Excerpted from the publication:
]]>“When we first started working with Bea at the Sunview, the front window was filled with a tangle of plants, mostly overgrown spider plants and ivies, that over the course of the first winter had frozen, thawed, and froze again. Eventually they were hauled outside by an impatient film crew and never brought back (their pots still reside in the garden, sans plants). It always felt like a loss, though we get more light now, and Bea has brought in fake flowers and a couple of plastic potted plants which aren’t so bad. When Dylan started talking with Matej about a project to create an aquaponic growing structure as a sculpture in the Sunview’s window (and back yard), it was these first plants they had in mind. They had also wanted to build a garden in the Sunview’s back yard, but with the oil spill and all (you know just the largest oil spill in US history) and the toxic plumes, they had no desire to actually plant anything in the ground, fearin’ what it might bring up. They decided instead to build an indoor/outdoor mobile aquaponic sonic phonic hydroponic garden. Aquaponics is a viable system of growing plants alongside fish in a symbiotic circle of life/waste in which the fish poop is used to fertilize the plants and the plants give the fish a reason to live, which then cheers the Sunview up over the cold winter while providing fresh herbs and small vegetables to members and the public.”
The installation consists of a number of hexagonal tanks, built from reclaimed water tower wood (white cedar), each housing a school of fish from one of three families of Cichlids commonly known as Tilapia: Red Nile Tilapia (Oreochromis niloticus), Gold Tilapia (Oreochromis Mossambicus), and Blue Tilapia (Oreochromis aureus), along with Copepods (small crustaceans) and algae. Above the fish tanks, water is circulated through angled hexagonal platforms containing gravel and sand along with several species of marshland plants, including edible sea purslane (Halimione portulacoides and Sesuvium portulacastrum) and sea oats (Uniola paniculata). Excess water is circulated downward into the fish tanks, providing nutrients for the fish. Water from the fishtanks is cycled back up to flood the plants, bringing fertilizer. Full spectrum LED lights and pumps provide an artificial daytime and flood the plants on a tidal cycle, synchronized to that of a proximal body of water, in this case, Dutch Kills on nearby Newtown Creek. A series of mirrors, cameras and screens multiplies the visual environment outward and inward. HI/LOW MARSH TIME is a stand in for a missing ecosystem, a self-governing system of agriculture, and a work of sculptural ecology and architecture.
Aquaponics research images:
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