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Jardiland Real Radish Races Via Internet
Jardland is an art project that proposes real-time radish races on the Internet. The intent of the project is to do something like the Tamagotchi virtual pets, but with real plants. In this case, radishes.
(Jardland Radish Race Radish Breeder)
Special growing boxes will be held at a single location; each box is an entirely self-contained ecosystem. A special robotic arm will be used to plant the seed and tend the plant. Each player will administer an array of radish growing parameters in such a way as to encourage optimal plant growth.
A webcam will take pictures three times per day (above ground only). After twenty-one days, the growing boxes will be opended, radished dug up and the winner announced. Finally, each player will receive their radish via post.
In the first version of jardiland, radish boxes will be placed in the following locations: Cambridge (UK), MIT (USA), Chicago (USA), Bristol (UK), Lisbon (Portugal), Aix-en-Provence (France). (See map below.)
(Jardland Breeder Box Locations)
Jardiland blends a very old preoccupation of civilization - farming and food supply - and recent questions introduced by emerging technologies such as telepresence, tele-surveillance, remotely controlled interaction and web community.Jardiland ironically raises questions about the legitimacy of omnipresent technology. All this new technology serving a single radish…
Sending the real radish to each breeder at the end of the race closes the gap between appearance and essence, and the virtuality of the "disembodied vision" that Jardiland or any tele-robotic installation engenders.
This is a very radicle idea.
You might be interested in these agriculture-related robotics stories:
- AgBots: Agricultural Robots Take The Field In one memorable scene from the original Star Wars movie, Luke Skywalker's Uncle Owen is bargaining for agricultural robots with Jawas. Agriculture has been slow to adopt to robotic technology.
- Robotic Tomato Harvester Ready For Space Astronauts on space missions are busy - too busy to tend the hydroponic gardens that will keep them alive on long trips to distant worlds, or on the surface of the Moon or Mars. So, NASA has developed a robotic tomato harvester to pitch in.
Scroll down for more stories in the same category. (Story submitted 11/18/2006)
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