A. How to work artistically with forest data ?
To work artistically with forest data , we connected three research streams : Ælab with MÉDIANE, Smartforests Canada along with DOT-Lab, and tree technologies.
The experimental documentary art practice by Ælab is active since 1996 (aelab.com), joining the work of visual artist Gisèle Trudel and sound artist Stéphane Claude. One of their previous research programs was produced during a ten-year period of art projects concerned with residual matter and pollution (2006-2016), which led them to address climate change .
This forms the basis for MÉDIANE, Canada Research Chair in Arts, Ecotechnologies of Practice and Climate Change (2020-2025) (mediane.uqam.ca), led by Trudel at the School of Visual and Media Arts at the University of Québec in Montréal (UQAM), where she is a professor since 2003 and a research member of Hexagram, the research-creation network for art, culture et technology since 2004.
MÉDIANE collaborates with Smartforests Canada is a pan-Canadian network of monitoring plots for forest management under environmental change, led at UQAM by professor and forest ecologist Daniel Kneeshaw, and also with DOT-Lab, a research group concerned with environmental data science , led by professor and forest ecologist Nicolas Bélanger at Université TÉLUQ in Montréal.
Zoé Fauvel, Ælab at Smartsforests site, Station de biologie des Laurentides (SBL), Saint-Hippolyte, Québec, May 2021.
Zoé Fauvel, Ælab at Smartsforests site, Station de biologie des Laurentides (SBL), Saint-Hippolyte, Québec, May 2021.
During our fieldwork , in 2020, 2021 and 2023, Ælab accompanied scientists to their research sites, conducted on-site audio and visual recordings, and also received sensor data sheets from them.
We worked collaboratively and developed relationships with scientists Daniel Kneeshaw, Nicolas Bélanger, Christoforos Pappas and Blandine Courcot who validated our artistic approach in the production of the visualizations of data with movement, presented in four major outdoor art installations in public spaces, from 2021 to 2024.
Gisèle Trudel, dendrometer, Sainte-Émilie-de-l'Énergie, Québec, July 2020.
Christoforos Pappas, Screen capture of data of sap flow (sap_raw), air temperature (Tair) et stem circumference (den_raw) data compiled from the sensors. Courtesy of Smartforests Canada, June 2021.
Joannie Beaulne, Installation of time-lapse cameras on trees, Station de biologie des Laurentides (SBL), May 2022. Courtesy of Smartforests Canada.
Photo of the Yellow Birch from time-lapse camera at the Station de biologie des Laurentides (SBL), May 2021. Courtesy of Smartforests Canada.
The third stream is concerned with tree technologies. This ongoing research-creation proposes "ecotechnologies of practice" whereby eco and technè are a dynamic crafting of responses, that of peoples, machines and trees , from the middling of their encounter.
"The tree crafts problem-solving operations with the surroundings: tackling water preservation or evapotranspiration as needed, regulating sap flow, making clouds, coordinating burgeoning and senescence timings, going dormant in northern winters, turning sapflow into antifreeze to prevent embolisms. Furthermore, trees produce photosynthesis in a cosmic relation of sun and soil , they yield oxygen and even grow stronger and bigger with the extraction of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. They communicate through VOCs (volatile organic compounds) and mycelium networks . These are but a few of the tree's wondrous techniques, parts of a larger continuum to coevolve their technologies over 350 million years."
[Trudel, 2024, Ecotechnologies of practice: in-forming changing climates , Proceedings of ISEA 2023 ].
Gisèle Trudel, micro-recording with wood bark by Stéphane Claude , Sainte-Émilie-de-l'Énergie, Québec, November 2020.