Sydney and Tasmania

Our holiday to Australia consisted of 9 nights in Sydney and 10 nights in Tasmania.
Most of our time in Sydney was spent in the Botanical Gardens, Circular Quay and Darling Harbour.
Whilst in Tasmania we stayed with family. We did a few odd jobs on their flower farm; picking flowers, weeding, wood chopping and getting plants ready for next season.
Then a couple of days before we where due to leave the volcano in Iceland started errupting sending ash into the sky which closed UK air space, leaving us in Australia until the 5th May giving us a six week holiday.

Listening Posts

Listening Post by Mark Hansen and Ben Rubin ' A MONUMENT TO THE PRESENT:THE SOUND OF 100,000 PEOPLE CHATTING'
The display has 200 small electronic screens that display moving words at different speeds that connect the computer-synthesised sounds coming out of the speakers. The words are from thousands of Internet chatrooms in real time. The display is bazaar with mixed up words that don't make sense and strange synthesised voices. The display was in the Science Museum and lasted a couple of minutes.

Decode at the V&A

The Decode:Digital Design Sensation exhibition at the V&A was an eyeopener to how quickly technology develops and how soon the technology in the exhib will be in our everyday lives, answer not long. As you walk around the exhib it's always changing with interactive works of art where you paint a canvas, blow the seeds off a dandelion head with a hairdryer, other works were being constantly updated with live footage i.e. Tree by Simon Heijdens. The works in the exhibition where split into three categories;
CODE: exploring algorithms and the artistic potential of computational systems
INTERACTIVITY: relationships between the work and the viewer
NETWORK: sing networks for production, interrogation and dissemination

www.soundcities.com

Design Real, Serpentine Exhibition

The Serpentine Exhibition, 'Design Real' was a presentation of ground breaking design. All the designs in the exhibition are mass produced and used in everyday life. Konstantin Grcic the curator of the exhibition says 'good design admits to the deeper insight that beyond performing a purpose in a good way, the purpose itself has to be good. All 43 items in the exhibition fulfil this idea in their own way. The relevance a product has to our life lies not only in its use, but also in how far we identify with it. A good product becomes part of our culture.'
What was really good about the exhibition was that fact that you recognised some of the objects and could buy them, also there was a central database where you could look into each design in depth and explore how they where created.

http://www.serpentinegallery.org/exhibitions/

http://www.design-real.com/

Edible Estates: Brookwood Estate

Tate Modern commissioned Fritz Haeg to create an Edible Estate in London as part of the Global Cities Exhibition in 2007. The Edible Estate has been created at Brookwood House Estate and is entirely made up of edible plants. The site was chosen to combine Southwark, one of the least green areas in London, with Fritz Haeg scheme to replace lawn with edible landscapes.

Growing Communities

A group of us went to Castle Climbing Centre in Hackney to help set up a new community garden on the surrounding land. Growing Communities is an organisation run by local people. The idea was to enable people in the city to obtain their food directly from a sustainably run farm close to London, but this has evolved with increased interest in growing organic vegetables in the city. Now Growing Communities is always looking for new land to set up more community gardens and Castle Climbing Centre is one of them.
When we arrived we were set to work digging up the compacted ground, getting it ready for future use. We were there for hours but it was great fun getting involved in a worthwhile scheme, and surprisingly it didn't seem like hard work.

Bonnington Square

For focus week I wanted to research deeper into my dissertation. My main aim was to visit my case studies; Bonnington Square, an Edible Estate in Southwark and to try and set up interviews.
Bonnington Square was the first case study I visited. I went to have a look at the secret community garden and central square, but what I found more interesting and more in keeping with my dissertation was how the residents of Bonnington Square have taken over their street using plants. As I was approaching Bonnington Square from South Lambeth Road, I started to notice different types of plants instead of those normally found at the base of trees. As I entered Bonnington Square I saw planting overflowing onto the paths and up telephone poles, and bins were taken over by bay trees and rosemary. This creates a community feel, softens the architecture and shows that people care about where they live and that they want to create a sanctuary in the centre of London. Bonnington Square showed me the benefits of creating your own environment; a happy community, taking pride in where they live.