ΔCulture
Where we instrumentalize sea creatures.
2015
The project DeltaCulture focuses on futures of agriculture in the post-sea-level-rise era. The current trend of global warming will cause a worldwide rise in sea levels. Since the lands currently cultivated are often in low grounds, there are higher chances of losing these grounds. In the same time with the growth of population demand for agriculture goods will rise in few decades.
DeltaCulture proposes an aquaponics system to address these emerging issues. Use of aquaponics as a historic method of agriculture is rising in recent years. This system creates a loop of plants and sea animals in a symbiosis. In a nutshell, while fish creating fertilizer for plants, plants provide nutrition for fish. Applying this system to massive bodies of water will create multiple eco-impacts. Considering the ecological problems already existing in the Nieuwe Waterweg, the design of a stabilizer system is necessary.
The fiction of the proposal begins with the observation of instrumentalized animals influencing our agriculture for millennia. Dogs are one of the human inventions through herding wolves in order to help primitive Homo Sapiens with multiple tasks. In this relation, human functions as the user and dog function as a tool. One can argue that through genetic modifications over centuries, human instrumentalized the dog and the dog functions as an extension of the human body.
With improvements in technology, human will be able to modify animals in new ways. DeltaCulture studies these ways on sea creatures including, Jellyfish, Starfish, and Coral in order to address the stabilization problem. Coral can function as a platform for cultivating crops. Jellyfish can function as a chemical detector and Starfish can help solving harmful sediments.
