Moss Graffiti: Greener designs to breathe more easily
I’ve been thinking for a long time now about a new way to conceptualize design. Coincidentally, all the events, conferences and exhibitions about design that I’ve attended this year analyzed the same thing and asked almost the same questions: Is it possible to design a new world?
*The author recommends listening to this piece while reading this articleThe future is the new sphere where we can play with current problems and argue, discuss and debate them. I feel like a child sitting in the center of a room full of toys and trying to find a new way to play with them. Which ones should I choose and will it be different from the old ones? And can it address the most important question: Is it going to work and make me happy?Like everything, design is changing; its methods, manifests, subtexts and materials are changing. According to a big group which we cannot underestimate, designing is over. We have done lots of things and destroyed the world, that's why we should let things go and not add anything else from now on. So, nature will repair itself and we will go back to our humanity. Another group thinks that this is the age of design where technology, abilities and human and engine power is now on top. This is the time to create the world again and make a new world, including nature while bearing in mind things like ski resorts with artificial snow or the manmade rainforests in shopping centers.I placed myself in between these ideas like a child with toys. The future is a part of design but is also another thing to be used in the short-term. Humanity has exhausted its resources without considering the future and now the future itself has become a source to consume. Let's get rid of everything and forget what we did; however, is it possible to fix the world with or without design?This is the time to mention an ongoing project. It seems like a light, small-scale "do it yourself" activity, but it inspired me more than anything. It is called moss graffiti. Briefly, it is a method using a mixture of moss, a cup of buttermilk, sugar and water to paint the walls. After a while, you can see the organic paintings growing and flourishing.I want to share the first paragraph of a Google search result of the query "how to make moss graffiti:" "As people become more eco-friendly and environmentally aware, the idea of making living, breathing graffiti has become an exciting outlet for graffiti artists. Also called eco-graffiti or green graffiti, moss graffiti replaces spray paint, paint-markers or other such toxic chemicals and paints with a paintbrush and a moss "paint" that can grow on its own. It can also be considered another form of guerrilla gardening."What a nice description. Now, I am the child who built Lego pieces in an unconventional way. Obviously this crafty, unproven and messy method is not going to save the world or the future, but it offers hope and a very strong answer for humanity, even if perhaps in an aggressive yet constructive way. Moss graffiti is painting the walls with nature, walls we built to separate, construct and prefer over nature. This is tinged with irony, as nature grows on walls like a water ripple competing for space; once the walls are covered with it, it is now nature's turn.We forget the taste of a cherry from the tree. We don't see the stars in the sky anymore because the citiestarget="_blank"'>
Last Update: January 09, 2015 17:09