Secession, Vienna, 2005 On Mobility, De Appel, BüroFriedrich Berlijn, CAC Vilnius, 2006 Domain of the Great Bear, Dystopische Landschaft, Kunstraum München, Munich, 2006
Biosphere 2 is modelled on Biosphere 1: Earth.
It is an artificial, closed ecological system in Oracle, Arizona, built by Texas billionaire Edward Bass, Space Biosphere Ventures and others. Constructed in the late eighties, this experimental world was used to test and study if and how people could live in a closed biosphere. This hermetically sealed New Age Garden of Eden offers a glance into the future, a taste of what life might be like in a space colony.
The physical structure of Biosphere 2 is made of steel tubing and frames and high-performance glass, designed by Peter Pearce, a former student of Buckminster Fuller. It was described as planet in a bottle and houses over 3800 species of plants and animals in five distinct ecological biomes: a marsh, a desert, a savannah, an ocean, and a rainforest. Indoor rain and tides are controlled from the Biosphere Command Room. Over 1000 sensors distributed throughout the Biosphere send information to the control system Mission Control. This computer network provides a continuous display of environmental variables while constantly updating the permanent database.
Eight testpersons entered Biosphere 2 in 1991 and 1994. They wore futuristic jump suits made by Marilyn Monroe's cloth designer. On one-half acre of enclosed land, they have grown their food. As a social experiment it was -unintentionally- a precursor to Big Brother.
The project was aborted prematurely due to various difficulties with the ecological system, tensions and social conflicts between the testpersons, and lack of oxygen. Today, Biosphere 2 is a touristic site.
The test showed how difficult it is to copy the natural capital of earth, our home: Biosphere 1. Despite huge expenditure, the attempt to make a new biosphere did not sustain eight humans for a limited time. Some economists have used the price of the Biosphere 2 to calculate the total value of earth. This leads to a large, but finite, price of earth itself.
Biosphere 2 and Trinity site are each others counterparts, though they bear similarities: both tourist sites boosted by a vision about the future, both experimental in 'toying' with the concept of a world that may or may not become unliveable. Where Biosphere 2 failed to construct a self-sustaining closed environment, the success of Trinity and the further developments following the first experiment (testing the first atom bomb), are, at the very least, ambiguous.
Biosphere 2 consists of series of 15 inkjet-prints and texts that describes the daily menu
