“GROW_ABILITY” Exhibition in Riga, Latvia

photo: Ansis Starks, Erik Sjödin

Until May 8th at RIXC Gallery

“Grow_Ability” is an interdisciplinary art e

xhibition that explores issues of “food as energy”. The exhibition features three installations. Super Meal by the Swedish artist Erik Sjödin draws attention to the aquatic plant Azolla – one of the worlds fastest growing plants, which is a rich source of nutrients, yet unexplored as food. Folk Pharmacy by several Latvian artists and culture researchers, is an artistic interpretation of the use of indoor and wild plants as food and folk medicine.

The project Talk to Me is the most recent project by RIXC – an online interface through which one can talk to plants via the Internet, examining the old assumption that plants which had been talked to grow better. Talk to plants here.

For more information visit: renewable.rixc.lv.

By Ronja Röckemann

Ronja Röckemann was the intern of Cultura21 from April to July 2011. She has a Bachelor degree in the field of Cultural Sciences and continues to study at Leuphana University in the Master program "Sustainability Sciences".

1 comment

  1. Hi Ronja, I realize you are international (so are we, with founders in Italy and staff in NL plus the US), but I thought you might have some reason to publicize what is currently a North American initiative for Citizen Science. If so, I am including some explanation. Hopefully, we can work together in the coming monthes.

    Lisa

    We are YourGardenShow.com, a free social network connecting gardeners of all experience levels with knowledge, tools and resources to inspire sustainable green communities. More gardeners mean healthier communities. We are organized around a garden log which each gardener can chose to share. Plus, we have about 40% original content, including videos since our founder is a veteran TV producer/director.

    We have an initiative which we started this month to build a network of Citizen Scientists to undertake the first online national bee count (they’re disappearing, causing concern for food security as well as being harbingers of environmental danger). We would like to publicize the initiative since that is what it will take to get the data collected so it can do good!

    Would you be interested in doing a story on it? We have copy, blogs and press releases. Here’s one page from our site: http://www.yourgardenshow.com/citizen-science/great-sunflower-project

    Here is a piece that suite 101 ran this week on us: http://www.suite101.com/content/citizen-scientists-tabulate-the-numbers-of-vanishing-bees-a370129
    SF Chronicle should have their story coming out this weekend. Net-net, we hope that this project will create a “buzz’ because it really argues for increasing the biodiversity – and especially in the last bastion of biodiversity – the cities. We take the following article to heart:

    Let me know if you are still publishing and would be interested in covering this. We built a cool little bee=meter widget which, if someone participates in a zip code, shows the exact number of bees seen in a 15 minute period, which we would love to see work in all zip codes in the country!

    Best, and please feel free to pass this request on.

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