AGF found this nice dress in a shopping window in Tokyo. Thanks for the image!

Kyoto, October 15, 2005

Kyoto, October 15, 2005

Kyoto, October 15, 2005

Ogaki, October 18, 2005

Tokyo, October 21, 2005; bought by Seiko Mikami

Kamasaki, October 25, 2005

Sendai, October 27, 2005

Osaka, November 4, 2005

Yamaguchi, November 5, 2005

Guenter Nitschke and Kenninji Temple Moss

This talk was important to shape my whole project concerning Contemporary Moss. Our conversation opened a lot of interesting questions which had great influence on my further thinking. The following short text might give you an impression of this development.






Guenter Nitschke:
To me it seemed quite sensitive to choose something like moss for your project. However, how you´re going to implement this idea now is another story. You mentioned that the softness and the territorial character - that there might...
Well, of course, a space defined by steel barbs like, let´s say, in Star Wars drives you nervous. That´s a tremendously aggressive energy you don´t want to have. In fact the moss is precisely opposite to that.

Stefan Riekeles:
That´s exactly what this project is about. About the confrontation with the barbed wires and concrete blocks of our citys. I would like to make use of moss as an object for contemplation and reflection of the increasingly fragmented world in which we live.

GN:
Well, moss is not in the focus of our world anymore. Apart from Japan nobody is interested in it anymore. There is a moss temple here, called Saihoji. Because it is a zen temple one associates notions of meditation with it. Not with slowness, that´s a different thing, but with meditation actually. Meaning that you´re getting to a point where you´re literally transcending your normal perception. In other words: where you´re experiencing all the interfering transmitters in your brain switched off, even for just some seconds.

However, this thing about meditation seems to lack all support, may it come from historical documents or facts. Historical documents don´t even exist about that. We know that Saihoji didn´t have any moss originally. Plains of sand have been layed out there upon which the moss spread out. The priests simply accepted that. Suddenly everything was overgrown after several hundrets of years.
We know some scripts of the founding priest and the only overtone concerning a link between garden and meditation he is bearing witness to, is not on gazing at the garden. It´s not that you´re visiting Ryoanji, the rockgarden, thinking that the empty white plain is associated to Buddhistic philosophy of emptiness, that the garden might actually be a product of philosophy or a medium, a technique to bring enlightenment to anybody. That´s all bosh.
There is not one sole voice throughout history within Japanese Zen priests saying that such temples had actually been used for meditation or had been regarded to be a product of meditation. Such has all been written in the fifties by western Zen writers, but not Zen masters, on Zen in Japanese culture. That´s all fictitious.
Back to moss now. On this note the designer of Saihoji said that the actual work in the garden, the design and also the process of maintaining it, but maintaining it in full awareness of the process, should be the purpose of such a garden. But never contemplation of the final result. This is basically the same like a tea ceremonie.

SR:
So it is all about practical experience?

GN:
In Zen the world can only be understood by practical experience, not through philosophy. This misunderstanding has to become clear to you. Reading a book on meditation is completely different from doing it in order to experience something totally unique.
From this point of view it will be a very difficult argument to combine the softness, or let´s say cushy green, coherently with meditation. Meditation is more likely to emerge if you´re surrounded by a crowd of rebels in Iraq and you start to scream two seconds before death. Then there is something happening. But if you sit on a nice green bed there will not happen anything. Unless you have a master manipulating you.

Furthermore your project seems to be very solitary. In Japan anything that matters is build, enjoyed and judged on the basis of a group of people. Everything is from the group, for the group, in the group or with the group. Communication is very important. However, the moss does not reply to you.

I found that the energy of this city is somewhat different from the others I´ve expierenced so far. This impression may partially derive from the location we were based at. The IMI school is located in the former headquartes building of the Osaka '70 International Exposition. After strolling around the former Expo area, visiting the Japanese Garden and a little bit of research in the school´s library I could still sense the utopian and futuristic ideas which were once represented in the Expo Pavillions 35 years ago. Although none of these buildings exists today, I thought that the Expo `70 might have been one of the birthplaces of contemporary Japanese culture. Some of the few things remaining is the vast transportational infrastructure. Although it is quite similar to every highway-metro-train-skywalk agglomeration this specific structure seemed to be something like an archetype of modern Japanese urban scenery to me. It´s same same - but a little different.

In the evening I met Kenji Yanobe, a well-known contemporary artist. He told me about his Tower of Life. A sculpture made out of the remains of the old Expo tower. Just before the tower was rebuilt he climbed to the top where he was quite surprised to find a large expanse of moss. He decided to use the moss as a metaphor for Life in his installation.
Although his sculpture is much more elaborate than my clumsy moss boxes both show a common point: moss is able to carry a strong utopian potential.

OSAKA POWER joined the POWER OF MOSS!

Once again a big Thank You especially to Masako Miyauchi and Tomomi Tada for this wonderful night near the Tower of Sun. It still gives me the heebie-jeebies.

The Tower of Sun, the landmark of the Osaka '70 International Exposition.
Thanks to Ayuko Nozoe for this nice picture.

The scenery next to the IMI. Vast infrastructure for transportation and amusement.

Music and moss.

Sven took this picture while I was picking up some moss in front of the hotel.

Thanks to AGF for this shot.

Please notice the smile on the right handside. Extraordinary.

Yukiko

Kento

Daisuke

Sven

Daisuke and Kim (from left to right) are apparently quite impressed.

Dr Martin Nebel

[Martin Nebel is browsing a book on Japanese zen gardens]
Martin Nebel:
... look at this, that´s magnificent, isn´t it. These effects in colour are completely different compared to those of a lawn. I think the green colour of a lawn is irritating. There´s nothing calm in it but something aggressive. However, I found it difficult to convince German gardeners that moss is superior to purposefully grown begonia.
Additionally cultivating moos is a rather costly task, also mentally.
Let me tell you a short story. One of my colleagues here is working with woodlouses. During a chat over coffee we came onto the question of how woodlouses curl themselves up. He suddenly laid onto the table and curled up like a woodlouse. He observed them precisely. It looked funny. However, what I learned from that anecdote is that if you really want to understand an organism you have to put yourself into the organism´s position, you have to search for the soul of this organism. If you can´t do this you will always remain on the outside, you will never disclose the essence of its being. Well, it´s already quite a long way to the woodlouses, however it is not as far as to moss. But I am getting closer and closer to it. And I think it returns something. It is something beyond rationality. If you´re constantly dealing with an organism it has a forming influence on yourself. Just like Lorenz became a goose in the end I am slowly becoming moss.

Stefan Riekeles:
One of my most urging questions is concerning the apparent stillness of moss.
From my perspective moss is giving off some kind of slowness. I took a piece of moss from the street and transplanted it into a squared box at my home. It is now growing for three weeks there and has adopted the squared shape perfectly. Therefore it can´t be that slow.

MN:
OK, but if you compare it to a higher plant it is growing really slowly. And it will never exceed a certain height. But it is correct that certain pioneering mosses are able to populate a certain expanse rapidly. Examinations on the basis of peat analysis are verifying that moss of the same variety has grown at the same spot for a period of two thousand years. Probably one individual sits there for two thousand years now. Mosses are growing endlessly. They don´t have real roots. Which means that they can die at the bottom and grow at the top. That´s the secret. The dying part is then slowly turning into humus. That way they are sitting upon their self-made layer of humus.

SR:
Moss is growing endlessly?

MN:
Yes. At the bottom it is just dying and at the top it keeps on growing. This means that a great number of moss plants which seem to be separate can emerge from a single moss plant over time. But actually it is a clone, an identical moss if you like.

SR:
That means that such a cushion actually is one single plant?
I´m interested in the idea that moss is always defining a territory. A tree for instance ist always defining a spot. Such a tree is growing exactly here. But with moss it is difficult to say where it is growing in terms of a definite spot.

MN:
The plant is growing and splitting further to the top and so on. Basically all plants are therefore connected on a deeper level. This way it is getting more and more dense at the top, one plant next to another. From the bottom the whole thing is dieing slowly. You end up with single plants growing very close to each other, just as a lawn of moss.
There is a point to this. First of all mosses don´t have a supporting tissue, which means that they mutually support each other this way. Secondly, mosses don´t have a possibility for water transport in their stalk. This means they need to be close to another in order to obtain the effect of a sponge.

SR:
The capillary effect emerges in between the plants.

MN:
Precisely. And there is another clue to it. As the humidity inside a moss cushion is much higher than in its surrounding a lot of animals, fungus and algae move in. In return they all make sure that the nutriment supply is established. Inside the moss cushion they are also protected much better from predators than outside. Well, it is a peculiar world such a moss cushion. If you open it and observe it with a microscope you will realise immediately: Ah, that´s a magnificent world here!

SR:
You´re collaborating with sociologists and economists to exchange your results. Where do you find your relations within these disciplines?

MN:
My greatest interest lies in the complexity of ecosystems. The hypothesis we are currently working on claims that selection mechanisms play a less important role the higher the complexity of an ecosystems gets. Complexity doesn´t care for hierarchies. It is networking that counts here, exchange has to be established, one has to trust another and so on. People who are in competition don´t trust each other. And that is the most important point. To overcome this principle and to adjust to another system. I think that moss could help us a lot with this.
Mosses took part in the whole process of evolution. In the beginning they have been the only ones. For a period of fifty or a hundred million years they have been alone in the world. Then they were driven out by fern and flowering plants to spots where they can still survive today. They managed to adjust to this system and to somehow find their way through.
I would say, the essence of moss is not pushiness but a calm and slow way. They are deliberately following their path. There are some varieties who are able to grow rapidly and are adjusted to a larger extend but essentially time is not very important here. I think in this regard we can learn a lot from moss.

Contemporary Moss at Yokohama harbour area.

Watch the gardener at work by downloading this video file [Quicktime, MPEG4, 33MB].
Thanks to Yoshiyuki Sakuragi who does a great job here as cameraman for the project and also shot this scene.

BACKGROUND
„The moss plant earns our respect, even our sense of awe, as one of the worlds lengthier successes in the business of living“ (George Schenk: „Moss Gardening“, Timberpress 1997). Moss is a very old plant and in turn old things are said to be moss-covered. We have a saying that as time goes by moss and grass will grow
and cover what should not be visible anymore. Due to its very slow growth it is a strong metaphor for the passing of time. I also found moss to be very important for some parts of Japanese garden culture and I think that it is because of its metaphorical incorporation of time. However what I find especially intriguing about moss in the context of MobLab is that it also has a very interesting spatial quality. Most of the time it is perceived as clusters, cushions or layers. It almost never comes as a single plant. Where it is growing it is therefore defining an area or a territory more than a single point.

PROPOSAL
In my project I would like to make use of these tempo-spatial qualities of moss in a „mossgarden“ to connect and reflect the different issues the MobLab project is working on. As I see them these issues are: the local hosting institutions, the virtual netspace and the moving bus.

Along the journey of the MobLab I will collect small sample pieces of moss from different locations. The moss will be put into small boxes with an approximate size of 12x12cm and 5cm height. The boxes will be labeled to indicate the location the moss was collected from. Throughout the trip the collection will constantly grow and form an archive of a variety of moss.

During travel time the boxes will be set up in the backside of the bus. Together with the tatami mats the moss will form a small lounge. This is the place to relax for us Mobnauts. The moss will function here just like any ordinary house plant only being a "bus plant".

At the hosting institutions I will take the boxes outside of the bus and build a small installation. The idea is to have the boxes constructed in such a way that makes it easy for me to take them. It should be a portable collection of moss or a mobile garden. The location where to build the installation depends on the spaces available at the hosts. The installation can be outside of the building where it will form a small garden. The moss can also be installed inhouse where it will be a real house plant.
In both cases I will take closeup photographs of the moss in its temporary new surrounding. The location specific images will be instantly made available for download to mobile phones to be used as wallpaper or screensaver. Have a look at a sample image here: http://www.transmediale.de/sr/projects/moblab/IMG_0586_176x220.jpg

On my blog I will document my experiences in collecting the moss using text and images. I will also publish interviews there which I am conducting for the preparation of the project and along the journey. I will conduct the first interviews in Germany. I think this is also important to make clear that I am not working on the stereotype of the "moss loving Japanese". I am inspired by the rich Japanese garden culture but the focus is on my (romantic) view on nature which is clearly based on an occidental foundation.

PRODUCTION
I have done testing with some moss in my room. It grows very well for two weeks time now. There is no indication of disease or decay at all. Next week I will meet a moss expert in Stuttgart. He has curated a botanical exhibition on moss last year. He will be able to give me more hints on collecting moss and on the requirements to grow it indoor. I will also make an interview with him which will be published on the blog.

I am currently developing prototypes of boxes that can be easily constructed during the trip or shortly beforehand. They have to be light and should have an appropriate shape to stack them. My goal is to have a stack of moss which I can take with me to different places and build small garden installations on the fly.

REQUIREMENTS
As for Sven a bicycle would be also very handy for me to find mossy spots in the surrounding of the bus.