A Virtual Geoff Lawton Urges You to Cross the Line
Developments, News, Society — by Craig Mackintosh October 15, 2009
We’ve just happened upon a rather unusual way of sharing the Permaculture ‘get out there and do it’ message. Someone has taken an interview Geoff did in California last year, and turned it into a rather impressive animation. Although it was a bit strange for Geoff to see himself portrayed in such a way, if it helps get the message across, then we figure so be it.
The end of the clip even appears to have cameo appearances from Bill Mollison and David Holmgren:
Or, put another way, courtesy of the 1970s UK sitcom favourites Tom and Barbara Good in ‘The Good Life’:
Comments (7)
It would be great if someone made a videogame about permaculture, i imagine as a simulation game like Simcity, where you could sart up with cetain topography and climate having a wide pallete of species to combine and so on…
Comment by Pedro Rodriguez — October 16, 2009 @ 8:16 am
I’m speechless. But I’m going to share this little video with everyone. Thank you.
Comment by Alexandra Rodriguez — October 16, 2009 @ 12:46 pm
love that virtual world avatar of you Geoff – might need a bit of work on the mannerisms and form in the rendering but all-in-all imho i think its very effective, especially the use of virtual scenarios to communicate perspective in amongst the interview dialogue – i have to agree with Pedro Rodriguez above too – way cool
Comment by trevor bamford — October 17, 2009 @ 8:59 pm
Pedro – I work in video games, and I’ve had similar thoughts. It could be a worthwhile project. I’m in the process of designing a permaculture board game, useful for high school and permaculture classes as an educational tool. It can be played cooperatively on one board (everyone discusses how resources should be used), and competitively between multiple boards (the team with the most resources at the end wins).
Comment by Tim Auld — October 18, 2009 @ 2:46 pm
but the good life was designed to stop people breaking away from the system. It ridicules us and talks about self sufficiency. That word designed to keep people in the system.
Comment by john — October 23, 2009 @ 2:41 am
Pedro, I couldn’t agree more. I’d love to see a sandbox-style simulation of a small piece of land, where you can choose what to plant when and where, how to harvest etc, all modeled on real processes. So it is simulating permaculture principles, and to play it the best you have to learn how everything interacts. It would not only be a fun game, but a wonderful teaching and design tool for thinking about how to approach your own piece of land.
There is potential here for a really great video game. I just have no idea how to make it.
SimFarm remake anyone? only instead of tractors and cornfields, small plots and food forests.
It would be complex, perhaps having climate, water, plant and soil modeling, and the interactions and exchanges between different plants, but it’s not an impossible thing.
You have a sim-family, the goal is to turn a piece of land, either based on a real place via topographic information, or a randomly generated set of criteria, into a productive piece of land to give your sim-family food as well as profit.
The fun would come with being open ended, you can do what you like, but the challenge would be doing that in a way that actually works with the system in play to produce a desirable result.
Please, someone make this.
Comment by Fredd — October 28, 2009 @ 11:00 am
Some other comments on this video from the PermaScience Channel;
osdias (19 hours ago)
I’ve wanted to leave my desk job for a permaculture course… this might have just tipped me to cross the line
AranyaGardens (1 week ago)
Well done! This is fab a really motivating piece, very nicely done. Look out World, here comes PERMACULTURE!
thesimulacre (1 week ago)
At first I thought: “talking about permaculture in a human-created virtual environment is nonsensical!” But then I listened. Now it appears to be a great choice for the words… a GREAT choice.
And thank you, Geoff. You are right on (at least I presume so by my calculations made from the safety of my [still] suburban surroundings).
The voices always grow louder as you approach a crossroads.
Comment by Permaculture Activist — October 28, 2009 @ 6:08 pm
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