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FIELD_NOTES - HYBRID MATTERs group descriptions

  1. Seven Senses on the Land (SSOTL)
  2. PostNatural - Hybridization, Intention, and the Alteration of Living Things
  3. Encounters in a layered landscape - mapping Hybrid Ecology
  4. (sonic) Wild Code
  5. Second Order

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

Complex ecological networked systems can be observed, read and navigated by employing Intuition and Technology. Artists, hunters and herders, tactical media workers and scientists will be joining forces to develop,  deploy, use and question enhanced sensing systems and methods. This could lead to new and surprising insights and construction of semantic  territories, in which the gaze and measurement become knowledges and are  projected back onto the land in order to structure completely new vectors of meaning, understanding and orientation. Our senses guide us through the world. Combined with experience, knowledge and openness we can begin to develop new realtionships and understandings of Earth  systems and our collective embedded positions within. We will develop the ability to augment these senses through Technology and Intuition, engaging Local and Traditional knowledges, Art, Engineering and  Sciences. This group will explore the machinic in the ecologies and the  animals in the machines.

Marko Peljhan
Marko Peljhan is a theatre and radio director, conceptual artist and researcher. From 1994 on he has been coordinating the Makrolab project in all its dimensions. He is the co-founder of the Ljudmila digital media lab (1995) and the initiatives I-TASC (Interpolar Transnational Arts Science Constellation) and API – Arctic Perspective Initiative with Matthew Biederman. His work has been widely exhibited in numerous exhibitions worldwide. He is the recipient of several art prizes, among others the Golden Nica in the Interactive arts category for the work "polar" with Carsten Nicolai. He also works as Professor of interdisciplinary studies at the University of California Santa Barbara. He is also the artistic director of the not for profit arts organization Zavod Projekt Atol and the editor at large of the music label rx:tx. http://www.ladomir.net/ http://arcticperspective.org/

Matthew Biederman
Matthew Biederman works across media and milieus, architectures and systems, communities and continents since 1990. He creates works that utilize light, space and sound to reflect on the intricacies of perception mediated through digital technologies through installations, screen-based work and performance. Since 2008 he is a co-author of Arctic Perspective Initiative, dedicated to augmenting traditional knowledge through new technologies for greater autonomy of the circumpolar region. His work has been featured at: Lyon Bienniale, Istanbul Design Bienniale, The Tokyo Museum of Photography, ELEKTRA, SCAPE Bienniale and CTM among others. http://www.mbiederman.com/ http://arcticperspective.org/

Leena Valkeapää
D.A. artist and researcher Leena Valkeapää lives in the wilderness in the northwest Lapland. Her doctoral dissertation In the Nature, a dialog with Nils-Aslak Valkeapää´s art (2011) proposed a dialogue with nature and its poets. Se has exhibited as a visual artist since (1988) and has produced public environmental artworks, including the rock wall piece Ice Veil (1999) in Turku. She wrote a regular column to Lappish newspaper Lapin Kansa during the years 2012-2014. Valkeapää is taking part of the daily works in a reindeer herding, in sami culture tradition. Leena Valkeapää works as a visiting lecture in the Department of Art in Aalto University.


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

This  group will focus on the notion of intention when we consider hybrid and other human-manipulated species and habitats. We have defined  PostNatural as the intentional  alteration of an organism’s inherited traits--but cannot deny that  there are also many unintentional and semi-intentional consequences of  human relationships with other life-forms and their habitats.
Using photography, specimen collection and other natural history methods, we will document and collect evidence of organisms that have been altered by the intentional practices of domestication, breeding, and genetic engineering, and by the unintentional (or less intentional) consequences of habitat destruction, globalization, and climate change. We will  explore habitats that have been constructed, managed, or affected by human guidance, as well as habitats that have been influenced unintentionally by human behaviors. We will explore and imagine what makes these different organisms and their habitats visible and invisible to humans eg. why  some “feel wrong” or are unnaturally attractive.

Richard Pell
Richard  Pell is an artist working at the intersections of science, engineering  and culture. He is the founder of the Center for PostNatural History, a museum dedicated to the collection and exposition of life-forms that have been intentionally altered by human intervention.  The Center has been awarded a Rockefeller New Media fellowship, a  Creative Capital fellowship, Kindle Project awards, a Smithsonian research fellowship and is currently in residence at the STUDIO for  Creative Inquiry at Carnegie Mellon and has opened a permanent  exhibition space in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He is an Associate  Professor of Art at Carnegie Mellon University and a founding member of  the Institute for Applied Autonomy. http://www.postnatural.org/

Lauren Allen
Lauren Allen is a biologist pursuing a PhD in learning science at the  University of Pittsburgh. Lauren’s research focuses on how people come  to understand complex social and scientific challenges such as climate  change and bioengineering. She has spent the bulk of her career working  in science museums, including the Exploratorium in San Francisco, the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh, and the Center for PostNatural History. Her work is focused in spaces where people have  hands-on learning experiences and social interactions, important  features of the process of understanding and subsequently responding to  complex issues. http://www.postnatural.org/


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

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 equal parts artist and naturalist. He has worked and filmed  throughout the North, from the Ice Sea to Siberia, and as far south as  South Thailand and Greece. Tenetz’s works are at the crossroads of  media-, bio- and urban arts with an emphasis on interdisciplinary art  & science collaboration. He combines media ranging from various  technological platforms and materials to living nature. His work about  nature/human/non-human relationships goes far beyond all the usual  clichés and the “green-hype” movement. Tenetz exhibits internationally  and as winner of three Finnish national snow sculpting championships, he  personifies a melding of the artistic and Arctic. http://www.tenetz.com


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

As humans we inhabit a hybrid ecology and as such we are part of the biological and technological ends of our world. In recognizing this, one can state that it is our responsibility to connect both  peripheries to develop ethical and respectful forms of co-existence and ideally beneficial  interaction. The (sonic) Wild Code Team will investigate notions of coexistence, communication and potentials for interaction in a hybrid ecology. By immersing itself into the vast and raw landscape of Lapland around Kilpisjärvi, the group will research and test possibilities to enable the landscape to speak for itself. Methods include listening to the land, communicating to the land, analyzing the heard and the code and finding common and uncommon denominators and more. From this experience the group will imagine sonic and other wild interfaces to  enable communication, articulation and learning processes for actors in  the landscape and the landscape itself.

Antye Greie
Antye Greie [AGF, poemproducer] is a musician, vocalist, digital songwriter, composer, poet, producer, performer, digital media artist and recently practicing curator and educator. Her poetry, which she converts into electronic music, and digital media, has been presented on records, live performances and sound installations in venues around the world. Born and raised in East Germany, AGF lives and works on the northern Finnish island Hailuoto. She is founder and artistic director of Hai Art, a cultural organisation that practices media art in public and social space in a remote context. As independent curator Antye Greie specializes on hybrid sound and sonic activism. In 2004 she received an Award of Distinction at the 2004 Ars Electronica festival. http://www.poemproducer.com/


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

The  second order group will have a different working model then the rest.  It will be composed of philosophers, theorists and other suitable  practitioners, who will be embedded into the other groups. Their work  will be twofold, on the one hand, they do research on the rest of the  groups, and at the other hand, they will act as subversive agents to  introduce counter perspectives. The aim is to critically look at the  methods and practices of the field, and to see whether there are ethical  or aesthetic questions specific to certain practices. The group uses  the tools of philosophy of science and art, science and technology  studies, art history, and more. In order to study and intervene in the  other groups they employ various inventive methods.

Lea Schick
Lea  Schick is currently finishing her PhD at the IT University of  Copenhagen. Her research concerns the role of artistic and creative  practices in imagining and making green energy futures. Concerned with  environmental issues she is exploring how relations between humans,  natures, and energy are being redesigned in the case of Danish smart  grid planning and in a variety of artworks. How are environment becoming  (or not becoming) part of future energy collectives? From a Science and  Technology Studies approach she is working with infrastructures and  ‘natural’ environments as inherently entangled and co-constituting  ‘hybrid ecologies’. She has a background in arts and design and is now  working in the intersection between arts and ethnographic studies of  environmental innovation. http://itu.dk/tip/?p=1181

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HYBRID MATTERs Symposium video documentation
07 Dec 2016
HYBRID MATTERs Symposium video documentation now online >>>