‚Time travel through the Renaissance‘ Josina von Mickwitz, 2017

Listen to the audio book part 6

Jaron’s Diary / Jaron’s Tagebuch

ILLUSTRATION & TEXT Leonie Voigt, ANIMATION & TEXT Joscha Brüning

What a day! My invention works! I am in the Pacific Ocean and closer than ever to my dream of ridding the ocean of rubbish.
For years I have been researching and experimenting to finally be able to leave my old life behind.
Today, for the first time, I have succeeded in operating a magnet that can distinguish between organic and inorganic matter, solely through the energy of my brain waves collected in a complex electrode system in the form of a helmet. The difficulties of recent years in supplying the magnet with the right voltage have now been overcome by drawing on the body’s own electrical voltage.

The magnet now attracts plastic, aluminium, sheet metal and whatever else we humans throw into the oceans! It was a moment of pure joy when the first plastic pieces shot through the waves like little schools of fish and attached themselves to my boat. It’s unbelievable, I want to hug the whole world; tell them that I saved them all.

My thoughts become blurred. It is becoming more and more difficult for me to formulate clear words. Thirty days have passed since my triumph. In the first few days, the magnet pulled vast amounts of rubbish and junk from the depths of the ocean, so that by now I am squatting on a small island of waste.
But something seems to be wrong. I don’t mean the magnet, it’s me who’s weak. Everything is like yesterday only worse. I can barely move my limbs in pain.
I wonder if the price of sacrificing myself to save everyone else isn’t too high. Besides, there’s not enough energy to bind everything. The force of attraction has already diminished so much that outer parts are being displaced by stronger waves again.
My dream is beginning to crumble! And that’s only because nobody cares about the problem except me. I am in danger of failing because of the ignorance of my fellow species.
They think they are intelligent, but no other living being is so busy destroying itself. Stupid people! Stupid ignorant animals!

Today I feel a flood of energy flowing through my weakened body. My mind is clear again and I have made a decision. I will no longer be the one who pays for all of them.
I will make them pay! People have to answer for their own mistakes. Whether voluntarily or not, they won’t have a choice. It is not me as an individual who will offer all the energy, they will!!! Only then will there be enough energy to bind all the rubbish from the oceans. That is how it will be! That is how it must be!

Today I stood on the shore and watched the ferry slowly approaching. The sound of laughing people, carefree and looking forward to a day of fun, echoed across the water. The colourful pennants on the boat fluttered in the wind and all I could think was how deceptive this idyll is. My island is like a spider’s web full of sticky droplets. Just come here, I whispered softly and waited impatiently for the boat to dock and the trap to snap shut.
My island, now overgrown with a fine layer of grass, has grown magnificently in these five years, thanks to the energy from the minds of these naive people. It is my masterpiece and is in a constant state of change. The theme park I have built here over the years attracts people like a pot of honey attracts flies. They come, enjoy themselves, fill their bellies and don’t even notice that every evening fewer people leave the island than have arrived in the morning.
I should be happy. My plan is working perfectly and the rubbish pollution in the sea has already decreased a lot. But some evenings, when the last visitors have left the island and the less fortunate have been „taken care of“, loneliness overcomes me. I look out to sea and think back to my old life and the doubts start to gnaw at me. Am I doing the right thing?

Yesterday I went on a dive to test my new submarine. It exceeded my wildest expectations. Now I can also inspect the iceberg I’ve recently started using as a home from below and find out about the state of the island underwater.
It was incredible! I glided silently through the deep clear water and marvelled at the scale of my scientific work. Over the past few years, the rubbish mountain has bored into the water like a huge pyramid. After the dive, I inspected the cart shops on land. It just occurred to me to do some lanes underwater as well. Yes, I really should do that. Then I could more easily uncouple the individual wagons and let them disappear unnoticed. With an underwater access I could bring the fresh people directly into the energy centre. This way, there would be less danger of someone discovering what I’m doing here.
Underwater, I encountered a few mantaras, which makes it all the more strange that there is not a single living creature on the island, not counting the humans. Is it because of the composition of the slimy earth that covers the entire island? I’ll have to investigate that further! In the meantime, I will continue to work on my machine animals. I have now found a way to exhume biomass from inorganic materials and bring it to life through clever constructions.

For all the years I have been working and living on the island, I have not been sick once. I can’t believe it, but today it has hit me.
I lie in bed with a high fever and stare at the ice sheet. What a wasted day! I couldn’t even open the theme park today, which means less energy for rubbish disposal. I don’t even like to imagine what will happen once I’m gone and the whole island dissolves again.
Everything would have been for nothing. Piece by piece, the tediously gathered rubbish would come off again and return to the ocean. That would be a catastrophy! I can’t let that happen!
I will have to look for a successor. My legacy must not just sink into the depths of the ocean! But people are so ignorant and self-absorbed. Once they reach adulthood, they are difficult to mould and teach. I need an unprejudiced child’s soul that I can educate according to my values!

Even for my mind it is difficult to comprehend what has happened today. If I were not a rational head, I would almost think that fate had brought us together. But I have no use for such superstitions. I don’t know which name to give her yet. Sarah, perhaps? Or Odette!
I will teach her. Teach her everything I know and in due time I will lead her into the depths of the island and show her the energy centre. Then she will understand that people have to be punished for a good cause. Now she is still too young to understand things.
I was about to close the park when I spotted her in a snack bar down by the pier. I heard the soft crying of a child and found her in a rush basket among cocktail sausages and mustard pickles. They had just been left behind! Lucky for me. People are so cruel!

Now I know; I will call her Camilla!

Time Swirl

3D ARTIST Jan Schneider & 3D MODELING Felicitas Müller


Past

Jaron‘s converter, which Camilla took the precaution of putting in her pocket before the big journey, is actually a time machine. If you master the right combination of the four elements fire, water, earth and air, whose symbols are engraved on the converter, you can also determine the exact year and the place of arrival. Without input, you travel wildly through time. With the help of energy, no matter where it comes from, the converter can be activated. As an emergency stop, there is the little flute, which stops time with the appropriate tones and brings you back to the time and place you were thinking of. However, the inventor was not Jaron, but his mother Leonora. It is unclear when she invented the time machine, but Jaron found a text about it in her notes:

view 360 degree 3D video

Diary Leonore: Iunius, 1502

Eureka! After months of trying, I managed to travel to Leonardo today. The time machine finally worked properly again. Nevertheless, Leonardo was supposed to help me make it more reliable. But he didn‘t really listen to me. First I almost ran into his current model, from whom I was able to hide in time, and then Leonardo just wanted to talk about this „plastic“ that I brought him from the other time. He is fascinated by the material and can‘t believe that in the future it will be used for everything as a matter of course. He thinks it‘s a seductive material and he doesn‘t believe that humanity will use it wisely. What costs almost nothing, man wastes until it eventually takes its revenge. I will check this out on my next trip to the future.

view 360 degree 3D video

The movie "FISH IN GLASS ARMOUR" belongs to this part of the Story:

„But a blink of an eye and 100 years later, two people are fighting over a fish in a painted still life that they don‘t even notice the three time walkers. Why are they talking about machines, Camilla wonders, but again the room has changed.“


Present time

On the island Oppfinnelses Øy

Jaron finally manages to pull a small flute out of his pocket and blows into it. Whoosh! Camilla, Mantu and Jaron are at the Oppfinnelses Øy pier. It is the day Jaron disappeared. In an hour the park will open and Jaron will leave by boat for the Mermaid Tower. Mantu shows them in the water that there are still fish. But there is also plastic. It is clear to all that they cannot continue as before. They close the park for the day and run to the iceberg to work together in the workshop to build an invention that is better than Maestro‘s vision.

DO YOU HAVE AN IDEA HOW TO MAKE IT BETTER?
BECOME PART OF THIS STORY. BECOME PART OF HISTORY!


Future

Method: Art For Futures Lab

ArtForFutures-Lab

Make Nature Great

In the „Art For Future“ lab at the Ars Electronica Festival 2020, we developed a co-creative concept art. The work is entitled: „Make Nature Great Again“. Here we see a currently still young environmental activist as a matured personality in the year 2050. A techno-shamanic method of communicating with animals was found. The politician with a shaman‘s qualification in the middle of the picture is an advocate for animals and integrates their interests into world political decisions. She is able to translate the view of non-human animals for the human species.

see more results and future visions

CAMILLA PLASTIC OCEAN PLAN

Von der Dystopie zur Utopie

Foyerausstellung & VeranstaltungsreiheFilmmuseum Potsdam, 1.7.2022 - 16.4.2023Eröffnung am 30. Juni 2022 ab 14 Uhr

Programm

Kann man mit den Mitteln der Kunst Lust und Mut machen für Veränderungen, die zu einer nachhaltigeren Lebensweise beitragen? Dieser Frage widmet sich die Foyerausstellung, die am 30. Juni 2022 im Filmmuseum Potsdam eröffnet wird. In verschiedenen Kunstformen werden dort Arbeiten vorgestellt, die sich mit Visionen einer lebenswerteren Zukunft auseinandersetzen. Dazu gehören beeindruckende Bildwelten aus dem Projekt „Camilla Plastic Ocean Plan“, in der die Thematik der Verschmutzung der Weltmeere durch Plastikmüll dystopisch adressiert wird als auch utopische Zukunftsentwürfe für lebenswertere Stadtvisionen aus dem Art For Futures Lab.

Die Ausstellung ist ebenso wie die Vernissage für alle interessierten Bürger*innen frei im Filmmuseum zugänglich. Vor der Ausstellungseröffnung findet ab 14 Uhr auf dem Vorplatz des Filmmuseums das Kinderfest „Kids For Futures Potsdam“ statt, das Kindern einen spielerischen und fantasievollen Einstieg in Fragestellungen einer nachhaltigen Lebensweise ermöglichen soll.

Art For Futures Potsdam, Maria Jende 2022