FIELD TEST: Explore the exhibition at Science Gallery Dublin

Why an exhibition about farming? Our ability to produce food and products for a growing population on a finite amount of land with limited resources is unquestionably one of the great challenges we face. It may not be foremost in our minds when we shop, but the decisions that we make as consumers can be critical influencers in the way these challenges play out.

Our future may very well be high-tech, slick and highly designed, but it will also be grown, not built. The next fifty years will radically reinvent what, where and how we grow the crops and raise animals that keep us alive, fed and warm. Farms —not mines or oil wells — will form the foundation of our sustainable civilisation, even if those farms look unusual or unfamiliar.

If anything, this exhibition raises more questions than it does answers. Will we make hay while the sun shines, or when the sensors say? Will visionaries and dreamers reinvent farms as on-demand food forests, skyscrapers, or even theme parks? What crops should we be cultivating now for a very different future: bacon-flavoured seaweed, heirloom potatoes, or fly meat steaks? FIELD TEST will bring you into dialogue with a range of artworks, products, farm hacks, robotics and microfarms that are real field tests: experiments at the boundaries of art, design, science and farming.