GIS information and organized in flocking patterns, plants move through the city in swarms hydrating, providing shade, and bring oxygen to greenless spaces in the urban field.”
Clearly this means that any rogue robo-botanical hacker will be able to stage a vegetal version of The Birds.
(Go see Rael San Fratello Architects in Consume at Exit Art in New York from June 18 to August 28, 2010. A project of SEA (Social Environmental Aesthetics), Consume “is a multimedia group exhibition and event series that investigates the world's systems of food production, distribution, consumption and waste.”)
Wednesday, June 02. 2010
Via Pruned
-----
by Alexander Trevi
(Analog Media Lab, Chair I: Rococo Armchair Retrofit, 2010. Photo by Analog Media Lab.)
Chair I: Rococo Armchair Retrofit and Chair II: Ghost Chair Retrofit belong to a series of projects by Analog Media Lab exploring interfaces between insect and human communities. These works focus on domestic insects that have not been domesticated — meaning, they are generally considered invasive, unproductive or otherwise problematic (e.g., ants, termites, moths).
(Analog Media Lab, Chair I: Rococo Armchair Retrofit, 2010. Photo by Analog Media Lab.)
Connected by flexible tubing to ports in a perimeter wall, the interior volumes of Chair I and Chair II are literally part of the outdoors, making them inhabitable by insects. Active nesting and reproductive behaviors are made visible within the context of the domestic interior.
(Analog Media Lab, Chair II: Ghost Chair Retrofit, 2010. Photo by Analog Media Lab.)
Analog Media Lab is a collaborative practice founded by David L. Hays, Kevin Stewart and Shuangshuang Wu.
Tuesday, June 01. 2010
-----
by Koert van Mensvoort
Hans Jørgen Olsen, a 12-year-old Norwegian boy, saved himself and his sister from a moose attack using skills he picked up playing the online role playing game World of Warcraft.
Hans and his sister got into trouble after they had trespassed the territory of the moose during a walk in the forest near their home. When the moose attacked them, Hans knew the first thing he had to do was ‘taunt’ and provoke the animal so that it would leave his sister alone and she could run to safety. ‘Taunting’ is a move one uses in World of Warcraft to get monsters off of the less-well-armored team members.
Once Hans was a target, he remembered another skill he had picked up at level 30 in ‘World of Warcraft’ – he feigned death. The moose lost interest in the inanimate boy and wandered off into the woods. When he was safely alone Hans ran back home to share his tale of video game-inspired survival.
Via Nettavisen.no.
Wednesday, July 08. 2009
Nominated by the TerraPass. team
Our experiences shape our consciousness: who we are, who we become, the choices we make about how we spend our lives. But our range of experiences — from drinking from a clean, clear Sierra stream to beholding a star-filled night sky — is diminishing. With the disappearance of unmediated experiences in nature, the opportunity to know what it means to be human in the world is compromised and our awareness of the fundamental truth of the interdependent and interconnnected nature of our existence becomes more and more attenuated. This obscured perception has personal, social and global consequences.
Through all manner of artistic expression — painting, video, music, sculpture, etc, the collaborative installation, A Catalog of Extinct Experience, will evoke the experience of that connected whole. We will engage all of the senses to awaken people to the wonder of experiences gone and threatened, and the import of such loss. Our aim is neither nostalgia nor despondency, but rather to inspire awareness, wonder and gratitude for our remarkable world and to spark the recognition that our own best, creative, evolving selves grow out of and depend on preserving a diverse and evolving planet.
The website for the project is expanding and under development.
Chris Desser, the creator and founder of the project, has done at lot of work at the intersection of the environment, politics, and technology. She can be reached at cdesser@mac.com.
This piece is part of Worldchanging's Attention Philanthropy campaign. All week long, the Worldchanging Network will be delivering "attention grants" to worthy projects, individuals, resources and more. You can learn more about these gifts of notice and find other entries by clicking here.
Photo credit: Flickr/Nick Russill, Creative Commons License.
-----
Via WorldChanging
Personal comment:
Une approche et un texte peut-être un peu "conservateur" et nostalgique: quelles nouvelles expériences ont été gagnées et quelle nouvelle définition trouver de "la nature" aujourd'hui alors qu'elle est "artificielle" ou partiellement déformée/manufacturée par l'activité humaine. Si l'on s'en tient à l'ancienne acceptation du mot nature, alors la nature n'existe plus. Reste que la perte des expériences ou d'un "spectre d'expériences" large est une véritable question, à mettre en parallèle avec le "devenir confortable" de notre environnement quotidien.
|