Did you want to experience our Fall Audio Tour: Breaking the (Phyto)Social Distance, but couldn’t make it to 3333 6th Avenue in Troy? We took some sound and video samples of the tour process (many from the plants’ point of view!), and matched them up with the audio track from the tour. The result is a meditative, vegetally-paced audio-video piece to provide another perspective on this year’s Lawn Lab habitat. The piece is broken into two chapters, available below.
Chapter 1: Introduction
Chapter 2: Tour
The Lawn (Re)Disturbance Laboratory is an ongoing art-science experiment now in its third season. A project of the Next Epoch Seed Library, it involves re-wilding interventions in institutional and residential lawns from seeds lying dormant in the soil. From plant-based sculptures and community science workshops to novel approaches to data collection and presentation, the project offers multiple entry points through which to consider lawn habitats and their impacts on the communities—human and nonhuman—who live in and among them. The plots here on this lawn display a range of approaches to rewilding in collaboration with spontaneous, wild-growing, feral, and cultivated plants. You can learn more about the treatments for each plot on this info sheet, and more about project on the main project page.
You can learn more about the benefits and risks of wild urban nature in this short article: “Accidental urban oases,” and more about Lawn Lab and ecosocial art in this media essay: “A Public Experiment in Collaboration with Seeds, Time, and Weeds”