2019.12
PATALAND
#Pataphysics #Ethical Botany #Critical Thinking #Storytelling
Group Members: Wei Peng, Keer Wei,Yaoyao Tang
This is a blueprint of using divine natural power to save a barren land, we human beings are playing a role as a connector. Eventually, the great pacific garbage patch will become a newly cultivated land in the pacific ocean.
Plants exist billions of years on earth and they are closely interconnected with humans. After we broke the balance of nature, plants may be the only method to turn the tables.
We lock our eyes on an extreme example of uncultivated “land” - the great pacific garbage patch. It is a plastic accumulation zona in the pacific ocean between Hawaii and California, covering an estimated surface area of 1.6 million square kilometers, an area three times the size of France. Most of the garbages is from Asia and North America. Plastic and other non-degradable materials have colonized there, the ecosystem has been destroyed, plants cannot naturally survive there. Our plan is to bring the power of greenness (viriditas potion) to the patch and build up a new ecosystem on the garbage.
In the Middle Ages, a benedictine abbess Hildegard Von Bingen discovered a mysterious power called “viriditas”, as she described, viriditas is a divine healing power of green, an expression of heaven, vitality, and creative power of life that can be found in nature. The human can absorb this power from the environment then it becomes a part of our anima. Similarly, Chinese Taoism also brings out a theory about “Qi” (the vibratory nature of phenomena) that described how nature animates the world and how humans are able to absorb and contain qi by breathing. So viriditas is a fundamental element for plants and humans to grow and have vitality, it usually exists naturally between plants, but as the garbage patch is full of artificial materials that cannot become a part of a natural cycle, it has no viriditas, if only we can bring some viriditas there to help it rebuilt, it will grow to a green island.
Ingredients of viriditas potion
1. Oyster mushroom Spores（Pleurotus Ostreatus）: We need fungi to be our pioneer to grow on plastics. That’s because fungi grow together with other microbes and create beneficial symbiotic relationships in nature. Most importantly, there is a specific one - oyster mushroom (Pleurotus ostreatus), which has been proofed by Katharina Unger’s experiment - Fungi Mutarium, that can live on plastics. Oyster mushroom is an edible mushroom that can be found in the market. And also, it is tolerant to saltwater exposure(The Petroleum Problem, Paul Stamets, Fungi Perfecti) which is profitable to our plan.
2. Lotus Stamen: Lotus refers to rebirth in Buddhism and is a core belief of reincarnation.
3. Human Breath: We absorb viriditas from nature, we can also give it back when nature needs it. Through meditation, we preserve it in our body, and humans breathe as a conveyer will transmit the viriditas we have to the potion.
4. Cinnabar: It is the most important material in Chinese alchemy that can bring life back. People believed that the transformation of these substances through roasting or burning gave the final substance a spiritual value.
5. Abstract of Transgenic Crops: Using supergene of transgenic crops to improve the protective effect of the potion about resistance to certain pests, diseases, environmental conditions…
VIRIDITAS MEASUREMENT
When viriditas reach a proper level, our breathing will be steady. So we make this breathing measurement for people of different age and gender to see if the environment have enough viriditas. Blow the ball up to the right place prescribed times continuously (when the bottom of the ball reaches the line) and each time stay 3 seconds.
A RITUAL TO MAKE VIRIDITAS POSION
1. Change to loose clothes to let breath unobstructed.
2. Put oyster mushroom spores and 2ml still water into a separating funnel with valve tightened, other materials, and 30ml still water in the flask.
3. Use alcohol burner to heat the flask till condenser pipe start to drop liquid into separating funnel. (Extract essence of ingredients.)
4. Wait for 5 minutes and turn on the valve to let all the liquid flow into the bottle. (Let essence liquid and fungus react.)
6. Then, sitting on heels, take a deep breathe and begin to meditate for 15min, thinking about all the harms we made to nature. (Get spirit from nature.)
7. After meditation, hold a deep breathe from lung and breathe out to the pipe. Repeat until the red cabbage water colour from blue become close to the purple on the colour chart which means you have supply enough viriditas. (Add viriditas to the potion.)
8. Finally, take the bottle off, put dropper in and tight it quickly.
Delivery Method
1. Drifting duck delivery
This is the way that people can do from different places so it becomes to a ceremony. Basically, it’s letting many clay-made bath ducks carry viriditas potion and “swim” to the garbage patch to save the land. We have made a mold to make air clay ducks. People only need to use needle tubing to inject potions into ducks. Check the map to choose a drifting duck port nearby and go put it into the ocean. Owing to the current of North Pacific Gyre, ducks will travel 1 year to the patch from Asia ports like Hongkong, Busan, and Yokohama, and 5 years from North America like San Francisco and Victoria.
The duck will be slowly dissolved while it travels cause it is made of clay when it reaches the patch, it will be fully dissolved and viriditas potion will come out. The fungus can attach to plastic there and begins to grow on this huge warm bed.
2. Drones delivery
There is another way, which is faster, we build a viriditas navy consist of drones, inject viriditas potion into “duck egg bombs” (made by baking soda and citric acid), using drones to carry them flying to the patch. When arrived, drop them down and those egg bombs will be quickly released when they reach the water，then viriditas will come out and starts to grow.
