Ecotopia,Towards an Eco-Socio-Morphology
Symposium:
- ISEA2011: 17th International Symposium on Electronic Art
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More presentations from ISEA2011:
Session Title:
- Sustainability
Presentation Title:
- Ecotopia,Towards an Eco-Socio-Morphology
Presenter(s):
Venue(s):
Abstract:
In the 17th century, Johannes Kepler alleged that living organisms on our planet worked according to certain self-recycling rules which can satisfy their own needs constantly, within a gigantic organism called Gaia. About two centuries later, in 1924, this theory got backed by the concept of “biosphere” raised by Viadimir Vernadsky. The biosphere is a kind of global self-sustained ecosystem, generating all the living organisms through various biological chains. All of nature’s movements alter the appearance of our planet by ceaseless circulation and recombination of elements. The natural ecosystem possesses certain self-restoration abilities and this kind of restoration needs a certain period of time. The traditional agricultural production, based on natural resource processing, is a mode of production conforming to the nature’s rules. On the contrary, the industrial era is developing at fast pace : the pressing production cycle does not allow the necessary duration for the nature to restore itself, which means that the producing capacity of the industrial society has gone far beyond what the nature can bear. In the long run, the serious ecosystem imbalance is inevitable and it results in damages to the ecosystem.
In this paper I present and discuss a project of insertion of a restoration system into the city where the living surroundings are getting worse and worse, aiming at accelerating recycling and regeneration of the system. This restoration system consists of a series of eco-machines which are not isolated from each other but are making up an “eco-tribe”, that could rehabilitate the urban ecosystem with eco-technologies and eventually could be integrated into the urban environment. The proposed restoration system, simulating the operation of natural ecosystems, will be inserted into the wrecked urban ecosystem and connect all communities to take effect in the range of the whole city. With self- reproduction and duplication, the system could constantly grow and evolve along with the city’s development and technology innovations. I will discuss this restoration system together with a semiotic system which inspired it, interpreting the relationship of various representitive organisms in the urban, rural and wild environment.
