TeleAgriCulture_NO PERIPHERAL SKILLS
In Spring 2019 I was a resident within TeleAgriCulture at the bio-art Cultivamos Cultura in São Luís, a village in southern Portugal. Spearheaded by Julian Stadon, TeleAgriCulture is a cloud/crowd agricultural data network, an aquaponics community platform for artists, designers, agriculturalists & hobbyists. The seed for the project was planted in conversations during the 2018 Bio Summit, so it is quite special presenting it here at the 2020 Bio Summit.
TeleAgriCulture includes a modular aquaponics kit, combining aquaculture (fish farming) with hydroponics (water-based agriculture) and real-time IoT measuring. Next to the sensors, regular chemical and biological sampling could help with assessing the health of the ecosystem.
In Portugal I focused on the latter, first checking in with the macro-species and then using microscopy to count microorganism species abundances. We compared two kits: one fresh-water system with fish from the aquarium shop, and a second with brackish water, snails and crabs from the local lagune.
Over the course of the week I created several prototypes and ideas for project, but the one project I would like to share here is a duo of videos. The first video, TeleAgriCulture_No Peripheral Skills, functions of a documentation of the larger philosophies of the TeleAgriCulture project. It uses audio of a conversation I had with Julian Stadon around the topics of skills, and how society devalues skills that are in fact essential to being human, to survive, and how TeleAgriCulture fits in this broader discussion, and mixes these with video footage of microscopy as well as the releasing of crabs in the lagune.
The second video, TeleAgriCulture_Auto.Tele.Data.Glitchification is inspired by Julian Stadon’s glitch art, it uses the first video as raw material, and glitches the image through the mutation of pixels using Processing, and the audio through the speeding up and slowing down of samples of the conversation using Pure data.
Roland van Dierendonck
Roland van Dierendonck is an Oslo-based artist and researcher combining techniques from Biology and Media Technology. His interests include the translation of complicated processes and concepts into public experiences, as he has done with topics like emergence, ecosystems and microscopic interactions, with media ranging from robotics, genetics to living matter. His past exhibitions include the Ars Electronica Festival, London Design Festival and the Discovery Festival. Next to his practice he also likes to teach and create the conditions for stimulating art-science collaborative projects. In this context, he was leading the BioHack Academy at Waag, helped set up the Biospace of the Utrecht University of the Arts and founded Amsterdam Biolabs.Contact info
