TeleAgriCulture_no peripheral skills (2019). Residency at Cultivamos Cultura, Portugal, within the TeleAgriCulture project
In Spring 2019 I was a resident within TeleAgriCulture at the bio-art space Cultivamos Cultura in São Luís, a village in southern Portugal. Spearheaded by Julian Stadon, TeleAgriCulture is a cloud/crowd agricultural data network, an aquaponics community platform for artists, designers, agriculturalists & hobbyists.
TeleAgriCulture includes a modular aquaponics kit, combining aquaculture (fish farming) with hydroponics (water-based agriculture) and real-time IoT measuring. Next to the sensors, regular chemical and biological sampling could help with assessing the health of the ecosystem.
In Portugal I focused on the latter, first looking at the macro-species and then using microscopy to count microorganism species abundances. We compared two kits: one fresh-water system with fish from the aquarium shop, and a second with brackish water, snails and crabs from the local lagoon.
Over the course of the week I created several prototypes and project ideas. The one I share here is a short film: TeleAgriCulture_no peripheral skills, which functions as a documentation of the larger philosophies of the project. It uses audio of a conversation I had with Julian Stadon around the topics of skills, and how society devalues skills that are in fact essential to being human, to survive, and how TeleAgriCulture fits in this broader discussion. The audio is combined with video footage of microscopy as well as the releasing of crabs in the lagoon.
If you watch until the end there is a link to a hidden glitched version of the video, inspired by Julian’s artwork. It was made using Pure Data and Processing, TeleAgriCulture_no peripheral skills (Auto.Tele.Data.Glitchification).