i spent the month of june this year in brooklyn, doing some research for a new project, the Archimedes Coalition. i was interested in finding out about people who are working on sustainable practices, focused locally. i know that the latter description could be an almost aggravatingly general, green term. part of the annoyance, about much of the ‘green washing’ that takes place in the world these days, is that we don’t consider what sustainable even means in this context. for instance: a couple goes to a carpet store, shopping for carpet, and they ask the salesman, “is this carpet sustainable?” what do they mean? does it sustain itself through time? in other words, does it last forever? or do they mean, is this carpet made out of moss? ultimately what people want is an energy savings. i’m not convinced, however, that they separate rigorous energy savings from the look of energy efficiency. it might feel and look cool to drive in a prius, with a patagonia shirt recycled from the plastic rooftops of some favela. but really humans are just going to use what’s at their disposal, with the technologies that are available, and they’re going to do it until those resources are used up, or until it’s against the law to practice those activities. we look back at our parents’ parents’ generation (parents of the baby boomers) and scold them for putting the Japanese into internment camps, picking strawberries, etc. well, the day may come when our progeny scolds us for taking a plane trip and driving around in ford F150.
so; so.
my own personal aggravation about being green comes about when what is proposed is either irrational or totally unrealistic. that’s sort of the context for my search… to find something new, something inventive. i am realizing now that the solutions must be beautiful. this is where the endeavor becomes artistic. what can we do that is beautiful and alternate from the status quo? i.e. atmosphere choking, environment killing?
i did some work on flexible solar membranes, alternate energy storage and lightweight architecture AND, one day walking down the street in Williamsburg, on a lunch break from my endeavor, i randomly saw a friend from college, Britta Riley. she was riding her bike along with a full size movie camera strapped to the back of it. i shouted at her. we talked. it turns out, she is building what she calls “vertical farms” or window farms, in Manhattan and Brooklyn. they are hydroponic curtain systems that hang in urban windows and allow a home occupant to grown her own food in the apartment or loft or otherwise urban dwelling, and offset the amount of groceries she has to buy at the store.
here’s Britta’s site:
i had known that she was doing some cool art programs and learning to be a hacker… so i went to visit one of her projects and helped her build it, and make it better (in terms of its construction):
and then, because i found the project so exciting, helped for about five days, building a large installation she was doing as part of an artists’ residency at eyebeam, in chelsea:
i became aware of the importance of making both a physical and an allegorical armature for a sustainable idea. these window farms captured my imagination in terms of their possible locations and sculptural/living value. they could live in restaurants permanently, and be used to grow herbs and light vegetables and be more as a display for what the restaurant is, a reminder of what’s going on when we eat… they could add art value, olfactory value, oxygen production value, etc. these farms could be in storefronts, galleries, homes, even outside, in dense urban environments where a “real” garden is not practical.
i love the form here.
i had the idea of making some of the planters out of glass, using a restaurant’s discarded wine bottles:
and making the armature out of copper and steel so that it has a permanence and artistic value that creates sculptural valor along with the idea of sustainability.
any thoughts?
b