Digital Garden – A green platform

Information society works as a big computer, it accumulates sensitive data trying to understand the evolution and future of the world. This society needs to understand and develop new strategies starting from the study of the consequences of industrialization. Mankind has been using machines and instruments for ages now, but the technological changes that took place in the last 30 years had important effects. In the last 30 years everything, in every field, is changing, but what are the consequences of these changes? Is the Present Better Than the Past? What are the damages of these changes to the world?

Digital Garden, installation view, foto Fabio Donato ©

If we consider the perils that global economic development can have on the climate, we could recognize that our ideas about development prospects fall on deaf ears. Fundamental changes are taking place in nature. Increasing greenhouse gas concentrations are expected to have significant impacts on the world’s climate on a timescale of decades to centuries. Do we have to fear technological development?

There is not only one answer to these questions, but having various approaches on technological development could be useful. On the one hand, we have to pay attention not to demonize technology. But on the other hand, we have to find the right way to use it.

Seems that for a while now traditional industries have been coming to a decline, and perhaps more importantly new technologies are growing. In the last years, art is really interested in these changes, and a lot of architects and artists are looking for a way to use technology to change the world in a responsible way. There are new roles for artists: placing art in direct interaction with all the areas of human activity that form society. The concepts that focus on environmental stewardship have gripped the collective intellect of humankind, challenged our ability to be self-aware, and established a common global imperative to respond to critical issues that arise from world-wide climate change and natural resource conservation. DIGITAL GARDEN, Piante, Tecnologia, Sostenibilità, an exhibition held by Spazio Gerra (Reggio Emilia) tries to find a way to discuss on these questions, aims to provide a methodology and tool-set to help close that gap. Green spaces improve the health of city dwellers, and they seem to have a stronger influence on us, but how is it possible to introduce green spaces into our lives? DIGITAL GREEN picks up some opportunities of dialog between environment and technical knowledge. The application of technology in art and architecture could be useful to far-reaching implications for everyone. DIGITAL GARDEN stands as a green platform dedicated to the interaction between art, architecture, digital technologies, design. DIGITAL GARDEN shows a number of opportunities for a dialogue between nature and humankind.

Digital Garden, installation view, foto Maurizio Mantovi©

Digital Garden, foto Fabio Donato ©

There is the greenhouse that Renzo Piano realized for Smeg. This greenhouse works as a domestic green device. It is self-sufficient, and puts the “green benefits” inside our homes. There is the Teatrino di Verzura by Paolo Vezzali; the MEG – Micro Experimental Growing greenhouse by Yradia; E- vase by MakeinBo, a project of digital handicraft where a system of sensors allows the plant to move to find optimal conditions for its growth. These installations help maintaining urban communities, and the methodology and tool-set provided in this exhibition can help common people to take on new values from green opportunities. These artists, who address issues concerning environment, ecology and sustainability, have different artistic approaches and attitudes to our society. They reflect their awareness and their critical state of mind onto their everyday life, trying to imitate the pragmatism of nature to build new kinds of relationships. The show aims to offer a number of choices of sustainable practices that put a new idea of progress to the test. Spazio Gerra would like to underline a new creative activism, a new ecological struggle through artistic languages. The exhibition aims to be an inter-disciplinary network, based on the attempt to offer various kinds of active experience, from economy to architecture, from social sciences to public art. Seems like these artists’ works begin to set up a perfect tool for reflecting about a new idea of art and about its possible, new and “sustainable” development. Since the state of efficient democracy relies on active and involved citizens, maybe we should take care of the green, sow the seeds of a better society; and now it’s up to us to follow these ways.

Digital Garden, Spazio Gerra, Reggio Emilia, through January 25, 2014

Digital Garden, installation view, foto Fabio Donato ©