Sunlight,
Soil & Shit
(De)Cycle
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2022
Ionat Zurr & Oron Catts
in collaboration with
Steve Berrick

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Project Website:
sunlightsoilshit.systems

3SDC is a contestable food systems project about Agricultural Technology (AgTech).

The work is a performative durational experiment that includes public workshops, a symposium, a dinner party, live streaming of the event and a documentary.

Sunlight, Soil and Shit (the 3 S’s) are the three elements our technological utopian future farming is trying to live without. “AgTech” (precision-agriculture intelligence) aims to automate and control food production, while non-standardised elements such as sunlight, soil and shit are removed in favour of artificial light, substrates and fertilizers.

In times of ecological crisis, there is a vital need for seriously playful artistic interventions into these fantasies of separating humans from Nature. By using aesthetics to intervene, sense and gain data of the different processes involved in food manufacturing we are allowing the public to consider their own relations with both Nature and human-made technology.

SymbioticA’s 3SDC builds resources to enable the community to accelerate metabolic rifts in agricultural innovation. This project considers whether the precursor to sustainable food systems will be the creation of a metabolic rift – were the means of production will grow ever distant from nature. An ecosystem of technologies that enable and promote transparency, networked experimentation, education, time and climate equity and hyper-local production.

We bring together partners from industry, government, and academia in a research collective that’s creating collaborative tools and communities to explore contestable agricultural systems.