Now I’m heading for my final project at CSM. Today is the 16th July 2007 and this is the day one, the beginning of the construction of this project. By now, my research follows the work of some people who I believe that have good interpretations for what is going on at this present moment in our lives. People who are also speculating in a way that I agree it is an interesting one.
My first reference is a website from a Dutch designer called Koert van Mensvoort. The name of the website is Next Nature and its description is “Our established view of "nature" needs reconsideration. The notions of nature and culture are trading places. Products of culture, which we used to be in control of, tend to outgrow us and become autonomous. The natural powers shift to another field. Nature changes along with us”.With statements like “We don’t really want to conserve nature. We want to conserve our image of nature” Koert speculates that Nature and Culture had changed places. Stock market has become more unpredictable and wild than weather changes, for instance. The increasing demand of society for immediate responses but at the same time the need of a less artificial and oppressive environment can make us believe that we do want to control nature but we still want to live surrounded by it. We do want to wake up in the morning and look through the window to a clean blue sky but if you could get some more information but the weather condition it would be “better than the real thing”: “"In the morning paper, I can read the weather report as well as the stock quotes. But when I look out of my window I only get a weather update and no stock exchange info. Could someone please fix this bug in my environmental system? Thanks."
My first reference is a website from a Dutch designer called Koert van Mensvoort. The name of the website is Next Nature and its description is “Our established view of "nature" needs reconsideration. The notions of nature and culture are trading places. Products of culture, which we used to be in control of, tend to outgrow us and become autonomous. The natural powers shift to another field. Nature changes along with us”.With statements like “We don’t really want to conserve nature. We want to conserve our image of nature” Koert speculates that Nature and Culture had changed places. Stock market has become more unpredictable and wild than weather changes, for instance. The increasing demand of society for immediate responses but at the same time the need of a less artificial and oppressive environment can make us believe that we do want to control nature but we still want to live surrounded by it. We do want to wake up in the morning and look through the window to a clean blue sky but if you could get some more information but the weather condition it would be “better than the real thing”: “"In the morning paper, I can read the weather report as well as the stock quotes. But when I look out of my window I only get a weather update and no stock exchange info. Could someone please fix this bug in my environmental system? Thanks."
A friend told me about Next Nature when we were talking about a visit I’ve made to London’s Zoo at Regent Park. I told him that I was never again in a zoo after my age of 10 and all that natural controlled environment had quite intrigued me. There was a simulation of a rain forest in the middle of the park, weather, humidity, animals, vegetation, but all in an absolutely safe and clean system. After some minutes you had the experience of had walked in a wild forest but in fact you are in the middle of London. Another thing was the huge birdcage. Think about this enormous net, half km wide and half km tall, full of birds and the simulation of its natural environments. I was inside and for a moment I thought: “where am I?”, “what is it all about?” and then my friend told me: “that’s next nature”.
