The ability to form abstract concepts, symbols and mental images is a key feature of our consciousness, and human intelligence today includes the abstractions we associate with mathematics and with computers – algorithms, mathematical models and the like. However, from the systemic perspective of life at large, these mathematical abstractions are peripheral to the intelligence inherent in all living organisms. Living intelligence is tacit and embodied. Its key quality is the ability to be in the world, to move around in it, and to survive in it.
(Fritjof Capra, Resurgence and Ecologist Magazine)
The site by moonlight, 7/10/24 (Image Keith Armstrong)
With the recent rapid development of artificial intelligence (AI), we have overemphasised algorithms and other mathematical abstractions and have neglected our tacit, embodied, living intelligence. As a consequence, our ability to be in the world – in other words, our wisdom – seems to have diminished dramatically. Indeed, a civilisation that sees making money rather than human wellbeing as its main goal and in the process of doing so destroys the natural environment on which human survival depends can hardly be deemed very intelligent.
(Fritjof Capra, Resurgence and Ecologist Magazine)
The artwork site at last light, 7/10/24 (Image Keith Armstrong)
Emerging Rationale: 8/10/24
FAI comprises the entire re-growth site at SERF, as it develops over the years – with the associated land management processes being the site’s curation and maintenance functions. Within that emerging forest, site specific (art) interventions dotted across the land are each designed to both benefit the site ecologically (and in some cases aesthetically), whilst also providing window of engagement into the site’s ecological recovery for future audiences.
1: Ai ‘Art intelligences’ & Aii (‘Art intelligence interpreters’)
Art Intelligences (Ai) = Experimental artworks, embedded within the forest site, compatible with, & allied with the profound, natural intelligences of the forest (the meta-artwork) as it repairs and re-grows. These hybrid installations across the site ‘evolve with’ and ‘learn from’ the evolving forest whilst directly benefitting its growth. Ais might also evoke awe and encourage public engagement with the forest’s fluxes of intelligent natural regrowth. Ais are placed at principal, representative sites, and therefore stand in as proxy for the entire forest development
Art Intelligence accelerators (Aia) = Additional/embellishing, creative elements added to Art Intelligences to enhance and accelerate local ecological processes – therefore intended primarily for non-humans. For example these may add additional benefit or encouragement to certain organisms to be and become, that in turn will further aid forest recovery.
Art Intelligence interpreters (Aii) = Elements that create additional layers of engagement with the Ais, and their hosting forest, intended predominantly for human audiences (art and otherwise). Interpreters may be accessed both locally and/or remotely – (e.g. they may involve on-site translations in light sound & vibration and forms of online observation). Aii interpreters may also draw data from the existing on-site scientific observatory instruments (eg. scientific standards such as laser scanners, ‘acoustic observatory’ stations, veg-change cameras & carbon sequestration soil/air probes), and may also employ an analog material palette of ‘lively materials’ capable of detecting & registering changes above & below the soil in colour, light, movement & growth (including absorbent flexing woods and metals, reflective materials, sensitive litmus papers, continually circulated water & seed banks) as well as networked analog sensor systems accessible remotely.
Hence whereas the entire site is an experimental artwork – these added elements Ai’s + Aia’s further activate the site with Aii’s then encouraging further human observation and engagement.
A future Ai, awaiting move to the site, 7/10/24 (Image Keith Armstrong)
Mark Rifkin, a literary scholar, develops the concepts of settler common sense in ways that are resonant with anthropologist Laura and Stoller’s concept of colonial common sense. .. their ‘common sense’ is a normative, embodied multi-sensory effectively and politically charged way of knowing. As a kind of common sense, it sediments and habituates the difference between good and bad and right and wrong in settler worlds. It is .. highly attuned to colonial values and norms, attentions, sensibilities, aesthetics, desire. ..Its.. economies and forms of nostalgia dictate what is seeable, sayable, thinkable and knowable, and what cannot be seen, said, imagined or felt. It limits, for example, what we think, what we can experience, what we value and how we intervene in the world, especially how we engage land, forests and plants.
If settlers would make space, there are many other stories to be heard about these lands and their relations.
1: Ai (1) – tetericornis This 2tonne, enormus fallen limb from ancient Forest Blue Gum (E. tetericornis), in a far corner of the site, is scheduled removal for for H&S reasons. Hence we have decided to move it to the sloped bank site to form one of the initial site’s Art Intelligences Ai’s. This carefully placed fallen tree limb, will be set amongst the young, emergent trees already on site, to slowly become a home for insects, other creatures and seed spreading perching birds – supporting biodiversity in its own unique way – becoming in effect a low cost low rent housing for a myriad of future species. This addition of additional current and future carbon and nutrients to the emerging forest – a site currently missing the richness of a forest floor or any real form of shading – will also feed the regenerating ground, and encourage development of mychorizzal networks – whilst also providing shelter, food, and habitat for a variety of creatures. In otherwords – it will be a gift to the ecosystem.”
Consistent with the idea of an Ai – it will thus become embedded within the forest site, compatible with, & allied with the profound, natural intelligences of the forest’s (meta-artwork) as it repairs and re-grows. As a hybrid, dramatic installation will ‘evolve with’ and ‘learn from’ the forest whilst directly benefitting its growth. Furthermore such a dramatic structure has the capacity to evoke awe and encourage public engagement with the forest’s processes of intelligent natural regrowth through its physical presence.
Proposed log to use as basis for Ai (Image Keith Armstrong)Proposed log to use as basis for Ai (Image Keith Armstrong)Proposed log to use as basis for Ai (Image Keith Armstrong)
2: Ais (2+3) – acacias These fallen older acacias trees already lie within the site and are already both actively degrading and forming a protective site for emerging young trees. They will form the second and third Ais – being in essence on-site readymades.
Fallen myrtle in the corner of the site, Sept 2024, (Image Keith Armstrong)Lichen on myrtle logs in the corner of the site, Sept 2024, (Image Keith Armstrong)Fallen myrtle in the corner of the site, Sept 2024, (Image Keith Armstrong)Fungi on the fallen myrtle logs in the corner of the site, Sept 2024, (Image Keith Armstrong)Fungi on the fallen myrtle logs in the corner of the site, Sept 2024, (Image Keith Armstrong)
Step 2: Initial Art intelligence accelerators = Creative elements added to the Art Intelligences to enhance and accelerate ecological processes
Aia’s (Art Intelligence accelerators) are creative elements, added to the first three Art Intelligences (ie the fallen limbs/trees), and are designed to enhance and accelerate ecological processes. More of these would initially be applied to the smooth, still mostly whole Bluegum limb. They may include aesthetic organic and inorganic additional elements; Organic elements, tbc may include:
initial temporary housing for native insects, borers, wasps and bees (e.g synthesised mud/hollow tubes/drillings)
soil-submerged tree ends to encourage early termite activity
young tree(s) transplanted from another area where in greater abundance
a formal series of furrows/holes in that vicinity that will in time catch leaf matter/seeds
selective weeding and grass care around trees to enhance their sound root growth
Insect gall on developing Eucalypt leaf, Sept 2024 (Image Keith Armstrong)
And then inorganic AIa (Art Intelligence accelerators) elements may include:
a gravity fed slow-drip water system to keep an area of ground/the log permanently damp – encouraging both growth of lichens and fungi and accelerating breakdown.
a perspex sided soil window to encourage root and fungi growth whilst providing observational capacity.
machinic versions of mammalian soil: digging/scratching/manuring/aerating) – realised by electronically controlled/solar powered ‘muscle wire’ bark scratchers/depositors – designed to agitate and slowly break down the surface of wood and soil over time.
formal, sculptural provision of attractants for local pollinating species (native honey/pollen sculptures).
seasonal, occasional low level lighting to attract night- time pollinators and other insects.
Paper wasp creates nest underneath one of the artwork site’s LiDAR position markers, Sept 2024 (Image Keith Armstrong)
Step 3:Initial Art intelligence Interpreters = Additional creative elements added to the Art Intelligences suited for the engagement/comprehension of human audiences – with both local and remote access capacities.
This may include a temporary analog material palette of ‘lively materials’ capable of detecting & registering changes above & below the soil in colour, light, movement & growth (including absorbent flexing woods and metals, reflective materials, and periodically installed sensitive litmus papers.
An Arduino powered, cellular ‘flux cycle’ recording station may also be used to track changing analog fluxes day by day and month by month .. with only their uncalibrated patterns, shapes and intensities providing an abstract online analogy of the Ai site, set alongside captured video imagery and sound highlights from the on site ‘Acoustic Observatory recorder’.
Other AV outcomes will be developed from existing on-site scientific observatory (eg. from LiDar/laser scans, ‘acoustic observatory’ stations, veg-change cameras & carbon sequestration soil/air probes).
Spider cocoon grows on installed instruments (Image Keith Armstrong)
