NextNature.net
- Website: http://www.nextnature.net
What is Next Nature?
With our attempts to cultivate nature, humankind causes the rising of a next nature, which is wild and unpredictable as ever. Wild systems, genetic surprises, autonomous machinery and splendidly beautiful black flowers. Nature changes along with us.
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Nature So-called
Nature is not what it used to be. Or at least that is what we may think, when we look at the way humans and their technologies have treated nature. When we speak of “nature”, however, we are essentially talking about our relationship with nature, never nature itself. What we refer to as “nature” or “natural” has always been as much about what we see, as it is about what we think is “out there”. And trying to bring nature into view is equally ambivalent. Images of nature cannot be taken at face value either. It is not the straightforward case of “what we see, is what we get”. What is at stake are our cultural perceptions of nature. In viewing “nature” we can only talk about what we call “nature”.
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Better than the real thing
Written by Debbie Mollenhagen
PART 1: FROM LINEAR TO CIRCULAR
Designer living has become designing life. I often ask myself: did it taste like the real thing? But when I open my eyes I see a world where plastic grows on trees and where everything tastes better than the real thing. A world which has been replaced with a copy of itself. When I was living in Australia I knew a girl who didn’t know where sultanas came from, which I thought was odd. After all, she was 15. How is it possible? I guess to me that was like buying one of those lemon squeeze things which came in the shape of a lemon, and thinking that they grew on trees. Plastics don’t grow on trees or do they?
Enjoy. Suddenly out of nothing, something fell from the sky. I found myself confronted with a piece of deformed fruit, I paused for a moment and tried to remain calm. I didn’t know what to do so I did what came naturally, I yelled back at the sky and told her that the fruit was not acceptable and that I would not eat it. Why should I, I thought? I demand more, I know my rights! I want to be able to express what I expect in my relationship with what I buy. How do I make a fruit more compatible with my needs? Then I remembered this thing fell from the sky, I didn’t buy it and besides in real life fruit has already been designed to accommodate my needs.
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Post History
Jos de Mul (Erasmus University Rotterdam), published in Next Nature Paperback, 2005
For someone whose main instrument is a computer, the world becomes a gigantic database.
We see this database ontology at work, for example, when information technology is deployed in the field of genetic manipulation. The gene pool of life on earth is then no longer primarily conceived as a contingent and factual evolutionary constellation, but rather as a database of an infinite number of virtual life forms that can be actualized at will. Although not yet as spectacularly as in Spielberg’s Jurassic Park, or in science fiction films such as Robocop, our world is increasingly populated with life forms created with the aid of informationistic bio-technologies.
The emergence of post-history will not completely put an end to historical experiences in our individual and collective lives. However, in the light of the developments, we may expect the post-historic dimension to increasingly become the fundamental dimension of human experience.
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N is for Nature
McKenzie Wark, published in Next Nature Paperback, 2005
There are people who think what makes a good wine comes from nature – factors like rain and soil and temperature. Then there are those who think it’s a matter of second nature – of picking and fermenting and ageing. But these days, there’s a whole new world of wine making technology – and a whole new argument as to what is “natural” and what is not.
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WDR Television on Visual Powershow, Zollverein
A TV item about Zollverein and the Visual Power Show.
Click on the link to see the video!
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The World is not a Desktop
Mark Weiser (originally written for ACM Interactions).
What is the metaphor for the computer of the future? The intelligent agent? The television (multimedia)? The 3-D graphics world (virtual reality)? The StarTrek ubiquitous voice computer? The GUI desktop, honed and refined? The machine that magically grants our wishes? I think the right answer is “none of the above”, because I think all of these concepts share a basic flaw: they make the computer visible.
A good tool is an invisible tool. By invisible, I mean that the tool does not intrude on your consciousness; you focus on the task, not the tool. Eyeglasses are a good tool – you look at the world, not the eyeglasses. The blind man tapping the cane feels the street, not the cane. Of course, tools are not invisible in themselves, but as part of a context of use. With enough practice we can make many apparently difficult things disappear: my fingers know vi editing commands that my conscious mind has long forgotten. But good tools enhance invisibility.
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WiFi-enabled Ambient Rabbit
There may even come a moment that our connection with an industrially manufactured coke bottle may be richer and more mythical that our relation with a genetically analysed and manipulated white rabbit in the woods. – Exploring Next Nature, May 2004
Guess what, the coke bottle looks like a rabbit. It connects to a local wi-fi network to provide services to any users nearby. It can sing, talk, flash colored lights within its translucent body, and move its ears to let you know whether you have new email, or what the weather’s like outside, or how the stock market is doing, etc.
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Entryparadise
Written by Werner Lippert & Peter Wippermann, Curators of the Entryparadise exhibition (26/8 until 3/12, 2006, at Kohlenwäsche, Zollverein)
Design is about to undergo a paradigm shift – the extent to which new technologies have been intervening in the constructive, material, aesthetic and social practice of both architecture and design since the nineties is unprecedented. Today design starts at the level of the atom. We are drifting into the world of the invisible: virtual realities, nano and biotechnology are increasingly influencing our aesthetics and providing new construction kits for our reality. Information and communication design are ensuring the controllability of highly complex connections and giving rise to virtual social systems. Design is becoming immanent to being, and the experience of design will be both physical and metaphysical. Design is becoming invisible, and design is making things visible. Design promotes a better world and is based on the dream people have of themselves.
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Next Nature: Radikale Mediokrität
Lecture spoken by Henk Oosterling at Biggest Visual Powershow, Zollverein Essen, Germany, 23 June 2006
Damen und Herrn, Next Nature, Nächste Natur ist ein Pleonasmus, ein überflüssiger Ausdruck. Heutzutage ist Natur immer Nächst. Es gibt auch kein Gegensatz zwischen Nature und Nurture, zwischen Natur und Nahrung. Ist Natur nur Nahrung, dann gibt es kein Natur. Natur wird dann völlig konsumiert in die survival of the fittest. Sobald aber Jagen und Essen sich verwandeln in Züchten und Nouvelle Cuisine, dann wird gleichzeitig mit Kultur Natur produziert. Natur als radikalisierte Kultur is Reinkultur. Nach der Reiz des neuesten Kicks kommt das Reine. Dann gibt es nur Kaffee ohne Kafeine, Bier ohne Alkohol, Viagrasex ohne Libido und sogar Kriege ohne Opfer und bodybags. Slow food ist ein Produkt heutiger Geschwindigkeit, Real time ein digitales Konstrukt.
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Save our Next Nature! Buy the book
A critical and visual take on culturally emerged Nature. Full of statements from designers and thinkers from around the globe. Wild systems, Genetic Surprises, Calm Technology, Autonomous Machinery and Splendidly Beautiful Black Flowers. Nature changes along with us.
Editors: Koert van Mensvoort, Mieke Gerritzen, Michiel Schwarz, Design: Mieke Gerritzen.
140 pages, paperback. ISBN 90 6369 093 2
Bis Publishers, USA Gingko Press -
Biggest Visual Powershow: Photo report
The pictures of the Next Nature Biggest Visual Powershow, in Zollverein are now online!
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