At the conclusion of a research-creation residency at Hexagram, the completed draft of the third installation developed by MÉDIANE (Canada Research Chair in Arts, Ecotechnologies of Practices, and Climate Change) was presented for discussion with the Montreal community on March 16, 2023. Following this, it transitioned to an exhibition in the forest at the Grantham Foundation for Art and Environment in May 2023.
Photo credit: Sébastien Huot
Devenir-Hêtre is the penultimate project in a cycle of four works and has been presented in various public spaces. The previous projects, bois eau métal and Orée des bois, took place at the Arboretum of Espace pour la vie | Jardin Botanique de Montréal (2021) and the Cœur des sciences garden at UQAM (2022), respectively.
These projects are interconnected by shared methodologies. Since 2017, a team of scientists from DOT-Lab (under the direction of Nicolas Bélanger, Université TÉLUQ) and Smartforests Canada (led by forest ecologist Daniel Kneeshaw, Department of Biological Sciences, UQAM) has been collecting data from birch, fir, and beech trees in the Laurentian and Lanaudière forests. Data is gathered via sensors, recording 24 readings per day from spring through autumn, as winter is a dormancy period in northern climates. Additionally, chronophotographic (time-lapse) images are captured at a rate of 4 to 6 per day. This collected and continuously synchronized data include various environmental and physiological parameters, such as water potential and soil temperature, sap flow, tree trunk circumference (tracking contraction and dilation due to sap fluctuations), as well as ambient temperature and humidity.
These sets of quantitative and qualitative data reveal the tree’s sensitive relationship with its environment—its internal and external realities across time and space—which would be difficult to access without the use of sensors. The data files are transmitted to the MÉDIANE team, which works “with” them alongside field explorations and consultations with the Smartforests Canada teams to design an installation art piece that visualizes these changing states. These artistic explorations are then presented within a scaffold structure that remains open to its surroundings in situ.
These “conductor relays” traverse each iteration of the works. However, they are modulated in various ways by thematic and aesthetic axes, as well as by specific agents, within a particular interface that interacts with different fields of expertise in both art and science. By facilitating exchanges between communities and knowledge, this interface promotes transdisciplinary reflection and action, extending the Chair’s notion of “ecotechnologies of practice” to include citizenship and the more-than-human.
2023 Iteration
This work-laboratory stems from the collaboration of the research-creation cell Ælab, formed by Gisèle Trudel (chairholder) and Stéphane Claude (composer and specialist in immersive sound), and their artistic accomplices: Blandine Courcot, a scientist at DOT-Lab specializing in Big Data applied to environmental sciences (Université TÉLUQ), and Marc-André Cossette, an artist and PhD candidate at Concordia University specializing in interactive media. Their combined knowledge and sensitivities create the lived experience of Fagus grandifolia, the American beech tree. Their work emerges from the data collected in 2020, recording the number of “flash droughts” that occurred that year to understand their effects on the tree’s resilience. Blandine Courcot’s research shows that this tree species can tolerate a certain number of short drought periods, which may even strengthen it in the context of high temperatures and water scarcity.
For this iteration of the annual work, a series of LED screen tiles are arranged in two opposing semi-circles, creating an open niche in the woods. There is a convergence of past and present: the past space-time of data collection related to the beech tree, and the present reality of scientific and creative acts that animate it. The data visualization maps micro-movements and phenomena that occurred on a microscopic scale, but whose expression and concrete effects can be felt by the spectators.
Ælab. (2023). devenir-hêtre [labéexhibition]. MÉDIANE Chaire de recherche du Canada en arts, écotechnologies de pratique et changements climatiques, Fondation Grantham pour l’art et l’environnement (Saint-Edmond-de-Grantham, Québec, Canada). Photo credits: Richard-Max Tremblay (images 1 to 6), Gisèle Trudel (image 7), Mélodie Claire Jetté (image 8), Ælab (image 9), 2022. La Station climatique mobile at the lab-exhibition devenir-hêtre. Photo credit: Caroline Pierret.
On the screens, imagined compositions express the quantified measures of each type of data collected from various sensors, circulating in the form of colors, gradients, particles, and lines. Their associations reveal the forces at play and the internal processes of the tree in relation to its environment. As we explore the data, we apprehend a real, lived day of the tree, within seconds. In the exhibition, time compresses to highlight the variations on the tree’s conditions. Scriptural indications accompany these variations, signaling changes in state and the risks of tipping into a precarious phase when the tree experiences a water deficit. This tests the system’s ability to extract water from the soil through its roots and pull it up to the leaves via the opening of its stomata. What are the immediate and long-term effects of occasional, repeated, accelerated, and cumulative droughts? Could the tree adapt? Will it be able to keep adapting?
The 2023 iteration of the work proceeds through statistical correlations enabled by artificial intelligence, which analyzes the millions of collected data points and facilitates the identification of positive and negative feedback loops, as well as the definition of potentially critical thresholds.
Alongside the main visualization of the tree, a generative process using Courcot’s analyzed data and Cossette’s work in Touch Designer generates creative forms driven by the data itself. Here, another experience unfolds through algorithmic programming, synchronizing the installation’s behavior with that of the beech trees. This dynamic process offers a visceral understanding of its layers of life through a global feeling, rather than tracking isolated data. Climate is a complex system of encounters, exponential accumulations, and agencies, making the capture of climatic facts an inherently approximate science. This work serves thus as a relay, with no scientific, pedagogical, or didactic aim. Its goal is artistic, distancing itself from demonstration through a stance that learns from the agents in a creative and transformative process.
During the discussion with the public, among other considerations, the relationship established here between individual, capture, data, visualization, and sound exploration, between life, science, art, and programming, as well as with a sound environment from field recordings and textures created in situ, designed as associative and agentive crossings, a way of ‘making with’ changing climates · the potential that human and more-than-human intelligences hold, when associated, to help predict and prevent climate stresses, particularly for the tree · working with technologies, which can create a favorable context for the emergence of current and new situations · traces and computer errors illuminating and informing biological traces · the fact that the ongoing changes are shifts that become new norms and forms, that there is no going back. With MÉDIANE, these dynamics fit into the paradigm of metastability, under the guidance of the thought of philosopher of technology and sciences Gilbert Simondon, considering the relationship as relative, punctuated by various phases, carrying transformative potentials through the action of a multi-species technological environment that invents itself in the very movements of the ever-emerging relationship. Thus, the story told here is both concrete and projected, a multiple being, collectively experienced, in research-creation.
Crédits
Original text written in French by chantal t paris [student member, UQAM].
Images of the activity held on March, 16, 2023 by Sébastien Huot, student at École des arts visuels et médiatiques, UQAM.
Screenshots of the Touch Designer sofware (visual programminh) by Marc-André Cossette [student member, Concordia].
3D plans of the Chair’s projects by Kévin Pinvidic [student member, UQAM].
For more information, visit the web page of the installation Devenir-Hêtre presented at Fondation Grantham pour l’Art et l’Environnement, from May 11 to 28, 2023.
Biographies
Chantal T Paris
Chantal is currently pursuing a PhD in Arts Studies and Practices (UQAM), focusing on developing and updating ontoepistemological processes that support life, linking human and more-than-human elements with changing climates. She is a student member of MÉDIANE, the Canada Research Chair in Arts, Ecotechnologies of Practice, and Climate Change, as well as a member of Hexagram. Previously, her research-creation perspective led to exploratory workshops, several publications, and a Master’s degree in Arts Studies (UQAM), exploring the interplay between writing, creation, and more-than-human agency.
Blandine Courcot
After training in fundamental physics and neuroscience, it was through her doctoral project at École Centrale Paris that Blandine Courcot discovered the richness of transdisciplinary exchanges. Passionate about learning and technology, she naturally became interested in artificial intelligence during her studies and pursued a Master’s degree in Data Science at the DOT-Lab, at the intersection of big data and forests.
Marc-André Cossette
Marc-André Cossette is a transdisciplinary artist and PhD candidate at Concordia University, working on the relationship between technology and performing arts through sound, visuals, interaction design, and artificial intelligence. His work has been presented in Canada and abroad, notably at Tangente Danse (Canada), the Ars Electronica Festival (Austria), El Matadero (Spain), and CMMAS (Mexico).
Gisèle Trudel
Gisèle Trudel is an artist, professor, and holder of the Canada Research Chair in Arts, Ecotechnologies of Practice, and Climate Change (2020-2025). This is an ongoing collaboration with the Smartforests Canada network, led at UQAM by forest ecologist Daniel Kneeshaw. A member of this network, Nicolas Bélanger directs the DOT-Lab, the data science lab at TÉLUQ University.
