'Antenna Trees' -- Meet 'Next Nature'
Reading KCET.org colleague Holly Willis' recent post, "Antenna Trees," brought to mind the ongoing work of Miekke Gerritzen and Koert Van Mensvoort, the creative Dutch duo behind the "Next Nature" philosophy.
Gerritzen and Van Mensvoort spent the 2007-2008 academic year as visionaries-in-residence of the Media Design Program at Art Center. Their culminating effort, the Biggest Visual Power Show**, made for a brainy revel at the Million Dollar Theater.
Read the couple of pages excerpted beginning here, on Amazon.com, for an easy-to-digest introduction to what Next Nature is all about.
For a longer version of the above, take a look at Van Mensvoort's essay, "Real Nature is Not Green," (the underlining is his). The essay begins with a description of a cell phone tower camoflauged to resemble a pine tree.
In one section of the piece, subtitled "Nature Becomes Culture," Van Mensvoort writes:
"The dividing line between nature and culture is difficult to draw. When a bird builds a nest, we call it nature, but when a human puts up an apartment building, suddenly it's culture. Some try to sidestep the problem by claiming that everything is nature, while others claim that nature is only a cultural construction. It's tempting just to lump the two together and give up thinking about it."
Then, in the section, "Culture Becomes Nature," he adds:
Thus far I have said nothing new. Everyone knows that old nature is being more and more radically cultivated. However, the question is: is the opposite also possible? I think it is. In contrast to optimistic progress thinkers who believe human beings' control of nature will steadily increase until we are ultimately able to live without it, I argue that the idea that we can completely dominate nature is an illusion. Nature is changing along with us.
More reference: Visit the Next Nature blog.
Photo Credit: The image accompanying this post was taken by Flickr user rust.bucket. It was used under Creative Commons license.
**Disclosures: The Next Nature duo gave a Public Salon Series talk at Farmlab, where TTLA's blogger works. And Farmlab was a participant in the BVPS.
