Microcosmic Aquaculture

<Cesar Harada> 07-2-2009, straight from http://www.thefunctionality.com/blog/2009/7/2/microcosmic-aquaculture.html

[Editors' Note]: For this week's Friday Feature (posted early for the holiday), The Functionality is proud to host "Microcosmic Aquaculture," a speculative project by new design office Bittertang (Michael Loverich + Antonio Torres). The project recently won inclusion as part of [Bracket] magazine's feature on the future of farming, which explores "the modification of infrastructure, urbanisms, architectures, and landscapes toward a privileging of production." We love "Microcosmic Aquaculture" because it is both completely whimsical and completely convincing as a concept that could help increase marine biodiversity and replenish the world's overfished waters. Think of it as a biodegradable fish farm. Or a synthetic reef. Or an edible scuba museum. Or a pile of goo. Either way, it follows on the heels of an (unintentional) theme here at The Functionality over the past month: self-sustaining pods. From Mary Mattingly's water pods to Tomás Saraceno's floating blob, we're embracing the post-apocalyptic condition with gusto...



Gelatinous orb section and detail (courtesy bittertang)[Project statement]: We imagine a future where the vast and deep expanses of the ocean will teem with overabundant floating gelatinous reefs. Human's will be nourished physically and aesthetically by encouraging new floating worlds of reefs that sustain large quantities of harvestable wild and captive fish. Farming in this project is not viewed as a monoculture but the creation of a new ecology where wild and captive wildlife are 'raised' and their aesthetic potential is enjoyed by future divers and fishermen.

By encouraging the establishment of new ecosystems contemporary farmers as well as the public can reap sustenance and aesthetic benefits from environmental stewardship. The ocean is a vast resource that can accommodate more life when the proper conditions are met. These conditions are minimal and new ecologies can flourish around the simplest substrate. In the ocean it is not a matter of making space for life but by making objects that attract life. By combining manufactured products with plant material we will help to define a new bio-engineered aesthetic associated with qualitative benefits that disturbs romantic desires to return to nature and environmentalism. Our ominous orbs will provide the structure from which this aesthetic will arise.

Gelatinous Armada (courtesy bittertang)By encouraging the establishment of new ecosystems contemporary farmers as well as the public can reap sustenance and aesthetic benefits from environmental stewardship. The ocean is a vast resource that can accommodate more life when the proper conditions are met. These conditions are minimal and new ecologies can flourish around the simplest substrate. In the ocean it is not a matter of making space for life but by making objects that attract life. By combining manufactured products with plant material we will help to define a new bio-engineered aesthetic associated with qualitative benefits that disturbs romantic desires to return to nature and environmentalism. Our ominous orbs will provide the structure from which this aesthetic will arise.

Gelatinous orb lifecycle (courtesy bittertang)The advantage of this methodology is that farmed fish are grown within a larger reef system that manages and cleanses the waste and accumulation of typical farms. Large colonies of wild fish and shellfish will be attracted to the new substrate and can be harvested by a farm's owner of may be made available to the public.

These orbs will not only be productive and efficient farms, but the giant spherical reefs will become an aestheticized and living object to be explored by divers and recreational fisherman. Shape and gelatin mixture will produce different living conditions and various reef typologies, no two will be the same. Once set loose in the wild the orbs will literally take on a life of their own, following currents and attracting life wherever they go, possibly even mingling with other spheres of various ages, sharing their ecosystems and giving them away as they collapse and die. In the ocean this growth can happen very quickly within months of being born the orbs will be covered with living material becoming new edible living worlds.

From the fellows at bittertang.

(courtesy bittertang)

Cesar Harada>