During the residency at Yorkshire Sculpture Park, we will be collecting sensory data and visualising the findings to reveal the invisible changes at play in our forests and woodlands. We will be conducting a series of experiments including a live link up between trees in the Yorkshire Sculpture Park and the Jardim Botanico do Rio de Janiero, Brazil.
Take part in the activities online by emailing photos, drawings and stories to: info@i-am-ai.net
Days 10 -11:
The last 2 days will involve a live link between a tree in the Yorkshire Sculpture Park and a tree at the Rio Botanical Gardens, connecting with the British-Brazilian artist Silvia Leal. Over these 2 days visitors will be able to see the changes in the 2 trees in different locations across the world throughout the day, watching the effect of the atmosphere, weather, light and colour around the tree canopy in both locations, sent by mobile phone to the Longside Studio space. There will also be a live audio link up to Brazil.
We will also be showing the outcomes of the residency, the drawings, plans and activities that we have done with visitors throughout the 2 weeks.
Day 7:
We conducted a walk in the park led by Active Ingredient. As we walked we talked about the project and people took turns to wear the sensor kit, tracking the journey by taking photographs every minute and collecting the data in the different park environments that we walked through, which is all stored on the database and will be used for future experiments on how to develop a locative experience alongside the final artwork.
Along the walk we conducted the human sensor experiments and also asked participants to note down on the map on the flyer things they noticed, and where they did the experiments, to map their journey.
Day 4 - 9:
On day 4 we started to think about how we percieve the changes in the atmosphere in comparison to the scientific data. The activity involves standing in a forest or under a large tree.
1 - Take a photo to capture the light and colour between the branches of the tree canopy
2 - Write down what you feel the temperature is between 1 - 10 with 1 being the coldest you have ever felt and 10 the hottest
3 - Write down what you feel the humidity is between 1 - 10 with 1 being dry and 10 being wet / humid, think about the effect on your body (sweaty, dry lips, static, wet ground below your feet)
4 - Write down what you feel the sound levels are between 1 - 10 with 1 being the quietest environment you have ever been in and 10 the loudest environment
If you do this exercise in a forest or by a tree nearby please send us your results and your location and we will add it to the map.
Day 3:
On day 3 we started to think about imaginary forests and to begin to design the sculptural installation we hope to build as part of A Conversation Between Trees, that will be controlled by the sensor data collected in the forests.
Please feel free to send us stories and drawings of imaginary forests and trees. Draw a picture or a map of an imaginary landscape based on a real forest, woodland or park. How would you design the park if you could re-landscape it, put your own sculptures, plants or even alien life forms into it. Look at some of the maps in the books for inspiration.
One of our sketches
Day 2:
Please send us stories and images you might have of trees, woodlands, forests and parks and the location where they are from.
Maybe it is one particular tree on your street or in your garden? A tree you climbed in your childhood or carved into the trunk the name of your first love? Were you frightened in the woods, where you ever lost and alone in them? Or maybe the woods were your playground, a place to escape or a breath of fresh air?
Day 1:
Think about the things that are invisible in the atmosphere of a woodland or forest. The temperature, humidity, sound, light and colour changes as you enter the forest and stand under the canopy of the trees.
At the Yorkshire Sculpture Park, your nearest forest or woodland or simply under a large tree nearby take photos that you think show the invisible atmosphere, that evidence the changes you feel as you stand there. If you don’t have a camera take a sketch pad and pencils and draw the things you notice.
Email the photos and drawings to info@i-am-ai.net with the location where they were taken and we will add them to the map of the Yorkshire Sculpture Park.
Download the flyer with family activities to bring along to the park or come along to Longside Studios and participate in our interactive experiments.
Further Public Engagement
Using mobile and web technologies, both A Conversation Between Trees and The Dark Forest provide a direct creative impetus for the public to learn about each other’s cultures, myths, sensing nature and measuring climate change. Through constructive dialogue, we aim to stimulate young minds through engaging with the associations and contrasts that exist within the forest environments. Operating as a mutually beneficial live project, the public engagement alongside both projects act as a stimulus to compliment existing curriculum learning, engaging the public as well as informing the artists and acting as a test bed for sensing and mobile technologies.
Our aim is developing a strategy for initially engaging schools in sustained and creative collaborative dialogue. From working with schools based both within urban and forest environments and also located on opposing sides of the globe, we hope to inspire young people and inform them of the wider social, geographical and cultural impact the forests hold. By involving young people in the project, we want to create an international exchange of ideas that has a meaning to both contexts, through issues like climate change and ecology within the perceptions of each location.
This is an exchange of ideas, where the forest and the project become the impetus for the young people to develop their own investigation. We aim to integrate the data that is collected from the forest into the schools own intranet where the data can be accessed as a resource for projects to utilise. It is hoped that this project can become a springboard for crosss disciplinary learning across the areas of art, cultural studies, history and science.
-
- Classroom session in Rio with a Skype link to Matt Davenport in Nottingham
-
- Skyping with Nottingham from the Rio Botanical Gardens
mmm