Join us at 2pm SLT (Tuesday 2nd June) on Designing Worlds, when we are visiting a rather different environment as we explore Better World Island. Curated by Riversong Garden, this island is home to a group of nonprofits who have created a number of stunning – and very different – exhibitions, designed to raise awareness of a variety of issues – and suggest actions that you can take if you want to become involved.
We’re going to be looking at two very different exhibitions – Camp Darfur and The Center for Water Studies.
Camp Darfur is an interactive awareness and education exhibit, created by Jamie Neutra, Zeke Poutine, In Kenzo, Sue Stonebender, and Riversong Garden, and designed to draw attention to the ongoing genocide in Darfur, Sudan, and to give individuals the opportunity to discover their own power to make a difference.
The exhibit explains that the genocide in Darfur has taken the lives of an estimated 400,000 people, and more than 2.5 million are displaced and in grave danger of more violence and starvation. As you move through the exhibition, there’s an opportunity to discover more information, through text, images and video, giving the effect of moving through a burning village. It’s extraordinarily powerful – one of those things that needs to be experienced to be understood, and the horror that is Darfur to be grasped.
The second area that we visit is the Center for Water Studies. This is a beautiful area that offers a multi-media experience. At any one time, there are at least six different water microhabitat builds at the centre (which is a lot squeezed in to a very small area). The builds at the water centre have plants and animals that could live together in real life, but which may not necessarily do so. The idea is to simulate natural environments, and also the way that species migration has happened in real life – which might sometimes have been because the plant or animal was carried by a migratory human. The areas include a wam water ocean, with coral reefs and fish that like warm water, a mangrove swamp, a north temperate zone beach and a temperate rainforest, for temperate rainforests are areas that are really under studied.
The Center for Water Studies encourages people make use of this Second Life resource. They hold events here where we present on various important environmental issues and then have discussions. There are also notecards about the environment in most habitat areas, as well as a fascinating interactive exhibition on the discussion platform, stationed in the air above the centre.
Join us at 2pm SLT (Tuesday 2nd June) as we talk to Riversong Garden and Delia Lake as we explore these fascinating exhibitions.
And you can join our viewing party to watch the show at the Designing Worlds studios on Northpoint. As always, there’s two special gifts for everyone who comes to the studio, and an exhibition to see in our Hall outside. The show starts at 2pm SLT, but you should be in our Northpoint studios by 1.30pm to make sure of getting a seat.
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