Field_Notes – HYBRID MATTERs is an art&science field laboratory organized by the Finnish Society of Bioart at the Kilpisjärvi Biological Station in Lapland/Finland. Five groups, hosted by Marko Peljhan and Matthew Biederman (Arctic Perspective Initiative - API) with Leena Valkeapää, Richard Pell and Lauren Allen (Center for Postnatural History), Antye Greie aka AGF, Antti Tenetz and Lea Schick will work for one week in the sub-Arctic Lapland. Together with a team of five selected collaborators, they will develop, test and evaluate specific interdisciplinary approaches in relation to the notion of Hybrid Ecology.

See previous Field_Notes editions Field_Notes - Cultivating Ground in 2011 and  Field_Notes - Deep Time in 2013

Theme

We consider anything which has a physical and technological aspect as hybrid matter and as part of a Hybrid Ecology. Hybrid Ecology is a thought vehicle to think about converging ecologies. It is unfolded through the multiple interactions of its elements and actors in physical and digital spaces. Actors can include for example well established or new biological organisms, things, networks and machines as well as products of human activity like goods, trash, waste or landscapes and more. For example a genetically altered or synthetic organism is of technological origin but biological in matter. Hybrid Ecology permits to expand the traditional concepts of environment and ecology and allows us to rethink our relation to the world.

Field_Notes – HYBRID MATTERs is in search of artistic and scientific responses to converging ecologies. The local sub-Arctic ecology and environment, as well as the scientific research and infrastructure of the Kilpisjärvi Biological Station will act as fields and catalyst for the work carried out.

The premise is that in the simple ecology of the sub-Arctic indicators of a Hybrid Ecology are easier to identify then in the copious ecologies of the south.

Dates and Place

14th – 20th September 2015 at the Kilpisjärvi Biological Station

Groups

During one week the five groups will approach the HYBRID MATTERs theme from different angles. They will organize themselves in work groups, teams, think tanks, and workshops. They will carry out their work in their related fields, as well as have common activities of lectures,presentations and feedback sessions.
Expected results include abstracts, anecdotes, anecdata, artefacts, collaborations, data, documentation, experience, experiments, future workshops, field notes, friends, drawings, hard and software, ideas, knowledge, photos, presentations, prototypes, recordings, skills, sketches, sounds, projects, photos, videos and more. The five groups are:

Seven Senses on the Land (SSOTL)
- hosted by Marko Peljhan and Matthew Biederman of the Arctic Perspective Initiative (API) together with Leena Valkeapää
- takes place in the sub-Arctic landscape, amongst reindeer and the Sami culture

PostNatural - Hybridization, Intention, and the Alteration of Living Things
- hosted by Richard Pell and Lauren Allen of the Center for PostNatural History
- takes place in the sub-Arctic ecology and in the study

(sonic) Wild Code
- hosted by Antye Greie aka AGF
- takes place in the sub-Arctic landscape in the labs and the study

Encounters in a layered landscape - mapping Hybrid Ecology
- hosted by Antti Tenetz
- takes place in the sub-Arctic landscape, in the labs and the study

Second Order
- hosted by Lea Schick
- takes place amongst the working groups and in the study

Read more about the individual groups and hosts

Field_Notes - HYBRID MATTERs is part of the CHANGING WEATHERS program. © 2015 Changing Weathers – Networked responses to geophysical, geopolitical and technological culture-shifts across Europe. The project is initiated by the Arctic Perspective Initiative (API) and coordinated by Zavod Projekt Atol (SI) in partnership with Sonic Acts (NL), RIXC (LV), Finnish Society of Bioart (FI), Hilde Methi (NO), Time's Up (AT) and Ljudmila (SI). Changing Weathers is co-funded by the Creative Europe programme of the European Union.