Welcome. In this collaborative project, 8 people from different walks of life work together to build a public conversation about their individual aspirations for a desirable future.
Rolling orchards stretched beyond us as we wandered through the edible gardens of Acres Green. Spots of colour peppered the greenery and branches hung low with the weight of ripening produce.
As we looked closer we saw that each tree was actually growing different varieties of fruit. What we originally understood as a tangle of different trunks was actually an intricate technological graft. On parting the leaves we found strange flesh-like prosthesis that seemed to bind limbs from different species together. We realised that to maximise harvests the communities of Acres Green were experimenting with augmented orchards and designing strange new natures.
A prototype showing some of the extreme grafting techniques used in Acres Green to grow different fruits on one tree.
We walked over to pick fruit with a group of locals. It was ‘Harvest Wednesday’ and everyone was out in the orange light gathering their food for the week.
Posters advertising local food-related services found in different neighbourhoods. Locals using feral fruits to make juice and cider.
Under a pregnant tree the apple presses of Murgatroyd Cider creaked and groaned, as they spat cloudy juice into waiting buckets.
The Murgatroyd family started one of the many local businesses around food: A pan-city feral cider business.
Within such extraordinary edible gardens and food orchards, we could not help but wonder what kept this ecosystem so fertile, considering that the so many of our pollinators, including the honey bees, had nearly all disappeared. Then, gazing out across the fields of flowers in the distance we saw tiny glowing creates swarming from plant to plant. We moved on to investigate….
The Power of 8 project was invited to take part in the London 2012 Open Weekend events, at the Watermans Gallery. While the project is still in progress, this kicked off our public presence in the gallery and we have exhibited our ideas and sketches done in the last 6 weeks.
However, for the Open Weekend, the central element was a big table on which we placed an abstraction of a map of Brentford, where the gallery is geographically located. Although it may now appear to be a remote suburb with big motorways and dead pan office complexes, Brentford pre-dates the founding of London itself, with settlements from the Brigantes tribes before the Roman occupation of Britain. Our idea was to engage with the local people by situating some of our imagined scenarios over the map, and inviting them to do the same.
The map over the table, before the doors opened to the public.
The new landscape that grew over the map, at the end of the Weekend.
Saturday afternoon, people in ‘action’.
Over the course of two days we had a steady stream of participants ranging from the radically activist to the playfully naive populated this map of their local area of Brentford with walking houses, snow stimulators, solar powered airships, public free boxes, trees that could talk to one another, new wireless connectivity, new species of underwater organisms and human spinning tops. The table was transformed into a landscape of fantasy and possibility in what appears to be a distant edge suburb of London. More images here.
Immediate impressions of the two days suggest that many of the ideas from the participants were not far removed from what we have been thinking of. As one would have guessed, the desire for a ’sustainable future’ topped the wish list, but alongside it, were desires for quite fantastical living spaces and dangerous play areas.
We are decompressing the weekend and thinking of ways in which some of the themes that emerged could juxtapose with ideas that eight of us have been toying with. It has been a very exciting weekend. To conclude, I’ll quote Darryl:
“Much like a heist movie that assembles the maximum human potential with the greatest chance of internal conflict, Power of 8 has gathered together the perfect cast to take on the future: an interaction designer and filmmaker, bionanotechnologist, advertising guru, emotional intelligence trainer, social policy advisor, permaculturalist and political commentator, an architect and urban designer. Now there’s a plot worth paying the rights for! Final exhibition in September promises to be spectacular. Keep your eyes peeled to this channel for more updates.”
As part of the project, I am going to be interviewing the collaborators occasionally and see how they feel about the project and where it is going. (Guess one of them will interview me too!)
First in the series is a short interview with Graham Burnett. Links to his work and bio
