New media installation : in insitu virtual garden in wich unreal flora grow in interaction with real-time meteorological datas
Edition of 5

Produced by Le Fresnoy, Studio National des Arts Contemporains, 2003
Collaboration:
Code by David Deraedt (Flash Action Script / PHP)
Music by Olivier Bruggeman

Shimmy Shimmy Grass is an ephemeral virtual vegetable microcosm whose autonomous and random evolution is controlled by a data-processing program. A digital and imaginary flora spreads out and overruns the space, being part of the place which shelters it in a poetic way. This wild garden -inspired by « L’Île Derborescence » of the landscape designer Gilles Clement- is introduced in an inaccessible and protected place and appears to the spectator by its external vision only. This project of in situ installation is presented under the form of a data sound projection on a glass screen. The evolution of this garden is inspired by simple life systems and is specific to this ecosystem type: life, death, reproduction, tension and duality. This project marked by poetry and fragility is a continuation of Qubo Gas's graphic and thematic interests and their attachment to  subtle and delicate compositions. The main theme of this project is the creation of a data bank of graphic elements that give birth to an uncontrolled and imaginary flora with uncertain outcome and perenniality.

« L’Île Derborescence » of Gilles Clément deals with the concept of a wild garden from which all human intervention is banished as well as with the idea of a confrontation with an unfavourable urban environment. Thus it reveals the type of poetry Shimmy Grass intends to explore. « L’Île Derborescence » is an inaccessible garden, established on the heights of a concrete block of almost 3000 square metres in the heart of the Parc Matisse in Lille. Deprived of supervising, treatment, maintenance or water, the unapproachable forest evolves freely at the heart of an urban environment without any human intervention. It is therefore directly confronted with pollution and other urban nuisances. In his "Ile Derborescence", Gille Clément invites us to think and learn a lesson about a sound way to handle nature. Here, he questions the old myths which place men at the centre of the world and in a dominating position. With his concept of a planetary garden, Gilles Clément proposes a new legend, a new way to interpret the universe in a space where vegetable and animal nature, civilization and culture intermingle. Men are nowhere to be seen and yet their presence can be felt everywhere. They do not dominate the world any more.

Similarly, Shimmy Shimmy Grass's genesis of the project relies on the introduction of a wild garden into the heart of a hostile environment with the idea of neither access nor control on. Establishing a hidden garden, a wild and ephemeral microcosm in a shut space closed to the public, introduces a poetic and evanescent vision which is rendered all the more fragile by the dominant urban environment it is located in (as was the case in Le Fresnoy for which it was first designed). The only way to see this garden is through a translucent wall presenting a front view projection of its vegetative activity.  Therefore the place where the garden is   located is not accessible to the public. The space itself is closed by this glass separation on which a general view of the garden is projected. It respects the perspective just like a window opening on an external landscape. The surface of the place where the garden is virtually established, is entered in the data-processing program which then comes to force its deployment in this same surface. The garden fits perfectly into the architecture of the place, revealing the possibility of an hidden vegetable activity or the eventuality of an infiltration of nature.
A data bank of graphic elements is made of an unreal flora with multicoloured ferns, magic mushrooms and other enchanted weeds, continuing the surreal and poetic universe of Qubo Gas. About one hundred and fifty imaginary vegetable specimens created from drawings on paper or on computer form a strange herbarium divided into several families of plants. Each family of plants has physical and sound specific features which react differently and determine their evolution. There are three phases in the evolution process of each plant : birth, maturation and degeneration. A range of sounds is allotted to each plant and also reflects these three cycles. While developing, the garden then reveals a curious musical composition, made up by very subtle sounds and punctuated by short melodies. If the flora of this wild garden is imaginary and poetic, it has nevertheless the evolutionary and organic characteristics of a real vegetable environment. The plants grow up, spread, fade, die and disappear, generating a perpetual and fast renewal of the vegetation.

The floral structure of the garden and its graphic composition are set up in a completely autonomous and uncontrollable way according to precise criteria. Once started, the garden is completely left to itself and gradually evolves in real time in a cyclic and natural way over the duration of the exhibition. The program is linked to Internet in real time and collects weather data provided by Metar (the system transmitting the climatic data to the international airports). The garden is permanently connected to the "Metar" of the nearest airport to the place of exhibition and recovers in real time the temperature level, the humidity rate, the sunshine level, the cloudbank, which have an effect on the development of the garden. This wild flora evolves day and night during the whole time of the exhibition and develops two phases: diurnal and nocturnal. According to weather data -the sunshine level or the humidity rate, for example-, the garden activity is more or less intense. The plants can completely invade the space and abound or do badly according to the climatic conditions. The evolution of this flora can thus become uncertain and the degeneration of the garden completely plausible.

This installation being « in situ », each vegetable environment is unique, ephemeral and nonreproducible. Whenever it is introduced and shown in a specific place, this garden adjusts itself in a singular way, working on concepts of apparition and poetic vision according to the architecture which accommodates it. The eventuality of its disappearance and the idea of an ephemeral existence -depending both on the duration of its visibility and on the climatic conditions- assimilates this wild flora to a kind of chimerical and evanescent garden.
A delicate environment with fragile balance.
An ecosystem which lies dormant until activated by our goodwill.