In collaboration with Heather Brand.
byronrich.com/G-A-R-R-y-Work-in-Progress-2015
G.A.R.R.y is an impractical solution to the growing problem of invasive species. The system integrates Plantae with a robotic system designed to find its original “place” in the biosphere. The project exists as a reaction to the largely unsuccessful efforts to eradicate Ambrosia psilostachya, commonly called Ragweed, from the European continent. G.A.R.R.y offers a purposefully absurdist alternative to common eradication efforts highlighting the hypocrisy inherent to the European response to invasive species.
G.A.R.R.y explores the environmental ramifications of globalization, specifically the impact of non-endemic species on localized ecosystems, and the social, political, environmental, economic repercussions of non-native species on the notion of “place”.
G.A.R.R.y consists of a GPS guided robotic system that is integrated with invasive flora ,in this case ragweed, to physically transport the living being back to its ancestral land.
The work problematizes what it means to re-locate an entity back to its home, for on the journey it interacts with local ecosystems that may or may not be already affected by its presence. The system cannot help but interact with the environments it is being transported through, thereby influencing, to however marginal a degree, the places it briefly inhabits.
The ethics of simply killing off a non-endemic organism, rather than re-locating it have obvious parallels to Colonization by human groups throughout history. In passing through non-native environments on the way back to ancestral lands, something of the organism is left behind, creating a residue of its passage, and, in however small a capacity, affecting the locale en route.
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