NewWorLdLog: LIVINGWALL

Friday, 16 July 2010

LIVINGWALL

LIVING WALL IS WORLD FIRST

The east-facing side of the hoardings features a dramatic green "living wall' made of a variety of plants growing in a revolutionary new light-weight system known as 'LivePanel'.
Developed in the Netherlands by Mobilane and installed by Midlands-based firm Hedera Screens, the system involves blocks of a special growing medium made from a recycled material (a by-product of home insulation production) mounted in an aluminium frame. Low maintenance, the display is fed and watered by a computer-controlled irrigation system. It will mature between now and when the construction site hoardings come down at the end of 2012, when the
whole system can then be reused at another site. Following trials of the system over the last few years, the Library of Birmingham construction site is the first place in the world to have a LivePanel display.
Cllr Mike Whitby said, "The Library of Birmingham is set to become one of the most exciting cultural projects in the world, and with that comes a huge responsibility to not only provide world class facilities, but also to meet our green responsibilities. The environment has never been far from our thoughts at all stages of the design process, and we felt it was appropriate that we do our bit, even during construction, to make the project fully environmentally sustainable."
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(scanned under 'text-document' setting on Dell Scanner from "The Word: Rewriting The Book- The Library of Bimringham" pamphlett found in Central Library.)

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CEP Proposal

Deleuze & Guattari once wrote that “New York is virtually a city without a language...” [from Postulates of Linguistics in A Thousand Plateaus, 1923, pp. 103]. How provocative a statement to make about a city brimming with so many languages, dialects, slang etc. I thought. New York for me has always been, as for so many before me, a city of such artistic prestige and accomplishment, vitality and possibility. It has drawn young artists to its bright lights and wide streets for decades now, and it will continue to. Surely New York is a city without any ‘without’: a city of infinite possibility and opportunity, offering itself to all whom arrive, making them never want to leave, offering everything they need.

But I was too hasty; my argumentative cry against with their provocations would have been quickly silenced, had I read a little further on: “There is no language that does not have intralinguistic, endogenous, internal minorities...” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1923, pp103). But my silence was brought with a smile, with a sense of relief, of assurance. Just as I believe[d], and have argued, New York is a city without a language- without a set, solid and all-conforming ‘language’, but rather a multiplicity of tongue, of variations of the tongue, the lingua franca, of English. New York for me is a prime example of how all languages, exchanged by so many different people from such different places is continually being shaped, changed and modified, mutating every day through common shared discourse and people trying to make sense to each other.

Having been born in one country but then being raised between two countries has brought difficulty when pledging allegiance to either. I have felt neither here nor there, not this nor that. What happens to those who don't feel a part, or feel apart, from their surroundings? They start something new; they seek out new places to live and to start again, afresh. The historical implication of New York City having been built ex nihilo by such a wide group of people(s) having travelled from their Old World in search of the New, ready to build themselves a New life in new contexts has always inspired me to travel and work there, to also become a part of the engagement with the 'new' moving away from the old, the traditional, the conventional, the usual, the obvious. I can see a direct link between this state of mind, towards progression through experimentation, in my journey to art and performance College and my future journey to New York and the USA, to frame my questions around the 'New' within city whose very name and ethos is just that.