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Electro^Plankton
A blog about design, technology, music and fashion.
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This thing was constructed on September 20, 2007, and it was categorized as art, environment.
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The Cicada art collective explores the human relation to landscape, creating installations that examine the effects of social scale on the environment. Recent works have connected viewers to the aesthetics of emergent behavior in crowds and traced the emotional life of common spaces.
The group’s Amensal installation uses simple bio-indicators–lichens– to visualize the effects of car exhaust, noise pollution, and other effects of mass society. The work explores the ability of organisms to survive in urban environments and the human tendency, often unintentional, to manipulate the natural world to create comfort and beauty Magnified thousands of times, the lichens shift across a public surface, adapting or withering before passersby. “If you want to watch the lichen grow,” the creators advise,”you must be quiet and still and be careful where your shadow falls.”
The Amensal site includes photos of the exhibit as well as a short video of a morphing lichen. Cicada provides overviews of three other recent projects.
. Historian Shae Davidson's research interests include public policy and the relationship between culture and civil society. His publications range from articles on industrial history to absurdist poetry.
