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--- groworld_vegetal_culture [2013-01-25 07:22] – nik
+++ groworld_vegetal_culture [2013-01-25 08:08] – [GroWorld: Experiments in vegetal culture] maja
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-Culture, in the sense of cultivation of minds and behaviours, is one of the most enduring phenomena through which we shape our world (Brand 1999). We leave religious sites, shipwrecks and public art as hand-prints on the environment we share with other species. Enhancing and depleting ecosystems. Some preindustrial societies saw themselves as a part of ever-widening cycles of nature. We can still experience their silent memorials in the form of animist and Buddhist temples in Asian landscapes, or pagan sites scattered throughout Europe. With the advent of the industrial age and modernism, European cultures became increasingly divorced from the non-human "planetary other" (McKenna 1992), so that the two evolved in parallel for a while, only to begin converging again in the unlikely places such as sites of failed industrial experiments. The Chernobyl “involuntary park” is a marvel of biodiversity and adaptation to a technological disaster (Sterling, retrieved 2010). Abandoned factories in the German Rühr are now colonised by cultural initiatives, such as the Zollverein. Both cultural and natural changes are slow but tenacious forces often marginalised in a world dominated by economic rationalism. They are messy tangles of emotional, spiritual and physical values, irreducible to simple graphs and statistical analysis, and as such are often ignored.
+Culture, in the sense of cultivation of minds and behaviours, is one of the most enduring phenomena through which we shape our world (Brand 1999). We leave religious sites, shipwrecks and public art as hand-prints on the environment we share with other species. Enhancing and depleting ecosystems. Some preindustrial societies saw themselves as a part of ever-widening cycles of nature. We can still experience their silent memorials in the form of animist and Buddhist temples in Asian landscapes, or pagan sites scattered throughout Europe. With the advent of the industrial age and modernism, European cultures became increasingly divorced from the non-human "planetary other" (McKenna 1992), so that the two evolved in parallel for a while, only to begin converging again in unlikely places such as sites of failed industrial experiments. The Chernobyl “involuntary park” is a marvel of biodiversity and adaptation to a technological disaster (Sterling, retrieved 2010). Abandoned factories in the German Rühr are now colonised by cultural initiatives, such as the Zollverein. Both cultural and natural changes are slow but tenacious forces often marginalised in a world dominated by economic rationalism. They are messy tangles of emotional, spiritual and physical values, irreducible to simple graphs and statistical analysis, and as such are often ignored.
+{{https://farm9.staticflickr.com/8474/8412633801_981b305cb7.jpg}}
 On the other hand, technology – another human contribution to the planetary ecosystem – is embraced by the same economic and political powers as a panacea to most contemporary challenges, from environmental turbulence to financial crises. From prehistoric seed-collecting and early agricultural ploughs through to nanotech, technology has become a persistent mark of humanity, in the shape of tools and techniques through which we analyse and interact with the world. Although how we use and think about technology has had a substantial influence on cultural changes and the eco-systems we live in (digital technology being the most recent example), it can never fill the cultural void left in the wake of the erosion of the grand narratives of the 20th century. Technology in isolation cannot provide truly encompassing visions of what a society could become, even though we have attempted to understand culture (and the whole universe) in terms of technological models – as clockwork, steam machine, or computer. The limitations of these models have become gradually apparent as science (and common sense) has dug deeper into the fundaments of reality. Now, after ages of superimposing technological worldviews on living systems, perhaps it is time to evolve technology from life.
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 Making the inward-oriented beauty of plant life compelling in the context of computer games is challenging. FoAM collaborated with game designers Tale of Tales to explore what it means to play a plant on a computer screen. To investigate whether there could be consilience between game design, botany and permaculture, the team prototyped a series of mini-games. One approach involved connecting physical plants to sensors so that information about their physical environment would influence the “weather” in a digital garden. In another prototype, plant collaboration (as understood in permaculture) was used as a starting point for developing game mechanics.
+{{https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4153/5067258589_0768452f7b.jpg}}
 Having experimented with the “first-plant perspective” in a collection of prototypes, attention shifted back to “playing with plants,” this time in the collaborative spaces of online social networks. Germination X is an attempt to introduce plants as guides in creating self-sustaining digital gardens, as a response to the industrial farming game Farmville. FoAM designed a prototype in which players are guided by autonomous “plant spirits” to grow virtual permaculture guilds, where diverse plants work together to grow and propagate. Zizim was one outgrowth of Germination X that focused on reconnecting the game world to physical locales. Zizim (“compass” in Hildegard's Lingua Ignota) emerged as a hybrid between a mobile app and an online game, exploring the interaction between urban foraging and the symbiotic relationships between plants and fungi.
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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).
-Even though postindustrial cities have the potential to become spontaneous conviviums, consumer culture, privatisation of public spaces and propagation of indoor entertainment have taken many a citizen away from the vibrant freshness and wind-blown vigour of urban gardens and parks. Some city-grown children don’t know that meat was once the living flesh of animals; many urbanite adults don’t recognise edible plants growing under their feet. To assist these people with spotting and sharing information about food sources that surround them, FoAM in Amsterdam developed Boskoi, an interactive survival guide for urban foragers equipped with mobile phones. The Boskoi app displays edible species in an area, accompanied by expert advice from seasoned gardeners and botanists. With the assistance of Boskoi, even a novice forager can stroll through the city after work and casually collect herbs, fruits or vegetables to add to their dinner.
+Even though postindustrial cities have the potential to become spontaneous conviviums, consumer culture, privatisation of public spaces and propagation of indoor entertainment have taken many a citizen away from the vibrant freshness and wind-blown vigour of urban gardens and parks. Some city-grown children don’t realise that meat was once the living flesh of animals; many urbanite adults don’t recognise edible plants growing under their feet. To assist with spotting and sharing information about food sources that surround them, FoAM in Amsterdam developed Boskoi, an interactive survival guide for urban foragers equipped with mobile phones. The Boskoi app displays edible species in an area, accompanied by expert advice from seasoned gardeners and botanists. With the assistance of Boskoi, even a novice forager can stroll through the city after work and casually collect herbs, fruits or vegetables to add to their dinner.
-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 – both humans and animals. 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 that combines 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.
-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 South America.
+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.
 “Arranging flowers is arranging ourselves. We're all flowers.”