Current Research -- The Moth Project
Project Description:
The Moth Project is a series of portable nighttime garden machines designed to attract moths for pollination underscoring the decline of honeybee populations. These gardens would use small, off the grid, solar panel systems to charge deep cycle batteries during the day. In the evening, power inverters and timers would set off the garden lights designed to attract moths as well as other nighttime insects as an alternative to bees for the pollination of food crops. This public art event would combine art and sustainability with entomological and horticultural research. I envision several of these gardens to be placed in urban areas such as parking lots and rooftops as well as rural fields.
I have chosen to focus on moths because of their diversity (approx. 14,500 species found in the United States) and usefulness as pollinators. There is much concern over the dramatic rise in Honey Bee Depopulation Syndrome (HBDS) or Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) in which worker bees from a beehive or honeybee colony abruptly disappear or die. Many do not realize the vital role bees play in maintaining a balanced eco-system. According to experts, if bees were to become extinct, humanity would perish in four years time. Research has led me to nighttime insects or second shift pollinators for necessary food crop pollination. Moths are also a family of insects that most people know very little about, both visually and environmentally.
Project Goals
The Moth Project's primary goal is to collaboratively address current environmental stresses, food shortages, and wasteful practices by linking ecological issues to synthetic biology and creative operations. I aspire to create a project rigorous and poetic in conceptual processes where passive viewers become empowered participants. The Moth Project will enable audiences to develop a greater understanding and appreciation for the art and science that can be found in sustainable practices while strengthening the bond between people and nature by inventing new ways to connect nature with people’s everyday lives.
This project will also develop accompanying field reports that will result in a text used to promote, preserve, and advance public awareness of this art-environment project, and its affect on real life in real time. This project combines research, activism, art, and science that address probable catastrophic events with a means for short-circuiting doomsday predictions. The Moth Project will: extend the “knowledge of the moment;” demonstrate the fragile connection between natural world and personal action; and offer simple, positive changes that can be enacted to increase sustainability-- an activity that can be replicated long after the artist has moved on.
The Moth Project is a series of portable nighttime garden machines designed to attract moths for pollination underscoring the decline of honeybee populations. These gardens would use small, off the grid, solar panel systems to charge deep cycle batteries during the day. In the evening, power inverters and timers would set off the garden lights designed to attract moths as well as other nighttime insects as an alternative to bees for the pollination of food crops. This public art event would combine art and sustainability with entomological and horticultural research. I envision several of these gardens to be placed in urban areas such as parking lots and rooftops as well as rural fields.
I have chosen to focus on moths because of their diversity (approx. 14,500 species found in the United States) and usefulness as pollinators. There is much concern over the dramatic rise in Honey Bee Depopulation Syndrome (HBDS) or Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) in which worker bees from a beehive or honeybee colony abruptly disappear or die. Many do not realize the vital role bees play in maintaining a balanced eco-system. According to experts, if bees were to become extinct, humanity would perish in four years time. Research has led me to nighttime insects or second shift pollinators for necessary food crop pollination. Moths are also a family of insects that most people know very little about, both visually and environmentally.
Project Goals
The Moth Project's primary goal is to collaboratively address current environmental stresses, food shortages, and wasteful practices by linking ecological issues to synthetic biology and creative operations. I aspire to create a project rigorous and poetic in conceptual processes where passive viewers become empowered participants. The Moth Project will enable audiences to develop a greater understanding and appreciation for the art and science that can be found in sustainable practices while strengthening the bond between people and nature by inventing new ways to connect nature with people’s everyday lives.
This project will also develop accompanying field reports that will result in a text used to promote, preserve, and advance public awareness of this art-environment project, and its affect on real life in real time. This project combines research, activism, art, and science that address probable catastrophic events with a means for short-circuiting doomsday predictions. The Moth Project will: extend the “knowledge of the moment;” demonstrate the fragile connection between natural world and personal action; and offer simple, positive changes that can be enacted to increase sustainability-- an activity that can be replicated long after the artist has moved on.
