Output details

Ark Lab: The Noah Project -constructing soil

Ark Lab (ppt:2-8) was a residency and installation at The Collection, Lincoln January 2008 – April 2009, which centred on the construction of compost (ppt:5-8) from the texts produced through the public engagement the work involved (ppt:2-4), as well as a contemplative text centred on the cultivation of a lemon tree ‘The Lemon Tree and Me’ (ppt:9-13). Ark Lab includes the elements of performance, installation and direct engagement with people that are characteristic of Newling’s work (see output 2).

Newling’s concern to explore the relationship between human activity, knowledge and technology and ideas of nature has manifested in a varied body of work since 2008 that has clear antecedents in his previous activity. Ark Lab takes it in new directions that explore recent scientific research including the decoding of DNA in terms of Heidegger’s concept of ‘lichtung’. In the broader body of work, lichtung is adopted both as a metaphor in relation to scientific understanding and literally in the arrangement of a group of hydroponically grown beech trees in the Clearing, part of the ACE funded ‘Hinterland’, 2009, finally installed in 2010. (ppt:12-16). This theme can be followed into Peterborough Soil, 2010 (ppt:17-21), which again involved the public in a work that transformed text into soil and Synthia II – code/ soil/ life (ppt:22-25) a permanent work commissioned by Lancaster University’s ESRC Centre for the Economic and Social Aspects of Genomics in 2010.

Newling’s concerns for the manipulation of matter that nourishes growth featured in Chatham Vines (2004), a project which continued to 2008 with an ACE funded feasibility study for a mobile hydroponic vineyard (ppt:26-27).