Fallen Fruit

LA public art project, Fallen Fruit, started by mapping public fruit--fruit trees growing in or over public property. Since then, the interests of this Meshy project "have expanded from mapping public fruit to include Public Fruit Jams in which we invite the citizens to bring homegrown or public fruit and join in communal jam-making; Nocturnal Fruit Forages, nighttime neighborhood fruit tours; Community Fruit Tree Plantings on the margins of private property and in community gardens; Public Fruit Park proposals in Hollywood, Los Feliz and downtown LA; and Neighborhood Infusions, taking the fruit found on one street and infusing it in alcohol to capture the spirit of the place."

• [Pete]

  I saw a talk by artist Heath Bunting, who was doing this same project about two years ago. Heath was, previously, one of the original web-artists, and the fruitfall project was something he was doing while he was out on bail for terrorism charges after creating a set of fast-growing seeds to jam genetically modified crops.

  He’s got a section about it on his website: http://duo.irational.org/food_for_free/orchard_of_avon/

  While it’s true there are no new ideas, there are obviously a lot of people doing projects around this area.

  • [Anonymous]

    These guys have been working on this project at least since before 2004. (I went on a walk of theirs then) Just because its on boingboing today doesn’t mean its new. But your right, there are many people working with this subject matter or in this field. (which is a good thing)

• [MrPlow42]

  An ‘art’ project? Really? Gee, when I lived in So Cal and one of my friends who loved to cook found a new herb bush, fig tree or whatever, we called it ‘sharing’.

• [doingsitups]

  Even the name “Public Food Jam” sounds disgusting … eww … because where I’m from anything “public” — toilets, benches, seats, buses are all dirty and in some level of neglect.

• [Anonymous]

  check out City Fruit’s fruit tree map in Seattle. It’s built on Google Maps so it’s interactive–anyone can add a tree and it’s updated in real time. Seattlites have mapped over 808 fruit trees.

  http://city-fruit.appspot.com/display

• [Donald Petersen]

  Nocturnal Fruit Forages, nighttime neighborhood fruit tours

  What an odd way to arouse the ire of the Neighborhood Watch.

• [redesigned]

  yum…sign me up!

• [Anonymous]

  ew, no bits for me plz

• [Anonymous]

  I think they could use my mom for a bit of help on that jam…

• [Rayonic]

  Why are those labels so wet? And are those green stems I see in there? I’m all for homemade stuff, but this food might be a little too “indie” for me.

• [Beryllium]

  This kinda makes me want to vomit.

• [BigBang]

  Some German guys started something similar, but with a slightly different approach: They built a community based on a Google Map with public trees, bushes, etc. for everyone to update: http://www.mundraub.org

• [Anonymous]

  The more “Indy” the better for me…