Solar Orchard Garden

Curiosity and Complexity defines Solar Orchard Garden on the basis of two concepts: quintessence, the fifth element described by alchemy, and the Gaia Hypothesis formulated in the seventies.

Humans have always looked up to the skies for otherness and origin – god, knowledge, destination, life. At the same time, Earth a self-regulating complex system, organic and inorganic at once, orchestrates the biosphere, the atmosphere, the hydrospheres and the pedosphere.

The on site and online visitors / participants of the Solar Orchard Garden are invited to participate in two complex experiences: Stargazer and Amazonia.

Stargazer is an experiment of hybrid presence, an artwork situated between two interconnected sites – a dome projection in Barcelona and the virtual world in Mozilla Hubs.

The virtual world of Stargazer draws its visual inspiration from a pre-scientific understanding of the cosmos, materialised as Platonic solids. It encourages visitors to engage playfully, create and share their own mini narratives as pictures and question the concepts of communication, distance, time and presence. It’s like sending a virtual message in a bottle into space: The pictures alter the dome projection site in Barcelona, where visitors observe changes to their visual environment in real time. Who sees these messages, what is their impact, and how will they respond?

The Amazonia experience shows Earth as a continuous ecological equilibrium with the Sun, its source of energy and an extreme danger to life, from COVID-19 spreading across the globe to ritualistic performances that demonstrate to contemporary, Anthropocenic humans, how Nature always calls the shots.