Encounters in a layered landscape - mapping Hybrid Ecology
Hosts: Antti Tenetz
Participants: Theun Karelse, Maia Iotzova, Lori Hepner, Anssi Laiho, Piibe Piirma, Peter Flemming
The Hybrid Ecology mapping group will put the thought vehicle of Hybrid Ecology into practice. The group explores the Kilpisjärvi hybrid ecology in space and over time - from the first fragments of life to the latest technology. It views the landscape as a dynamic system consisting of interconnect elements of biological, geological and technological origin. Geo location and field exploration tools will be used to collect the many stories of the land: the tracks of people and other animals, sites of human impact from hidden layers from Neolithic dwelling grounds to the Second World War and up to the contemporary, biological and technological ecologies, places of hybrid encounters, findings form the other groups and more. This mapping attempt aims to find strategies to visualize a hybrid ecology. The groups research revolves around the notion that humans have always been a hybrid species. Without any technological means to cope with the environment we will die in arctic within the cycle of year. We need technologies in order to survive, the extreme is the limit and adaptation is key for our survival.
Antti Tenetz is intermedia artist, adventurer and naturalist. Tenetz’s works are situated on the interface between media arts, bio arts and urban art. In his works he combines and fearlessly uses different forms of expression, media and technological platforms from stone age hunting systems to satellite tracking. He concentrates on studying the relationship between man and nature, with themes changing from the Siberian bear cult to the digital representation of animal sensory systems. Tenetz focus is on multi-disciplinary and multi-artistic cooperation between art and science. He has co-funded and worked with international artist groups such as Subzero, and Grafting Parlour and recently in The Finnish Society of Bioart. Tenetz’s works and collaborative projects have exhibited in Finland and internationally. His work was shown at the Venice Biennale 2013, X-Border 2013, Pan-Barentz 2009.
Peter Flemming is a Canadian artist based in Montréal working mainly in installation and performance. His research interests include incident energy reclamation, solar powered lazy machines, and designs for open-source hardware. Current projects involve improvisational and intuitive building, resonance and electromagnetically activated materials, and modular neuromime networks. Exhibiting extensively at galleries, festivals and museums both nationally and internationally, Flemming has garnered numerous grants and awards to support both his research and creative practice. He serves as Vice President of Oboro in Montréal and is also an occasional curator and writer. Flemming has taught experimental electronics internationally and is a professor in studio arts at Concordia University.
Lori Hepner is an interdisciplinary artist working primarily in conceptually based photography, Arduino/LED device artworks, and social media art. A recent body of work, Status Symbols, is a series of portraits that are studies of identity in the digital age of social media. The portraits focus on visualizing text-based tweets into abstracted visual portraits by using the on/off signature of the computer’s native language, binary code. #Crowdsourced #Landscapes: Beyond the North Wind, her current project, creates experimental landscapes surrounding personal landscape, memory, and climate change. Lori is associate professor of integrative arts at Penn State University’s Greater Allegheny campus in Pittsburgh, PA.
Maia Iotzova is a filmmaker and a media artist who grew up in Sofia, Bulgaria and is now based in Montreal, Canada. She completed a BA in Fine Arts at the University of Guelph in Canada. Maia's work explores our relationship with nature in the urban setting. She often looks at a subject from an intercultural perspective. She mixes traditional documentary film with experimental cinema and subverts traditional mapping techniques to explore our subjective connection to the landscape. In 2014 she formed the Wild City Mapping Collective to create an open source based on-line map of the wild green spaces in Montreal.
Theun Karelse studied art at the Sandberg Institute in Amsterdam before joining FoAM a translocal platform for artistic research. Currently Theun leads the MidWest Experimental Station which features experiments and artistic expressions related to horticulture, urban ecology and restoration ecology. He initiated Machine Wilderness, a program investigating technology aimed at participating holistically in natural cycles and foodwebs.
Anssi Laiho is a sound artist/ electronic music composer. For the last 10 years he has established himself as a freelance sound artist. In his acousmatic works Laiho creates constantly evolving sound structures that require the full attention of the listener. Main emphasis of these works is on psycho-acoustics, musical structure and the theoretical concept behind a piece of art.
In his works for theatre, Laiho uses live-electronics in order to create real life live event. In these works Laiho’s emphasis is on the social function of a performer as a interpreter of an message envisioned for the audience by the composer.
Piibe Piirma is media artist, curator and teacher based in Tallinn, Estonia. She was initiator and main organizer of conference 'Art&Science - Hybrid Art and interdisciplinary Research' and exhibition 'Rhizope' (2014, Estonian Academy of Arts). She has worked as designer and visual artist since 2002 and curated several new media art exhibitions since 2006. Piibe’s current activities are related with PhD studies at EAA since 2009, the title of the thesis is 'Hybrid Practice. Art and Science in Artistic Research'.