Garden of MachinesGarden of Machines

Garden of Machines shows a world that is actually already (almost) reality. Animals 'talk' to each other through films and travel all over the world on a container ship. A fridge runs the household: it makes sure that fresh vegetables from the city allotment are grown and harvested and make their way to the apartment, that the vegetables are eaten in time and that the grasshoppers grow in their greenhouses.

These days cars can ride themselves so what does the driver do? You check out the area you're travelling through on social media. What kind of animals live here? Where can I see the first deer? What about wolves in this neck of the woods? You have plenty of time to look around you because the car does all the work.

The whole exhibition gives you food for thought, but above all it's a place to be active. What can you think up in a world where machines can talk to animals or can work for animals? What would life be like if we stop seeing machines as extensions of ourselves but as beings that can act entirely on their own? What would a world look like in which machines, animals, plants and people work together?

In the education zone you can get to work yourself. Build an environment that you think might be possible in the near future: a fox armed against the enemy, a telephone that can move of its own accord, a container ship a forest can grow on so that it's completely self-sufficient and never has to stop off.

Build your new machine or installation using the objects available, and even the stuffed animals. In the education space anything is possible.

Below a selection of photos taken by children of the machines they built during Tuin van de Machines