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| groworld_vegetal_culture [2013-01-25 08:19] – [From planetary to human scale: responsive environments] maja | groworld_vegetal_culture [2020-06-06 10:39] – old revision restored (2013-01-30 01:55) 173.212.246.178 |
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| From these questions and assertions sprouted the groWorld initiative, a long-term inquiry into human-plant interactions and their effect on the longevity of human culture. The people of FoAM – a distributed laboratory for speculative culture – initiated groWorld to "minimise borders and maximise edges" between the man-made and the vegetal. In these zones of liminality and ambiguity, groWorld abets "unholy alliances" between contemporary culture and cultivation, building and growing, botany and technology. Inspired by the way in which plant species propagate – spanning multiple temporal layers – the initiative encompasses both long- and short-term explorations. The slow processes of cultural adaptation and plant cultivation are researched across several decades, through observation and interaction. At the same time, quick technological and social changes are incorporated through techno-artistic experiments in three interconnected branches: {sym}, {bio} and {sys}. The {sym} branch looks at how human culture can be infused with vegetal characteristics: in botanical fiction, plant games, active materials, and responsive environments. The {bio} branch is about a direct collaboration with plants, using age-old techniques of foraging and gardening and seeing cities as edible landscapes for humans and non-humans. Finally, {sys} deals with botanically-inspired technologies that can help humans engage with plants beyond the physical level, through sensing, perception and perhaps even communication. | From these questions and assertions sprouted the groWorld initiative, a long-term inquiry into human-plant interactions and their effect on the longevity of human culture. The people of FoAM – a distributed laboratory for speculative culture – initiated groWorld to "minimise borders and maximise edges" between the man-made and the vegetal. In these zones of liminality and ambiguity, groWorld abets "unholy alliances" between contemporary culture and cultivation, building and growing, botany and technology. Inspired by the way in which plant species propagate – spanning multiple temporal layers – the initiative encompasses both long- and short-term explorations. The slow processes of cultural adaptation and plant cultivation are researched across several decades, through observation and interaction. At the same time, quick technological and social changes are incorporated through techno-artistic experiments in three interconnected branches: {sym}, {bio} and {sys}. The {sym} branch looks at how human culture can be infused with vegetal characteristics: in botanical fiction, plant games, active materials, and responsive environments. The {bio} branch is about a direct collaboration with plants, using age-old techniques of foraging and gardening and seeing cities as edible landscapes for humans and non-humans. Finally, {sys} deals with botanically-inspired technologies that can help humans engage with plants beyond the physical level, through sensing, perception and perhaps even communication. |
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| Through a cross-fertilisation of {sym}{bio}{sys}, groWorld merges digital culture with environmentalism. Both approaches promote empowerment of trans-local communities and are rooted in self-reliant maker-cultures, yet they don’t often mingle. groWorld encourages their interaction by bringing programmers and gardeners, gamers and botanists together on the common ground of the arts. Together, they create hybrids of gardening and technology, or narrative realities where human and vegetal can merge into a unified, hybrid culture. | Through a cross-fertilisation of {sym}{bio}{sys}, groWorld merges digital culture with environmentalism. Both approaches promote empowerment of trans-local communities and are rooted in self-reliant maker-cultures, yet they don’t often mingle. groWorld encourages their interaction by bringing programmers and gardeners, gamers and botanists together on the common ground of the arts. Together, they create hybrids of gardening and technology, or narrative realities where human and vegetal can merge into a unified, hybrid culture. |
| {{https://farm1.staticflickr.com/180/419828990_8e795bf8b1.jpg}} | {{https://farm1.staticflickr.com/180/419828990_8e795bf8b1.jpg}} |
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| It was time for us to bring conversations down to the human scale and offer participants a direct experience of the effects we can have on our immediate surroundings (in real time and in a circumscribed space). FoAM designed a forest of phantasmagoric robo-botanical trees that surrounded a responsive domed shelter – the “growth bunker.” In the warmth of the bunker, visitors were immersed in electro-luminescent light and generative sound – an environment designed to respond to people’s voices and movement. Within this space, the environmental effects of their conscious and unconscious actions became instantly apparent. As in Wim Wenders’ movie //Until the End of the World,// people became intoxicated by the experience of their actions rippling through the growth and decay of biomorphic light and soundscapes. The interplay between people’s actions and environmental responses encouraged deceleration and engagement. The expected instant gratification of digital entertainment was substituted with meditative explorations of ambient changes. | It was time for us to bring conversations down to the human scale and offer participants a direct experience of the effects we can have on our immediate surroundings (in real time and in a circumscribed space). FoAM designed a forest of phantasmagoric robo-botanical trees that surrounded a responsive domed shelter – the “growth bunker.” In the warmth of the bunker, visitors were immersed in electro-luminescent light and generative sound – an environment designed to respond to people’s voices and movement. Within this space, the environmental effects of their conscious and unconscious actions became instantly apparent. As in Wim Wenders’ movie Until the End of the World, people became intoxicated by the experience of their actions rippling through the growth and decay of biomorphic light and soundscapes. The interplay between people’s actions and environmental responses encouraged deceleration and engagement. The expected instant gratification of digital entertainment was substituted with meditative explorations of ambient changes. |
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| {{https://farm9.staticflickr.com/8335/8413731872_157ef9954e.jpg}} | {{https://farm9.staticflickr.com/8335/8413731872_157ef9954e.jpg}} |
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| In groWorld patabotany was grafted onto tarot, a known storytelling and divination platform with its roots in card games and magic of italian Rennaissance. FoAM cross-breed tarot archetypes and ethnobotanical properties of plants - as the adventurous fool or the mysterious high priestess with patabotanically evolved Morning Glory and Lady's Mantle. Some of the chosen plants share history, morphology or geography with the human archetypes, others are able to induce archetypal body- and mind states or inhabit the same pataecology. Patabotanical tarot builds on a peculiar and mysterious history of plant books, which includes such curiosities as The Voynich Manuscript (Kennedy 2005, Voynich, Retreived 2011), Parallel Botany (Lionni 1978), Codex Seraphinianus (Serafini 1981) and Tolkien’s plants of Middle Earth (Hazell 2007). The Voynich Manuscript, for example, allegedly written in the 15th or 16th century, contains hundreds of herbal, astronomical, biological, cosmological and pharmaceutical drawings and recipes. The manuscript is not written in any known language, and has resisted all attempts at translation; many believe it is a hoax. The plants detailed in this strange manuscript do not match any known species. In a way, the Voynich Manuscript represents a “secret knowledge” of a possibly fictional, possibly alchemical universe, and as such it has engaged and fascinated scholars for hundreds of years. Parallel Botany, a more recent example by a known author, is a collection of faux scientific descriptions of plants, backed by invented mythologies and folktales from around the globe. Parallel plants have the ability to defy perspective, exist as music, or evaporate when touched. There is so much that we don’t know about our vegetal neighbours that even the most scientifically-minded among us have been unsure how much of this work is fact and how much fiction. Patabotany is a similarly entangled milieu, where botanical truths are questioned through juxtapositions with traditional myths and popular beliefs, interspersed with personal dreams and collective speculations. | In groWorld patabotany was grafted onto Tarot, a known storytelling and divination platform with its roots in card games and magic of the Italian Rennaissance. FoAM cross-bred tarot archetypes and ethnobotanical properties of plants – as the adventurous Fool or the mysterious High Priestess – with patabotanically-evolved morning glory and lady's mantle. Some of the chosen plants share history, morphology or geography with the human archetypes, others are able to induce archetypal body and mind states or inhabit the same pataecology. Patabotanical Tarot builds on a peculiar and mysterious history of plant books, which includes such curiosities as The Voynich Manuscript (Kennedy 2005, Voynich, retrieved 2011), Parallel Botany (Lionni 1978), Codex Seraphinianus (Serafini 1981) and Tolkien’s Plants of Middle Earth (Hazell 2007). The Voynich Manuscript, for example, allegedly written in the 15th or 16th century, contains hundreds of herbal, astronomical, biological, cosmological and pharmaceutical drawings and recipes. The manuscript is not written in any known language, and has resisted all attempts at translation; many believe it is a hoax. The plants detailed in this strange manuscript do not match any known species. In a way, the Voynich Manuscript represents a “secret knowledge” of a possibly fictional, possibly alchemical universe, and as such it has engaged and fascinated scholars for hundreds of years. Parallel Botany, a more recent example by a known author, is a collection of faux scientific descriptions of plants, backed by invented mythologies and folktales from around the globe. Parallel plants have the ability to defy perspective, exist as music, or evaporate when touched. There is so much that we don’t know about our vegetal neighbours that even the most scientifically-minded among us have been unsure how much of this work is fact and how much fiction. Patabotany is a similarly entangled milieu, where botanical truths are questioned through juxtapositions with traditional myths and popular beliefs, interspersed with personal dreams and collective speculations. |
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| Gardening can be a purposeful cultivation of plants as food and medicine. It can also be a meditative activity that allows us to contemplate the effects of our actions on our immediate surroundings. Alternatively, gardening can become a collective endeavour that brings communities together to resist monocultural hegemony. Gardening is humanity’s most direct hand-to-leaf interaction with living plants. In groWorld, gardening has taken on all of these dimensions – growing food, meditating, and building a community; whether through growing plants on windowsills, rooftops, back-yards, church yards, unused lots or public parks. To create urban gardens groWorld follows permaculture principles, specifically focusing on the techniques of permaculture guilds and companion planting (Holmgren, 2002). These techniques are based on creating permanent, self-sustaining gardens through “collaborations” between individual plants. Guild gardening is advantageous in urban settings, where it is used to grow a variety of species in small spaces and keep scarce soil fertile for as long as possible. In Brussels, FoAM's experiments focused on medicinal plant guilds that can thrive on roofs and balconies, including native fennel, wormwood and nasturtium. In Amsterdam, FoAM engages local communities in redesigning church gardens to form edible parks, centred around hardy native plants – the guilds of raspberries, marigolds, garlic and many other common edibles. | Gardening can be a purposeful cultivation of plants as food and medicine. It can also be a meditative activity that allows us to contemplate the effects of our actions on our immediate surroundings. Alternatively, gardening can become a collective endeavour that brings communities together to resist monocultural hegemony. Gardening is humanity’s most direct hand-to-leaf interaction with living plants. In groWorld, gardening has taken on all of these dimensions – growing food, meditating, and building a community; whether through growing plants on windowsills, rooftops, back-yards, church yards, unused lots or public parks. To create urban gardens groWorld follows permaculture principles, specifically focusing on the techniques of permaculture guilds and companion planting (Holmgren, 2002). These techniques are based on creating permanent, self-sustaining gardens through “collaborations” between individual plants. Guild gardening is advantageous in urban settings, where it is used to grow a variety of species in small spaces and keep scarce soil fertile for as long as possible. In Brussels, FoAM's experiments focused on medicinal plant guilds that can thrive on roofs and balconies, including native fennel, wormwood and nasturtium. In Amsterdam, FoAM engages local communities in redesigning church gardens to form edible parks, centred around hardy native plants – the guilds of raspberries, marigolds, garlic and many other common edibles. |
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| | {{https://farm3.staticflickr.com/2464/3794474629_f99c2cecd3.jpg}} |
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| groWorld’s vision of urban gardening doesn’t stop at fenced-off back-yards and allotments, it sees cities as continuous green passages from industrial to vegetal culture. Since the begining of the millenium, groWorld’s gardeners have been spreading and harvesting native flora in industrial zones, city centres and abandoned lots – in Belgium, the Netherlands, UK and Australia. We share the views of Urbanibalism that “the city should become a natural source of food and a place for diverse forms of life that grow autonomously from any planned city ecology. The city becomes a spontaneous convivium” (Maas and Pasquinelli, Retrieved 2010). | groWorld’s vision of urban gardening doesn’t stop at fenced-off back-yards and allotments, it sees cities as continuous green passages from industrial to vegetal culture. Since the begining of the millenium, groWorld’s gardeners have been spreading and harvesting native flora in industrial zones, city centres and abandoned lots – in Belgium, the Netherlands, UK and Australia. We share the views of Urbanibalism that “the city should become a natural source of food and a place for diverse forms of life that grow autonomously from any planned city ecology. The city becomes a spontaneous convivium” (Maas and Pasquinelli, Retrieved 2010). |
| For more dedicated plant enthusiasts, interested not just in foraging but also seeding edible urban landscapes, groWorld’s collaborators organise workshops in seed-balling (or seed bombing), urban gardening and guerrilla grafting. Seed-balls, so named by Masanobu Fukuoka (Fukuoka 1990), are small balls made of red or brown clay, vegetal compost, and a carefully picked mixture of seeds. Planting the balls does not require digging, which makes them perfect vehicles for spreading in the city. groWorld’s seedballs contain seeds that can become “weedscapes” of native plants: able to replenish and purify the soil in urban and industrial zones, and edible for urban dwellers – human and animal. A step further in plant propagation is the ancient skill of grafting, which involves interchanging parts of related or similar plant species. In orchards, grafting is nowadays rarely applied on adult plants, but all young fruit trees are grafts of a good fruit-bearing type onto a plant selected for its roots, which results in a hybrid combining the best of both. FoAM in Amsterdam began experiments with grafting wild and domesticated apples in the city, aiming to increase urban biodiversity and opportunities for pollination. One of their first grafts was a wild apple found near the Sloterdijk train station bound to a domesticated Golden Delicious in FoAM's garden. In autumn of 2012 this hybrid produced the first Rough (Golden) Sloterdijk apples, whose rough exterior covers an juicy flesh rich in taste, with hints of cinnamon and juniper. | For more dedicated plant enthusiasts, interested not just in foraging but also seeding edible urban landscapes, groWorld’s collaborators organise workshops in seed-balling (or seed bombing), urban gardening and guerrilla grafting. Seed-balls, so named by Masanobu Fukuoka (Fukuoka 1990), are small balls made of red or brown clay, vegetal compost, and a carefully picked mixture of seeds. Planting the balls does not require digging, which makes them perfect vehicles for spreading in the city. groWorld’s seedballs contain seeds that can become “weedscapes” of native plants: able to replenish and purify the soil in urban and industrial zones, and edible for urban dwellers – human and animal. A step further in plant propagation is the ancient skill of grafting, which involves interchanging parts of related or similar plant species. In orchards, grafting is nowadays rarely applied on adult plants, but all young fruit trees are grafts of a good fruit-bearing type onto a plant selected for its roots, which results in a hybrid combining the best of both. FoAM in Amsterdam began experiments with grafting wild and domesticated apples in the city, aiming to increase urban biodiversity and opportunities for pollination. One of their first grafts was a wild apple found near the Sloterdijk train station bound to a domesticated Golden Delicious in FoAM's garden. In autumn of 2012 this hybrid produced the first Rough (Golden) Sloterdijk apples, whose rough exterior covers an juicy flesh rich in taste, with hints of cinnamon and juniper. |
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| Not so long ago urban gardening was an activity relegated to marginalised subcultures and immigrant communities. Nowadays, large numbers of the urban population grow at least some herbs in their kitchens once again. Since the financial crisis of 2008 and increasingly unpredictable environmental upheavals, there is much demand for and attention to growing food in cities. Some of groWorld's gardening activities that were ignored by cultural institutions in the early 2000s have recently begun to become part of mainstream culture. Avant Gardening prophesied that“Gardening will emerge as one of the major economic forces of resistance” (Wilson 1999). A little over a decade later, urban gardening is practiced not just by the members of the “cultural resistance” but by people from all walks of life – ranging from the American first lady, uprooted people in European refugee centres, to school children in Australia and overpopulated favelas in Brazil. | Not so long ago urban gardening was an activity relegated to marginalised subcultures and immigrant communities. Nowadays, large numbers of the urban population grow at least some herbs in their kitchens once again. Since the financial crisis of 2008 and increasingly unpredictable environmental upheavals, there is much demand for and attention to growing food in cities. Some of groWorld's gardening activities that were ignored by cultural institutions in the early 2000s have recently begun to become part of mainstream culture. Avant Gardening prophesied that “gardening will emerge as one of the major economic forces of resistance” (Wilson 1999). A little over a decade later, urban gardening is practiced not just by the members of the “cultural resistance” but by people from all walks of life – ranging from the American first lady, uprooted people in European refugee centres, to school children in Australia and overpopulated favelas in Brazil. |
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| “Arranging flowers is arranging ourselves. We're all flowers.” | “Arranging flowers is arranging ourselves. We're all flowers.” |
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| – Thich Nhat Hanh | – Thich Nhat Hanh |
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| | {{https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4002/4440835005_962b1764d1.jpg}} |
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| Plants are entangling urban culture, entwining art and science, emerging through cracks in pavements and doors blown open by turbulent weather. Humans have curious relationships with plants - from digging for gnarly sprouts in parched deserts to battling vigorous tangles in dense forests, from building tree-houses on mountain peaks to hoisting vertical gardens in sprawling urban jungles. We cultivate plants to cultivate humans. To cultivate the garden within. | Plants are entangling urban culture, entwining art and science, emerging through cracks in pavements and doors blown open by turbulent weather. Humans have curious relationships with plants - from digging for gnarly sprouts in parched deserts to battling vigorous tangles in dense forests, from building tree-houses on mountain peaks to hoisting vertical gardens in sprawling urban jungles. We cultivate plants to cultivate humans. To cultivate the garden within. |
| ==== Acknowledgements ==== | ==== Acknowledgements ==== |
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| With thanks for the contributions from Alkan Chipperfield, Nik Gaffney, Dave Griffiths, Adrian Hon, Theun Karelse, Lina Kusaite and Lionel Billiet. | With thanks for the contributions from Alkan Chipperfield, Dave Griffiths, Adrian Hon, Theun Karelse, Lina Kusaite and Lionel Billiet. |
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| groWorld is an initiative of FoAM: http://fo.am/groworld | groWorld is an initiative of FoAM: http://fo.am/groworld |
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