PLSS for Think Box

We've been invited to show a video on the Think Box in JMSB for Congress 2010 at Concordia. Let's aim to have a 5 minute video produced for May 10. 

Hi Morgan.

Thanks for this. It looks really interesting and fun, and your group dynamic and documentation is terrific. 

Once we've received all the submissions we'll get back to you to discuss specifics, but do please get to work on that video. I like it a lot because it is so local and process-oriented.

Best.

David [...]
 
Hello David,

We would love to show video documentation of our current project, Plant Life Support System, on/in the Think Box. 

PLSS is an interdisciplinary collaboration between undergraduates and members of the Topological Media Lab[1]. Broadly, we are turning a critical eye to the practice of urban gardening by producing our own technically-assisted urban garden experiments inside the EV building at Concordia. The project has diverse goals: 
- experimenting with human-plant ecologies, 
- designing technical systems for sensing plant health and delivering sustenance (water, light, nutrients), 
- critically inquiring into hard questions of environmental ethics,
- working to create a living human/non-human community in the EV building,
- all the while trying to take a thoroughly Guattarian approach, building the system as a laboratory for the production of new subjectivites, as a machinic assemblage with ethico-aesthetic impact[2]. 

PLSS is an experiment in system building and an experiment in experimenting. What is an ethico-aesthetic experiment? We plan to go about asking this question by trying to perform one and watching ourselves closely as we try. A date on/in the Think Box would be a great excuse for us to produce a video of our progress in April. We would be delighted to represent innovative research at Concordia University and to shed light on this year's Congress theme ("connected understanding").

You will find documentation at our blog: http://plss.posterous.com/
and in our mailing list archives: http://groups.google.com/group/tml-plss

Thanks!
Morgan Sutherland