connecting with nature group
group members: allyson, liz, chris, priscilla.
PROPOSAL:
Ironic Surveillance: Who is watching whom?
Our intent is to address the issue related to exclusive visual interaction with nature, as commonly experienced through television shows. We are challenging the efficiency of natural surveillance by reversing the roles of the viewer and the viewed through the use of plants.
The South Waterfront is a clean, sterile environment (with the exception of the piles of dog poop everywhere). Touted as an environmental standard for living, the buildings succeed in reducing the footprint of many who want to live near the city while maintaining the conveniences and luxuries of single-family dwellings. However, these housing projects have been designed to recreate the environment, not co-exist with it. While known for it’s superfund status, there are still many potentials on the site for people to connect with the greater environment. Our project is important in helping residents to reassess their own connection to nature; to determine if their interaction is purely visual.
There are many problems that come from only visually interacting with nature. One of the most rampant problems on the Southwest Waterfront is the obvious lack of environmental responsibility. As a result of such irresponsibility, residents fail to pick up waste from canine companions, or to even recycle.
When the connection to nature is mostly made visually, and through television programs or other means of surveillance, the effect is often serious. The presence of Nature Deficiency Disorder is surprisingly common among children brought up without proper exposure to the “natural” environment. The lack of biodiversity in the site is also apparent as potential places of refuge for wildlife is paved over or built on.
For this project we are referencing a number of previous and current movements in urban farming. In an effort to reconnect with nature, gardeners and artists push many conventional boundaries in their effort to find solutions to the lack of biodiversity in our lives. Society’s view of nature is still strongly connected to the pastoral ideals connected to quiet farms and pastures. The advent of industry and development of the machine has led us to combat nature with technology. Our vision of nature is so disconnected that we are now using inventive ways to bring nature back into our world. Movements in rooftop gardens, indoor greenhouses and window gardens are all ways in which people are attempting to reconnect with nature. In the work of Britta Riley and Rebecca Bray, for example, their goal with the window garden is to, “…experiment in designing functional and beautiful ways to grow food in your apartment/house/loft window using only materials available in your recycling bin and the local hardware store.”
People’s connection to nature is currently on the visual and auditory level. Most people look at nature while they drive to work, or when they get home they turn on the Discovery channel and watch Planet Earth or the Animal channel with Jeff Corwin. There seems to be this inherent disengagement with how people are experiencing nature. Our project plans to contest this lackadaisical interaction with the environment.
Our proposal is to use a public performance as our initial palette for discussion. We would like to attempt to blur the lines of the public and private spaces that the people of the Southwest Waterfront inhabit in relation to their connection with nature. As a first part of the performance we want to stage a moveable living room set in the environment of the SWF, wherein a person would be “watching nature.” We would take apart a Television, so that it can be used as a way to “view” nature. This would be teamed with an onsite “narrator” a la Jeff Corwin, Planet Earth, etc. The narrator would be on site to narrate the aspects of the natural wildlife and the changing environment. This performance would be repeated multiple times in various parts of the SWF. These public performance will be documented through photographs which will be displayed at the December 3rd show.
The second part of the performance would occur the day of the exhibit. We would take raised beds and set them up in the gallery space. This would be accompanied by an LCD screen that the plants would be “watching.” This screen would be connected to a closed circuit camera that would be stationed above the gallery space. While the same narrator tells the plants what is going on in our “environment.” In this way, the plants could then be watching us, just as we watch them.
Because people find comfort in watching nature on T.V. and plants find comfort and grow better when people talk to them, we have decided to draw these two bodies together so that their relationship is more functional and vibrant while at the same time trying to exhibit how dysfunctional it is at this point in time.
Our design will change how the residents of Portland view their interactions with nature. This influence will then continue to the developers and how they building with nature, which will then lead to the alteration/updating of LEED certification requirements. “Green” buildings will not only address the physical problems of environmental building, but also the psychological impacts of living in a more cooperative environment.
SCENARIO:
This encounter is of a made up south waterfront resident:
Woke up this morning to see some hooligans outside setting up a living room set, on the park.
It looked like a photo session, a photographer was with them, but the photographer was disconnected.
I went down all those flights of stairs, to go see what they were up to.
As I walked up to them I noticed there was a person walking around them narrating their
surroundings. The group on the couch were not interacting with anyone else only them selves and the
television. For a moment I felt like the narrator was talking about me but I kept walking, I didn’t want
to seem nosy. I kept going my own way. Later on that day I looked out my window and I did not see
them again. I wonder what they were up to?
CHALLENGES & IMPEDIMENTS:
Discussion of challenges and impediments, and your strategies for overcoming them.
Some challenges we might get are:
- Getting kicked out or ask to leave the site or area we are trying to do the performance.
· We will overcome it by documentation
-Terrible Weather
* We will overcome it by, connecting to nature and its elements and
will make the documentation so much better.
-Plants dying before the show
* Watering them, taking proper care of them prior to show.
-Issues with the short circuit cameras.
* Setting it up days before so we can work out the kinks or possibly
order new ones to fix the problem in time before the show.
-Issues with the still Camera Nikon D90
*We will have at least two cameras with us incase one runs out of
battery or something happens.
BUDGET:
* Living room set: Couch/Chairs, Rug, T.V. set, Coffee Tabel,
Side Table, Stand-up Lamp
cost: $300
* Close Circuit Cameras: 3 cameras
cost: $109.99 Wireless 2 Outdoor Spy Color Camera Security Surveil-
lance System w/Night Vision - GH8N
* LCD screen
cost: $179 HP 2159m - 21.5” - widescreen TFT active matrix LCD dis-
play
* Rental Truck
cost: $19.95 plust $0.59 a mile
* Cannon D90
cost: $0.00 rent from school
* Digitally printed photos
cost: $18.00/linear ft. via. the output room = 180
* Plant materials/raised beds/grow light
cost: $100.00 Earth Solutions 2 Ft. x 4 Ft. Raised Garden Box
plant cost ~$15 per plant
$85.00 Jump Start T5 Grow Light System (fixture)
$55.00 4’ Jump Start Fixture & Bulb
via ACF Greenhouses
TOTAL COST: around $1100
TIMELINE:
WHO IS DOING WHAT:
Priscilla JOB: Call for Rental Truck.
Allyson JOB: Check the status of LCD screen/order one? Compare
prices for printed images from output room vs. other com-
pany?
Chris JOB: Order the close circuit cameras.
Liz JOB: Compare living room set prices between Goodwill/
Craigslist and IKEA.
ALL JOB: Purchase plant materials/raised bed. Set up the gal-
lery the week of the exhibit.
