“A lot of people want to go back to something,” [said Ruth Gates]. “They think, If we just stop doing things, maybe the reef will come back to what it was. [...] Our project is acknowledging that a future is coming where nature is no longer fully natural.” [...]
The power of selective breeding is all around us. Dogs, cats, cows, chickens, pigs [...] But the super-coral project pushes into new territory. Already there’s a term for this sort of effort: assisted evolution.
— the New Yorker
“'In the food supply, in our pets, you name it—everywhere you turn, selectively bred stuff appears,' Gates observed. 'For some reason, in the framework of conservation—or an ecosystem that would be preserved by conservation—it seems like a radical idea. But it’s not like we’ve invented something new. It’s hilarious, really, when you think about it.'”
As the world heats up, seas begin to rise, and farmland goes dry, our inherited ideas of "nature" are put under pressure. Here's some Archinect-exclusive features on unnatural nature and other aspects of life in the Anthropocene:
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