Next Nature:
Urban Tumbleweed
An art object created as a statement for Next Nature. Next Nature is culturally emerged nature, it is the nature caused by human culture. That may sound like a contradiction, but really, it isn’t. Our technological world has become so intricate and uncontrollable that it has become a nature of its own. This means we have to re-investigate our notion of nature.
It seems that yesterday’s leaves are being replaced by today’s garbage in the streets. This garbage is turning into a natural feature of our environment, we become more familiar with a coke can or McDonalds wrapping than with leaves of the few trees in the cities. This garbage, Urban garbage, is becoming our next nature. It is invading our streets like a modern tumbleweed, effectively creating a phenomenon known as Urban Tumbleweed.
This Urban Tumbleweed creates a footprint of a city. To illustrate this footprint, Urban Tumbleweeds were constructed using genuine trash from the streets of both Düsseldorf and Eindhoven. Though the results appear similar, they offer a lot of detail when being observed from a closer perspective.
In the end the question remains: what would Urban Tumbleweed from another continent look like?
A collaboration of: Jan van der Asdonk, Guus Baggermans and Brian Garret Schuur