Labverde: Artists of Labverde 2016

The last issue of EE introduced our readers to the Labverde Art Immersion Program in the Amazon. Labverde (The Green Lab) offers an intensely immersive experience for the selected artists to spend ten days in the Amazon Rainforest in order to reflect on the nature and the ecology while doing research and producing artistic works. In this article we will look at some of the works produced during the program, to see how the fusion of art, science and nature in such a unique location can inspire new ideas and thinking in the arts.

In the second edition of Labverde, many artists produced very visual works such as paintings, photographs and drawings inspired by the surroundings. However, some artists took a more conceptual approach exploring the Amazon’s role in the Earth’s ecological system and questioning its future status in the times of the new geological epoch of human made nature - the Anthropocene.

www.labverde.com

Vegetal Reality Shelter
BY Guto Nóbrega

Brazilian born artist Guto Nóbrega’s residency resulted in a concept of a multimedia hybrid installation Vegetal Reality Shelter. During the residency the artist recorded sounds and videos in the Adolpho Ducke Forest Reserve to create an augmented reality-based system in the form of a small terrarium of plants including a sound system and a small projector. The project aims to provide an augmented reality experience of being in an utopian forest.
www.cargocollective.com/gutonobrega

Sound Forest
BY Rihards Vitols

The Latvian artist Rihards Vitols focused on the themes of nature, ecology and the future of the Amazon rainforest. In his concept Sound Forest the artist recorded sounds made by the Amazon Rainforest’s plants, animals, insects and birds. He is going to create a spacial sound-scape consisting of 30 speakers that will be set up the same way as the trees in the rainforest where he recorded these sounds.
www.soundcloud.com/user-954248458/tracks
www.vimeo.com/rihvit/videos

The Amazon Fluid Processor
BY Stahl Stenslie

The Norwegian artist Stahl Stenslie challenges our understanding of the computer by applying ecological and sustainable principles of environmental computing to other fields and other scales. The result was a processor-like device operating with nothing else than the natural flow of water to execute basic computing processes. These 3D printed cubes are made out of 100% recyclable PLA plastics produced from corn starch. The proposed design works on the natural principles of physics, uses no electricity, lasts almost forever and can literally be thrown around.
www.stenslie.net

The Earth That Walks
BY Turenko Beça

How to take the Amazonian forest and carry it into the cities and other locations on Earth? That was the main question for the artist Turenko Beça from the Amazonas. The artist cast actual Amazonian ground, producing small preserved pieces of soil, frozen inside a resin plate, making it possible for other artists in the residency to take it all-around the world. Displacements were geo-tagged once displaced outside the Amazon.