Growing population numbers, exhaustion of appropriate farming areas and consequently an increasingly higher price of quality foods in a time when the buying power of people has reached one of the lowest points in recent history, inevitably lead to a need for research and implementation of alternative ways of food supply. With Open Code: Oasis the young author explores a DIY principles of food production inside the urban home environment. She is going to transform a household aquarium into an aquaponics food production system – a symbiotic combination of hydroponics and aquaculture, which uses a minimal input of energy to produce a relatively sizeable crop. Aquaponic food production forms a closed circular system, into which only food needs to be added – the fish eat the food and excrete ammonia, which is then processed by the bacteria into nitrates; the nitrates feed the plants, and the plants in turn clean the water inside the tank. The project is conceived in an utmost openly manner – public will be able to participate in the project during all of its stages. This is indeed the core of the open source principle, which is the author’s modus operandi – the technology and ideas for an improved way of living must be available to everyone, and so must the knowledge required for the implementation of these technologies. The Open Code: Oasis is, regardless of the implicit criticism of auto-destructive modern farming production methods, devised mostly as an interactive intervention, intended to raise the awareness about new and environment-friendly options of individual self-supply.
With: Valentina Škofic, Lori Hiti, Betina Bordo
Bio
Monika Pocrnjić (1987) is a student of visual art education in Maribor. She is researching the areas of special pedagogy and fine arts therapy. Currently she is developing the PostArtLab within GT22 (open art space and transnational guerilla art school). She collaborates with Multimedia center KIBLA in Maribor, the Biomodd team and the SGMK (Schweizeriche Gesellshaft Fur Mechatronische Kunst) in Switzerland. She also works on activist projects concerning new technologies, mostly biology, and art, and tries to enrich them by using her skills as an educator. With her projects, she uses and develops transdisciplinary approaches and introduces them to contemporary artistic practices. As an artist she also creates “scenarios” inside the active social sphere.
