Ecologically Conscious
Farmopolis, Greenwich
23 November 2016
In collaboration with
Hugo Wheeler
(as part of Transparent Platform)
Sponsored by
The Burford Garden Centre & The Botanist Gin
In a time when we are becoming increasingly devoid of natural environments, the ‘artificial oasis’ is now more prevalent in the landscape. Increasingly we see constructed spaces as a memento of ‘the outdoors’.
Ecologically Conscious investigated the close relationship between biological and social evolution.
The artists selected sought to comprehend natural subject matter within artificial environments in order to highlight changing attitudes towards nature.
The Bioelectric Chorus: Exhibiting The Sounds of Formerly Mute Organisms
George Stuart
This is a bioelectric chorus composed of 6 plant organisms at close proximity to each one another. Each plant relaying and reacting to the sounds being produced from electric activity within itself. Presented in a way that mirrors that of a choir of singers. Sounds are produced through using a series of censors systematically connected to each other.
George Stuart, a recent graduate of BA Fine Art at Chelsea College of Art at the time, acted as the conductor of the plants, initiating communication between both humans and nature. The activity is read using ECG (electrocardiogram) monitors, directly measuring the bioelectric activity within the plant. This ECG is connected to an Arduino circuit board that has been processed to convert the output from the plant into a tonal note.
Free flowing communication between the plants themselves will start to be created.
Cultivate
Susie Browning, Sara Augieras and Amy Yuemeng Dang.
Susie and Sara, were recent graduates from The London Contemporary Dance School, Amy, a cinematographer currently undergoing her masters in Ethnographic and Documentary Films at UCL. As a collective, Transparent Platform commissioned Cultivate, a performance piece documented through a digital Sony FX3 Camera.
The work aimed to conceive our conditioned experiences and notions of nature. The work is split between both a live performance in the space by Susie and Sara and a documented film that explores the ancient trails and woodlands of the Chiltern Ridgeway.
Throughout the film Susie and Sara reflect on the compositional structures of the chalk landscape, cultivating movement through the form of dance, harking back to primitive nature of human condition. Questioning whether we will ever be able to be truly at one with nature.
Props and Model for a Landscape
Jake Cecil
Jake was student studying MA Print at The Royal College of Art. Props and Model for a Landscape looked to understand nature within artificial theatrical settings. Jake was influenced by his time living in Brighton, with its array of ‘false’, garish colours juxtaposed with the beauty of nature within the city.
Jake has created a two-part large-scale installation, optimizing his breadth of ideas through his use of mixed media, his materials varying from plastic prefabricated PVA board to fine lithographs of the natural landscape.
Medicinal Plants: Series 1
Shayna Foneska
Shayna was a student studying BA Fine Art at The Slade School of Fine Art. Medicinal Plants: Series 1 was a set of 5 hyper realist plants, made from icing sugar, standing alongside information about their medicinal properties associated with memory. They preserve and conjure a false sense of reality whilst highlighting lifelessness. At first look the life forms appear exuberant, however when looked at closer, due to there artifice material they appear lifeless.
Trapped
John Petulla
John was a recent BA Fine Art Graduate of Chelsea Collage of Art. His series Trapped derived from a human’s lack of knowledge and skill in survival, seeing that once natural survival skills where innate to mans existence, it is now typically disinteresting to man.
Trapped displayed a range of different hunting methods that have historically been used as a form a survival. Traps previous function had been utilitarian, however John has shifted this into an exhibition environment, shifting the work function into the artificial.
Perhaps Independently
George Stuart
Perhaps Independently, also by George Stuart, looked to explore natural ecologies through the digital landscapes. Using game programming software Unity George crafted his own day/night cycle with the weather interacting with artificially replicated grass stretching across a seemingly endless field.
The virtual landscape aimed to portray a sense of connection with the earth through completely fabricated digital means. As time passes within the constructed reality George made it so the viewer believe that is a portal to a digitally rendered world where our animalistic relationship with nature is brought forward.
Farmopolis
This exhibition was inspired by Farmopolis, a floating garden and cultural space constructed on a disused coal jetty on the Greenwich Peninsula.
Known as the ‘Floating Garden’, the constructed oasis was used to re-home plants from surplus locations, reflecting the artificial nature in which ‘the outdoors’ is constructed within urban environments today.
