Growing Mediamatic
Art, design and bioculture
We're building an urban farm, experimenting with new forms of energy, and exploring biotechnology and eco-culture through art, community and design.
MartaEcobulevard
Fake tree in Vallecas, Madrid.
Re-thinking a 467.500 m3 urban space.
Ecosistema Urbano is an innovative agency focused on the understanding of the city as a complex phenomenon, from a special point of view between architecture, urbanism, engineering and sociology. The team’s field of interest is defined by something they call ‘creative urban sustainability’, from where to react to the present situation of cities through innovation, creativity and particularly action.
margaritaGarden furniture or a garden in your furniture?
8 Extraordinary Greens and FurniBloom
An artist and an architect are combining gardening and furniture design in very unexpected ways.
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This is an image of the "8 Extraordinary Greens" project on display at the Mixed Greens gallery. This image was taken from the artist's website, which can be found here.
Energy-packed microgreens growing in small urban spaces. Gardens growing inside transparent furniture. Jenna Spevack's "8 Extraordinary Greens" and Dagný Bjarnadóttir's "FurniBloom" are two projects that are combining agriculture and design in very unique ways.
8 Extraordinary Greens
Master composter and permaculture specialist, Jenna Spevack, has designed an efficient, sub-irrigated system for growing microgreens in small, urban spaces. Household objects, like a dresser, a suitcase, a chair, a kitchen cabinet, and a desk have been modifie...
Paddestoelen Paradijs Second Opening Party
Two concerts, radioactive mushrooms, and mold fights
Come see the new artworks and installations that have been growing in the exhibition since our last opening party. Join us for an epic mold battle, and listen to mushroom- and mold inspired concerts by the DNK Ensemble and David de Buyser. Other organic tunes will be provided by DJ Kristy Foom. Did you leave your bacteria with us during Museum Night? Pick up your petri dish and have a little souvenir of yourself! Please RSVP on this page.
Program
Mushroom spores concert by the DNK Ensemble
The Secret Sound of Spores installation has been making itself heard throughout Mediamatic Bank for a few months now. For our second opening party, Koen Nutters wrote an arrangement for the DNK Ensemble to accompany the sound of the spores. The DNK Ensemble is Seamus Cater on harmonica, Viljam Nybacka on cymbals, and Oguz Buyukberber on bass clarinet.
Fish&Chips Apparatus
Machine, human, environment, computer, will co-design and co-evolve into new artificial living systems.
The "Fish&Chips Apparatus" fits into the context of International Exhibition design “Spontaneous Schooling”, with the participation of 86 architectural workshops around the world.
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- 60 lt. tropical fish tank furnished with:
_heating system
_filtration system
_lasercutted cover
_interactive floating feeders
-25 tropical fishes
_1 arduino board with lasercutted holder
_16 flex sensors with custom dedicated circuit board
_1 lasercutted food holder
-custom codes and digital parametric models.
-apparatus diagram and coral gardens original digital drawings.Picture found on ecoLogicStudio's website
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Fishes swim around floating feeders agitating them and producing small and high frequency waves. The sensors are recording waves frequency in real time while the waves patterns and therefore fish colonies patterns are read by a parametric modelling software generating an ever evolving design output. The digital gardens drawings become interactive maps of the fish colonies daily behavior, of the visitors feeding patterns and the designer reaction to them both.
Fermented Fashion
“Microbes à la mode”
The Micro‘be’ project investigates the practical and cultural biosynthesis of microbiology – to explore forms of futuristic dress-making and textile technologies.
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These organic textiles produce their own colour and structure, providing an eco-friendly “conceptual” alternative to cloth manufacturing – drawing attention to environmental conservation. Picture by Gary Cass found on Bioalloy's website
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First project: Fibre reactive-
Fashioned from the mycelium and fruiting bodies of the fungus. Artist: Donna Franklin, 2004. Photo by Robert Firth and courtesy of SymbioticA.
In contrast to the first project Fibre Reactive fashioned from the mycelium and fruiting bodies of the fungus, (Pycnoporus cockiness), Microbe fermented wear will be produced by biological fermentation. Hence this Micro’be’ textile differs in discourse conceptually/visually and biologically as it utilises bacterial waste rather than living fungal cells.
The project Microbe by Donna Franklina & Gary Cass aims to develop innovative researc...
Slime Mold Computing
Gathering intelligence from brain-less organisms
Physarum polycephalum, better known as slime mold, is a simple organism that can solve some very complex problems. Slime molds are intelligent enough to find their way towards food through complex mazes, to design highway and rail networks, and even to control robots.
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Slime mold that we have been growing in the lab. This slime mold is part of the Mold Fight installation in the Paddestoelen Paradijs exhibition.
What is slime mold?
Slime molds are large single celled organisms that use spores to reproduce. Their name comes from a small part of their life cycle where they can appear to look like gelatinous 'slime'. More than 900 species of slime mold, in a wide range of colours, occur all over the world and feed on microorganisms that live in any type of dead plant material. They aid in the decomposition of dead vegetation, and feed on bacteria, yeasts, and fungi.
One of the most commonly encountered slime molds is the yellow Physarum Polycephalum, found both in forests in temperate zones, as well as in classrooms and laboratorie...
Bio-machine
Jurema Action Plant by Ivan Henriques
Mimosa pudica is the sensitive plant that interact with the customized machine.
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Preview Exam at Hoop Gallery, Den Haag / NL 2011.-
To measure the Action Potential from the plant some electrodes are placed in its branches. When the leaves and branches of the plant are touched this signal changes. Picture by Katherine Cuningham found on Ivan Henriques' website.
Like humans, animals and machines, the plants have an electrical signal traveling inside them, but they do not have nerves like humans and animals; nor wires and cables like machines. This electrical signal travels inside the cells of the plant. In collaboration with professor Bert van Duijn from the Biology University and the Hortus Botanicus on a research into the Action Potential of this plant they settled upon a solution in which a signal amplifier reads the differences in the electromagnetic field around the plant to determine wh...
Natural Fuse
OFF, SELFLESS and SELFISH
Natural Fuse creates a city-wide network of electronically-assisted plants that act both as energy providers and as circuit breakers.
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Micro scale CO2 monitoring & overload protection framework that works locally and globally. Picture found on Natural Fuse's website by Usmann Haque
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Approximately 0.64 kg of new dry plant material must be produced by photosynthesis each day to supply the oxygen needs of one adult. Picture found on Natural Fuse's website by Usmann Haque .
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By networking them together, the plants are able to share their capacity and take advantage of carbon-sinking-surplus in the system since not all Natural Fuses will be in use at any one time. Picture found on Natural Fuse's website by Usmann Haque .
The main intention of this project by Usmann Haque is to balance the carbon footprint and carbon sink of electricity usage and plants in the system. The electricity depends on the plants just as the plants depend on the electricity.
There is power-activation switch, which the owners can adjust depending on how much they want to use the energy. There are 3 modes, OFF, SELFLESS and SELFISH.
In “OFF” mode, the system uses minimal energy, turns itself on once every hour.
No energy flows to the appliance connected to the unit.
In “SELFLESS” mode, the unit gives power t...
H.O.R.T.U.S
New gardening prototype
"If we look at the earth as a territory devoted to life it would appear as an enclosed space, delimited by the boundaries of living systems (the biosphere). In other words it would appear as a garden"
Clement, Gilles
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New exhibition from ecoLogicStudio designed for the AA Front Members Room. Picture found on ecoLogicStudio's website
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To grow visitors are invited to contribute by blowing air inside the various containers. Picture found on ecoLogicStudio's website.
H.O.R.T.U.S, from ecoLogicStudio, host micro and macro-algal organisms as well as bioluminescent bacteria; fitted with ambient light sensing technologies and a custom designed virtual interface.
During the 4 weeks long growing period, Flows of Energy [light radiation], Matter[biomass, CO2] and Information [images, tweets, stats] are triggered inducing multiple mechanisms of self-regulation and evolving novel forms of self-organisation.
Visitors are invited to contribute by blowing air inside the various containers [photo-biore...
The Urban Space Station
Open urban agriculture and parasite architecture project
USS is the first prototype at 40% of the "real one" designed by Natalie Jeremijenko and Angel Borrego , performed by Cesar Harada in Reina Sofia Museum Madrid.
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Sketch for Reina Sofia Museum in Madrid. Picture by Cesar Harada found on Flickr's website.
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Barbara
Sylvia
Anna
