Earth Waves
Another quick diary of these days in the wonderland of Datscha Radio preparations. You’ll find an introduction of the (steadily growing) team here.
12. March
9:00 Coffee & mails. Agreement to meet Señora Bellet of the Botanic Garden to talk about its history and activities.
10:45 Printing out flyers and posters for the „Adopta-una-Planta“ event.
Flyer für diesen Samstag, 17. März
12:45 Leaving the building I run into kta and Joaquien who are on their way to one of the labs to set up a plant&soil sensory system.
13:00 A cat guards the security entrance of the garden. I gain admittance… a consistent minor problem: The guard needs my social security number to fill in the admittance form. The usual solution: present my visa card. By now the guards know me quite well, while the sequence of my multiple visits and mailings has made me think of the Botanic Garden offices as a kafkaesque „castle“.
On entering the offices i notice that the amanita has changed place.
Señora Maria Pellet receives me in her office. She’s very friendly and even speaks German. But we agree to do the interview in English. Afterward we go to the Bonsai section and take a pic.
13:15 Catching up with kta and Joaquim. A soft frequency hum permeates the air, there are plants, an arduino, micro sensors measuring the moisture in the pots, a dead deco cabbage plant, a very healthy looking aloe and a pot of the „bad mother plant“. We agree that „Grünlilie“ (German common name) is a nice word for it. Interview.
16:30 Editing the interview (too big to upload here, you’ll find it soon in the archive)
17:30 Meeting Jesús in the offices to discuss how to program an info video onto the wall of the Medialab. He’s just taking his exams… parallel to all the work with Medialab and Datscha Radio!
18:00 Datscha Radio artist’s meeting at the cantina. Romi Casile has finally arrived from Argentina. Although she has to leave already on the 16th, she likes to participate. Apart from working with sound objects, her grandmother knows how to sing songs about flowers and gardens. This is interesting!
18:45 The beer is a bit too expensive for a longer stay so we move upstairs to my „living room“. Maite, coordinator of IN-SONORA comes. Alberto and kta work on the translation of the jingle text into Spanish while I do a quick talk with Romi in my room.
19:15 We have a lot of fun speaking the jingle text. The artists and Maite talk me into recording it in Spanish. They say it sounds charming (but maybe it is just funny?)
We have an exchange about listening practices, art and society, the role of artists, money issues in artist lives and again about the importance of listening.
The most inspiring evening closes with a sip of duty free whiskey.
21:15
Rough editing of the recordings. Playing with some acoustic sketches :)
23:30 Relaxing with another rose plant website…
13. March
10:00 (!) Meeting up with Alberto as a translator to visit the „House of Honey“ in the Atocha street. Interview. Pedro warms up to our questions and in the end we get shown even the store rooms, the honey „mixing machine“ (of course it is not mixed but pure), and finally, as the talk turns to plants, the flowers and trees, Pedro himself rescues from offshoots or leaves falling „from the sky“ —
More of this in the next blog entry…
This post is also available in: German