THE ORGAN TREE
Digital media enshrouds our environment, disrupting our ability to percieve natural systems.
The media playback devices designed for this project are contingent on meteorlogical phenomena, activated by rainfall in the hope to expose this uncanny alienation. Reconciling the things that distract us most with the forces that allow life to exist.
Watch the video here
CRAFTING PLACES OF WELLBEING
Prototypes Towards A Symbiotic Placemaking TherapyAt its core this project is about recasting depression as a navigational tool for ethical city developement.
If you live in a city you have 40% more likelihood of suffering with depression, 20% more anxiety and double the likelihood of developing schizophrenia.
We use R.D Laing’s well known adage “insanity - a perfectly rational adjustment to an insane world” as a jump off point. Together with a group of people identifying as neurofluid we developed a program of therapeutic workshops providing those who are often most sensitive to their environment with the tools to change it.
The research phase was miasmic and mucky, through it we merged learnings from ethnobotany, collaborative urban planning, bushcraft and many more disciplines. Eventually designing a series of therapeutic workshops that are beneficial not only for the participants, but for the built environment itself.
These workshops come under the 5 headings of Material Mindfulness, Creative Agency, Local Practical Criticism, Meaning Sharing & Symbiotic Placemaking. They are designed to interface with local planning authorities so that as the awareness of the participant broadens their collaborative insights and material experiments are logged and inform the policy for the development of their local area
PROTOTYPES TOWARDS A SYMBIOTIC PLACEMAKING THERAPY
A look at some of the tools developed in the Crafting Places Of Wellbeing Project
PROTOTYPE 1: The Embodied Lens and Material Mindfulness at The Severed Hand
During a week long workshop with the architecture collective Assemble I ran an engagement in tandem with my fellow participants.
The Severed Hand workshop was an experiment in material-social communication. Through-out it we were attempting to understand how the limitations and potentialities of a given material lays the foundations for the language used to describe and work with it.
My engagement was designed to help participants reflect on the embodied agency we were developing as our understanding of material processes and relations grew. By reorienting vision to the tip of the subjects finger, the point of material contact becomes our sensory resting zone, an ideal location from which to interogate the material lineage of an object.
PROTOTYPE 2: Social Joinery and Source Energy
The Creation of open ended mechanisms powered by natural means and situated in a place with frequent footfall. It was built with the help of my research assistant JS a member of the Moray Wellbeing Hub.
This laser cut ply and dowel water wheel is lightweight and easy to assemble. Meaning it can translate the force of streams and rivers into a rotary machinic moment at the drop of a hat. The output plate is circular 12mm ply with 6 12mm holes. Workshops can be facilitated in which participants create their own water powered mechanisms.
PROTOTYPE 3: Panopticanopy: The Interspecies Drama
Unorthadox soap opera series staring living systems at vastly different scales.
In Episode One Desiree the Leopard Slug quits their job to become a sentient node in a planeray scale computational intellegence structure. Much to the dismay of a journeyman who has been travelling for months in a bid to exploit Desiree’s power.
BIOMATRIX WATER
Biomatrix Floating Ecosystems are artificial floating substrate modules which replicate the ecological function of riperian wetland. There are three tiers of habitat:
Pollinator level - where leafs, flowers, pollinating insects and the airborn elements co-mingle.
Substrate level - a contoured system of moisture wicking plant lanes lined with organic bedding where roots can take hold.
Subsurface Level - where a forest of roots make an ideal habitat for microorganisms and bacteria that feed off any polutants in the waterway, simultaneously helping to revitalise the water and attract larger species that will feed off them.
Substrate level - a contoured system of moisture wicking plant lanes lined with organic bedding where roots can take hold.
Subsurface Level - where a forest of roots make an ideal habitat for microorganisms and bacteria that feed off any polutants in the waterway, simultaneously helping to revitalise the water and attract larger species that will feed off them.
In this way Biomatrix floating islands enable multi species - interconnected ecosystems to be established for biodiversity and water regeneration in the city.
We are engaged in many other ecological engineering endeavours but floating eco systems are our bread and butter. Have a look on our website if you are interested in finding out more.
