Forest_Art_Intelligence
WHAT:
Forest Art Intelligence (FAI) aims to understand how to develop art forms capable of growing and evolving alongside a regenerating forest, whilst also actively benefiting that forest’s health: in collaboration with Samford Ecological Research Facility (SERF) and the Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Network (TERN). See the project's ANAT 2024 developmental blog.
The extraordinary intelligences that underpin natural systems will inspire and direct the development of our experimental sci-art process. Our aim is to understand how to develop art forms capable of growing and evolving alongside a regenerating forest, whilst also actively benefiting that forest’s health. We envisage embedded artworks capable of slowly finding, and then occupying, their own intelligent ‘niches’, within the forest’s ecology - a speculative form we call an ‘Art Intelligence’.
Our art+science team have secured unprecedented permission to restore a currently cleared block of land back to high conservation-value forest at the partner's site, Samford Ecological Research facility (SERF). As the forest ecology slowly returns to health, we will investigate how to develop symbiotic, process-based artworks across that entire site. We imagine that these ‘Art Intelligences’, would be capable of growing & evolving with the forest whilst occupying their own intelligent, ecological ‘niches’ within that emerging forest – with the forest itself being the project’s ‘meta-artwork’.
Our project’s actions, & our on-site creations are therefore intended to directly benefit the forest through both 'performing' ecological functions, whilst also encouraging public engagement with the forest's processes of intelligent natural regrowth.
WHO: Collaborating Science Team: Dr David Tucker (QUT Landscape Ecologist), Dr Gabrielle Lebbink (QUT Freelance Plant and Invasion Ecologist), Dr Eleanor Velasquez (TERN Education and Training Manager at Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Network TERN Australia) and Marcus Yates (QUT/SERF Site Technician). Further supported by A/Prof Caroline Hauxwell (QUT Microbiologist and Agricultural Biotechnologist).
PARTNERS: The ANAT Synapse residency program is supported by the Australian Network for Art and Technology (ANAT), Samford Ecological Research Facility (SERF) and the NCRIS-enabled Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Network (TERN) and QUT. FAI is also supported by the Australian Government through Creative Australia, its arts funding and advisory body.
INITIAL OUTCOME: Artwork 1 - 'Analog Intelligence' (2024) forthcoming
This video installation (Analog Intelligence) speaks to the projects’ first tentative steps – into uncovering and bringing to attention the extraordinary natural intelligences of a land in self-repair after decades of clearing, providing the inspiration for a non-extractive, hybrid art-science work capable of growing and evolving with the forest, whilst also actively benefitting it.
Analog Intelligence explores the future artwork site by land, air and soil, speaking poetically to early findings into conceiving loosely coordinating site-wide artworks, able to bring the forests’ regeneration process to public focus, whilst finding and occupying their own intelligent, beneficial ‘niches’ within that re-emerging forest ecology.