Week 4: Lauren & Ken

Lauren

Ken and I have been exploring several concepts that we find interesting and discussing how we can put them into some form of ecological art (art that solves ecological problems, and we want it to also provide ecological data!).  

One idea that I’m really jazzed about is thinking about how to create prairie restorations in a way that has artistic concept behind it.  When restoration ecologists typically seed a prairie, they first choose a seed mix that is native, and often that is heavily weighted towards forbs (think: wildflowers, anything that is not a grass) because grasses can dominate in restored prairies.  Then, these seeds are scattered as homogeneously as possible throughout the sites.  Here is a picture of one of our Iowa State undergraduate English students helping us seed the prairie in the typical way.

However Ken and I discussed for a long time, what if you could plant a prairie in a way that changed through time (within a year and across years).  We both agree it would be really neat to design a prairie restoration with an artistic concept in mind, but then see how the prairie “picture” evolved through time.  There could be really straightforward data to collect, including does this artistic prairie function in the same way as a typical prairie – for example, does it have the same soil qualities, or does it support the same communities of insects and pollinators?  We could also ask really interesting social science questions as well, about how well do local citizens connect with the prairie, and concepts related to native landscapes and conservation, and does that change depending on if the prairie has an artistic edge to it or not.

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What the artistic concept could be, we have not yet decided.  We are currently thinking about a bunch of really neat themes.  One for instance, is stochasticity, or the balance between randomness and knowingness.  I love the idea of random, and thinking about the different kinds of random (yes, there are different kinds of random…  and random things can be autocorrelated in different colors - which have different sounds!)

Another concept we talked about was erosion.  So Ken likes the idea a lot, and mentioned that if you take a picture of something, then save it as a .jpeg (I think this is the file format…), take a picture of it, then save it as a .jpeg over and over – eventually your image will erode completely to be a gray blur.  This is super interesting to me!  And we began thinking about how our “image” in the prairie might erode through time via dispersal and colonization, two things I really like to think about!  We are thinking more about these cool concepts this week, and will have an interesting discussion about which ideas to incorporate and how soon.

Blogged while listening to Michael Kiwanuka (especially the first half)

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Altitude Sketch

Ken

During the last conversation with Lauren, it became apparent that we needed to follow an idea that would allow her to research and provide me with material (data or physical object creation.) While we are still compiling a list (includes very general topics such as randomness, erosion, generation loss, colonization, wind pattern, etc.) our conversation came back to restocking grasslands- the idea of intervening on a current space and bringing it back to its natural state with native plants. Lauren informed me that there is debate in this as well- what/ when is the true natural state of that area. Would that be Colonial time period, Native American time period, or post glacier or even further back? What species of plants were prolific and present? Which were recent ‘invaders’? At what point would you target in the natural evolution of this ecological system? The effects of humans on the environment are many fold- among them was how the land was used/ affected during that period of society and was it documented, if even possible.

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Carved Landscape

Cloropleth Map Sketch

Concept Sketch

During this talk, Lauren mentioned the idea of working in people’s yards rather than in remote settings. This seemed to direct our conversation towards an interest in working in an urban environment- allowing people to view our project within their own urban setting. I really responded to this as it reminded me of the many large scale exterior murals I painted in Philadelphia and the North East- bringing art out of the gallery and into daily life of a community. We talked some about finding available/ abandoned lots in a city and using them for this purpose. Multiple lots would allow Lauren access to a site to perform long term study and provide me with another way to explore the specificity of place. We talked of the potential benefits to the community such as embedding science and art into the daily experience of the viewer in a very passive manner. The work would be available at all times to those who happened to walk by, even to notice how it evolves over time. We thought we could even monitor several concepts at the site- wind patterning, rate of plant colonization, rate/pattern of nature reclaiming urban space, etc. 

Reflecting over the next couple of days, I thought more about the nature of my work with the electromagnetic signature of place as seen by the distinctive RGB patterning of television static. I enjoy recording and finding ways to engage with a space that amplifies or reveals an unseen attribute of the location. This put me on the path of brainstorming methods to display this incoming data in real time as a video or animation. I thought about a drone taking daily pictures from above but what seemed to catch my attention most was the potential of placing recording devices (something to measure a certain phenomenon) at the site- an array of them. This would provide me with an installation opportunity and each device could forward its information to a real time display creating a visual experience. These could take the form of evolving images like choropleth maps, velocity maps, density markers, etc. Possibly these could be displayed on a website for the project. A simple QR code at the site could take the viewer to the website and see the visual experience of what is being recorded. 


I thought this was important- taking data and presenting it as sensory experience, making it felt. ​