[Basekamp Events] Biosphere 2 - Jun 8 2010

[scott at basekamp.com]

======== BIOSPHERE 2 =========================================================

June 8, 2010 - 6:00pm - 8:00pm EST
Hi Everyone,

This Tuesday is another event in a year-long series of weekly conversations  
and exhibits in 2010 shedding light on examples of Plausible Artworlds.

This week we’ll be talking with Vienna-based artist Ralo Mayer who has been  
researching “Biosphere 2,” a radical experiment from the 1980s that  
sought to reproduce the earth’s biosphere in a gigantic, hermetically  
sealed greenhouse in the middle of the Nevada desert, where a group of eight  
artists — self-described for the purpose as “bions” — went to live in  
total isolation from the rest of the world for two years. Inside, they would  
produce, seed and harvest all the food they needed to live, while closely  
tracking biospheric conditions.

As it happened, the group’s mission in this Noa’s Ark of the desert  
coincided with the fall of the Berlin wall and the subsequent redefining of  
global priorities, including scientific priorities. The project drew sharp  
criticism from the academic community — perhaps jealously guarding its role  
as arbiter of biospheric knowledge — which dismissed it as crackpot  
science, leading the project’s financier to withdraw his support, and the  
group disbanded. Today, the greenhouse and the property on which it is  
located has been purchased by a local real estate developer, who has applied  
to turn the area into an upscale gated community.

Named after Biosphere 1 (that is, our Earth), the project was both a time  
machine and a scale model. It was above all, in the words of its initiators,  
a “time microscope enabling the witnessing of as many events as possible in  
a short period of time.” In many respects, Biosphere 2 has exceeded all  
expectations in the witness it continues to bear to life here in Biosphere 1.  
Ralo Mayer’s extensive research into the hopes, prospects, dreams and  
illusions of Biosphere 2, as well as its all too prosaic fate, is part of his  
long-term research series, “How to do things with worlds.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biosphere_2

See you all then!

Join us every Tuesday night – in person, or on Skype, skypename:  
‘basekamp’
If you come to the potluck chat in person, be sure to bring a dish :)
Basekamp space: 723 Chestnut St, 2nd floor, Philadelphia usa

NOTE: All Skype “Join” links are /still/ broken. In the meantime, to join  
this week’s Potluck Chat:

Download from skype.com if you don’t already have it
 * In Skype “Add a contact”: basekamp
 * Send a message when you want to join the chat, by selecting us from your
   list and clicking ‘Start chat’
 * We’ll add you to the text chat, and when everyone is ready we’ll start
   the conference call


Follow Plausible Artworlds:
http://twitter.com/basekamp
http://basekamp.com/info

Comment here
http://basekamp.com/about/events/biosphere-2#comments [1]

/Plausible Artworlds is a project organized by Basekamp and Stephen Wright,  
and has been funded by The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage through the  
Philadelphia Exhibitions Initiative./


[1] http://basekamp.com/about/events/biosphere-2#comments
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