Light | Reading, Nick Laessing photo: Cristina Leoncini
Data Sculpted Plants, Simon Blackmore
Permacultures Residency, Richard Sides
Permacultures Logo
02 Feb–31 Mar 2013
About PERMACULTURES
Artists residencies: Media, technology & ecology
Residencies for artists exploring technology and media culture against the backdrop of apparent ecological crisis. SPACE hosts 1-3 month residencies in the MediaLab supporting artists to develop and produce new work.
The residency programme is complimented by talks and Do It Yourself technology workshops.
Check out our the PERMACULTURES blog:
http://permablog.spacestudios.org.uk/
On the one hand, technology can be seen as a major factor in ecological crises -just think of all the computers and how much power they sap everyday. On the other hand, however we know that technology offers the world genuine opportunities for democracy, freedom and a new ways for efficiency. This inevitably produces tensions. We enjoy technology and thirst for its new developments and we are worried about what we are doing to our planet.
PERMACULTURES takes its name from a term coined by Australians Bill Mollison and David Holmgren to describe their methods for sustainable agricultural design. To vastly simplify their theories, they use observation and feed-back to design a system that uses the differences between growing areas and plants to compliment each other. From this theory developed a general philosophy for sustainable design around the interconnection and relationships between differing areas or objects. It can be seen as an 'alternative' science holding an earth based value system that challenges scientific knowledge systems and modern late-capitalistic values. It asks difficult questions such as; how much is enough? or how much do I need?
Media art, for want of a better word, occupies a strange middle ground somewhere between contemporary art, software development, advertising and design. It does not fit neatly in any area and often asks difficult questions. Artists as feed-back for future design.
