{"id":197,"date":"2018-06-12T09:20:43","date_gmt":"2018-06-12T09:20:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newnatures.org\/greenhouse\/?p=197"},"modified":"2018-07-31T12:24:12","modified_gmt":"2018-07-31T12:24:12","slug":"artificial-nature-2018-venice-architecture-biennale","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newnatures.org\/greenhouse\/sharing-research\/artificial-nature-2018-venice-architecture-biennale\/","title":{"rendered":"Artificial Nature \/ 2018 Venice Architecture Biennale"},"content":{"rendered":"

It has been a pleasure to be at UiS in collaboration with Eric Dean Rasmussen<\/a> and all the folks at the Greenhouse! I have been exploring Stavanger, learning about the fascinating research that the Greenhouse conducts and facilitates, and working a bit manically on projects of my own.<\/p>\n

My first week here I traveled to Italy to attend a symposium on \u201cArtificial Natures,\u201d<\/a> hosted by the Ideal Spaces working group<\/a> (Ulrich Gehmann<\/a>, P.I.), a project supported by the European Cultural Centre<\/a>, and organized as a part of its exhibition for the 2018 Architecture Biennale in Venice, a city I had never visited but is arguably one of the most naturally beautiful and \u201cartificially\u201d maintained spaces in Europe.<\/p>\n

The exhibit was beautifully designed and housed in the Palazzo Mora<\/a>. It consisted of a series of six different environments that ranged from conventional garden spaces to terraced cities rendered with 3D simulators to complete abstractions. These images were projected on a three-part, floor-to-ceiling screen, with a console positioned in front of it.\u00a0 Selecting one of the control blocks from the console and setting it in the center prompted the exhibit to shift environments.\u00a0 The visuals were impressive, immersive, organized around a single-point perspective\u2014and the music, by Alexander Kadin and the Experimental Tone Studio Odek\u2014was especially stunning.\u00a0 A full description of the exhibition<\/a> is detailed on the Ideal Spaces website.<\/p>\n

Matthias Buehler introduces the exhibit<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0
\nThree of the six environments & t<\/em>he console<\/em><\/p>\n

The first day of the symposium included a discussion of garden spaces and utopian architecture by Yulia Leonova<\/a>, a discussion of the history of elemental design by Christoph M\u00fcller, and culminated with a demonstration, in partnership with\u00a0Guy Shalev of Microsoft Garage (Israel)<\/a>, of an Augmented Reality depiction of Tel Aviv as a garden city, using the MS HoloLens.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

3d model of Tel Aviv as a Garden City, me pretending to be a savvy HoloLens user, & a screen projection of the HoloLens overlay<\/em><\/p>\n

The afternoon conversations involved the usual attempts and failures to define nature but resulted in some really cool ways of thinking about artificiality, including the distinction between \u201ccreated\u201d and \u201cgenerated\u201d art; the untrustworthiness of plants, and the persistence and adaptability of bats.<\/p>\n

The second day of the symposium was jam-packed with presentations on a variety of fascinating topics: nature and Soviet constructivist architecture (Ksenia Malich<\/a>); 3D models of a desert utopia, comprised of sponge-like architecture and repeating patterns (Arthur Goldyuk); a critique of the \u201csmart city\u201d aesthetic (Dani Ploeger); memory, memorial, and nature in the Tejas Verdes torture center of Chile (Karen E. Bishop<\/a>); remediating memory in the Eastern Philadelphia Penitentiary (Sam Olshin<\/a>); using City Engine to simulate natural and built environments (Mattihas Buehler<\/a>); architectural history (Diego Repetto<\/a>); and environmental pollution on the coast of Tuscany (Livia Stacchini<\/a>).<\/p>\n

I was particularly intrigued by Dani Ploeger\u2019s \u201cPost-Apocalypse Smart City Lagoon,\u201d<\/a> an important provocation that made use of QR codes on the trash cans of Venice to call attention to global pollution. Ploeger tagged over 200 garbage cans in Venice with his codes. Although these codes employ the same \u201csmart city\u201d aesthetic that dominates the marketing of the Venice Biennale, they do not lead to self-congratulatory visions of a well-regulated and hyper-rational metropolis. Instead, scanning the QRCs leads to images of trash cans floating in a post-apocalyptic watery expanse. \u00a0\u00a0This presentation was also fantastic for its close reading of Thomas More\u2019s Utopia<\/em>.\u00a0 I had not recalled the way that More describes trash removal in that text, but Ploeger\u2019s reading highlighted it.\u00a0 It is, in short, pushed out of sight and its removal outsourced to slaves\u2014a blueprint for the modern era\u2019s treatment of natural resources and its shameful and continued use of exploitative labor. \u00a0A full description of the project can be found on Ploeger\u2019s website<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n

Images from Ploeger\u2019s \u201cPost-Apocalypse Smart City Lagoon<\/em>\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

I was also completely impressed by the work of Matthias Buehler of vrbn.io<\/a>, who presented work he designed with City Engine<\/a> and vrbn.io’s own proprietary code.\u00a0 He showed models he had made of Brazilian Favelas and design work he had collaborated on for the film industry, but his model of a refugee camp south of Iraq was flat-out stunning, not only because it was exquisitely rendered and designed, but because it showed the space and scale of the camp, its implications for surveillance, for human rights, for human rights abuses, and its uneasy and precarious situation in a desert ecology. I followed with my presentation of the Literary Field Guide App,<\/a> a collaboration with Scott Svatos<\/a>, my design partner (and life partner) and was delighted by the feedback and conversation it provoked.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Designed flora from Matthias Buehler at vrbn.io\u00a0<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Finally, Livia Stacchini\u2019s<\/a> Master\u2019s research on the Solvay Company\u2019s production of Baking Soda, was fascinating.\u00a0 This company’s manufacturing of sodium bicarbonate has the unfortunate consequence of bleaching the surrounding beaches.\u00a0 Ironically, these white beaches, because they look like beaches of the Caribbean, have become a popular tourist destination, even as the water remains unsafe to bathe in.\u00a0 As she so beautifully put it, Solvay \u201cmakes products to clean interior spaces while polluting natural spaces with toxic chemical byproducts.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

While there is a lot to think about\u2014an overwhelming amount, actually\u2014a few clusters of research emerged fairly clearly: 1) the utopian impulse within desert spaces 2) the artificiality of gardens and parks 3) the role of infrastructure 4) the challenges and opportunities for memorializing history through natural spaces.<\/p>\n

There is no doubt much more to explore along all four of these lines.\u00a0 The presentations of Tel Aviv as a Garden City, for example, when presented next to a 3D model of a desert refugee camp, requires further nuance and conversation in regard to colonization, access, and ecological and environmental ethics in terms of resource management.<\/p>\n

The symposium concluded with a conversation about future plans, and I look forward to seeing where the working group will head.\u00a0 In the meantime, however, I am delighted to back at the Greenhouse at UiS.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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