The Role and Significance of New Media, Technologies and Technoscientific Methods in the Arts for the Perception and Awareness of the Ecological.
The SNSF funded research project Ecodata–Ecomedia–Ecoaesthetics investigates new media, technologies and technoscientific methods (registering, collecting and interpreting data) in the arts in view of understanding their role and significance for the perception and awareness of the ecological. It intends both to bring the question of the technological into the ecological arts and to bridge the gap between them and to analyse current aesthetic idioms in the (techno-)ecological arts. The project is composed of two main parts: theory (analysis of various ecomedia art projects) and practice (aesthetic research relative to the alpine forest Pfynwald).
Assuming that there is no escape from technology in our technosphere, the belief in technologies as tools in relation to information and potential assistance is widespread in both technophile and critical discourses of the Anthropocene. Embracing the paradox and connecting to techno-scientific methods of observing the world, many artists use technologies as sensors and methods, such as Big Data, to get in touch with what has been unknown for a long time. They try to ‘translate’ (i.e. making visible or audible) earthbound signals into human perception, in order to deliver information and establish new relations between non-humans and humans. But what exactly do ecomedia and ecodata deliver or narrate, and to whom do they do this? How do they affect us? Do they trigger care, solidarity, and empathy, as many scholars state? What kind of experiences are possible if a forest, the soil, the air turns out to be a contingent and relational techno-organism, dependent on various actors? And what happens, if the audience is no longer human only, but interspecially-correlated? How does art and its idioms cope with these challenges?
The project is composed of a theoretical and a practice part. In the theoretical part, project leader Yvonne Volkart analyses a number of international ecomedia projects. In scrutinizing their aesthetic idioms, she develops a techno-eco-aesthetics of relationality and care that goes beyond the technological.
In the practice part, the artists-researchers Marcus Maeder, Rasa Smite and Aline Veillat develop aesthetic projects relative to the alpine forest Pfynwald. This forest in the Valais (southwest Switzerland) has been under close surveillance by natural-scientists for more than 25 years. Systematic experiments with irrigation and their close observation by the natural-scientists characterize the Pfynwald not only as an outdoor laboratory, but also as one of the unique sites in the world, delivering relevant data regarding the effects of climate change on the viability of forests. The artists-researchers work in close cooperation with the scientific institute WSL. The theoretical and practice parts are closely intertwined, trying to challenge the dualism of theory and practice and so working towards an aesthetics of theorypractice or practicetheory. In short, the project tries to establish a multifaceted artefactual poetics of the more-than-human.
Research Project
Perimeter Pfynwald
The installation “Perimeter Pfynwald” is an acoustic-artistic representation of the ecosystem of the Swiss mountain forest Pfynwald.
"Critical Zones – Observatories for Earthly Politics" is a thought experiment andan exhibition curated by Peter Weibel and ZKM together with the French ...
Critical Zones – Observatories for Earthly Politics
The thought exhibition »Critical Zones – Observatories for Earthly Politics« by ZKM, curated together with the French philosopher Bruno Latour, invites us to ...
What kind of techniques might provide us with an open sensorium towards the environment? What are the methods? What the technologies? What kind of processes, ...
The team works with partners from environmental fields of activity, the humanities and exhibition institutions in order to realize various dialogue formats that involve a broader public. The partners engaging in fields of ecology – universities, governmental departments, NGO’s – are embedded in a broad network of local and international protagonists. The close collaboration with the WSL during the research process generated an intense interdisciplinary dialogue and atmosphere of learning. The ongoing collaboration takes place in dialogue formats as conversations, project workshops, and the exhibitions at HeK, House of Electronic Arts Basel, and Rixc Center for New Media Culture, Riga.
National
The Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research WSL www.wsl.ch Andreas Rigling
Institute of Integrative Biology, Environmental Systems Science, ETH Zurich https://www.usys.ethz.ch Christoph Küffer
USYS TdLab Transdisciplinarity Lab, Environmental Systems Science, ETH Zürich https://tdlab.usys.ethz.ch/de Michael Stauffacher
Fachhochschule Nordwestschweiz FHNW
Hochschule für Gestaltung und KunstInstitut Ästhetische Praxis und Theorie, Hochhaus: D 4.01Freilager-Platz 14142 Münchenstein b. Basel