Photo: Agnes Meyer-Brandis
For decades, Hyytiälä Forestry Field station has been the destination and base for students and researchers. University field courses, research campaigns, class reunions and maintaining and developing instrumentation form a routine in Hyytiälä. The charming milieu, historical log houses, modern course centre and the surrounding forest all create the atmosphere for tranquil comprehension, but also surprising engagements. Researchers and experts from all over the world come to Hyytiälä to do research, or to exchange fresh ideas in Hyytiälä Forestry Field Station.
Hyytiälä invites to do research, whether it is scientific, or artistic. It is an ideal place for organizing multidisciplinary workshops inspired by forests. Climate Whirl has organized two workshops interlacing forest sciences and arts. The first workshop, Tealemetree Workshop was organized under the residency of Agnes Meyer-Brandis in August 2014. The second workshop The Art of Measuring the Woods, was conducted by forest researchers Elisa Halmeenmäki, Janne Korhonen, Kourosh Kabiri and artist Mari Keski-Korsu in April 2015. Both workshops were curated by Ulla Taipale.
For each artist-in-residence, the plan is to offer an eye opening workshop
The next Workshop will be celebrated on 3-5th September, 2017, this time in collaboration with Shift Register project by Jamie Allen, Martin Howse and Jonathan Kemp. The initiative comes from Martin Howse, who attended The Art of Measuring the Woods workshop in 2015 proposed Hyytiälä Station as a site for the Earth Observation Source (EOS) Workshop.
September 3-5 2017
The Earth Observation Source (EOS) workshop at Helsinki University Hyytiälä Forestry Field Station sets out to bother and to complicate the linear stories of deep-time, geology and anthropocenic discourse. EOS seeks to re-jig the history of the bones and stones with a vitalist writing of the earth and peat, of whiskies, bogs and tree sap, of mycelium and the blinded imaginaries of all earthly, airy and extraterrestrial creatures. We wish to untether planetary futures from an auto-destructive laboratory planet, exploring in the process how linear histories and geologies inform instrumental sciences and industries which are implicated in the initiating of this destroyed planet through effects such as global warming and technologies of resource management and extraction.
Within the context of the exciting work of the Hyytiälä Forestry Field Station in forest and atmospheric studies and peat-based measurements, the workshop will explore a more actively aesthetic relation to planetary phenomena such as climate change and to the measurements and research which inform the study of these large-scale objects. Through action and discussion we will ask questions such as:
-How can we imagine other non-linear terracentric histories and geologies informed by re-cyclings and recursions?
-What kinds of event impact on, for example, tree ring formation and how could we have a bodily experience of these instances and events?
-How can we immerse ourselves in natural-technical-industrial cyclings such as of tree fluids, and carbon cycles, sinks and sources?
The workshop will be hosted by Jamie Allen, Martin Howse and Ulla Taipale with special guests Erich Berger, Mari Keski-Korsu, and Timo Vesala as part of Shift Register and Climate Whirl.
The workshop forms part of the Shift Register Earth Observatory Array series in cooperation with Climate Whirl by Department of Physics and Division of Atmospheric Sciences at University of Helsinki, and Capsula. Shift Register investigates and renders legible the material evidence of human activities on earth, registering these not as indicators of human achievement, but as ambiguous negotiations and signposts of planetary exhaustion. Shift Register is supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation.
As a part of the Shift Register Workshop artist Mari Keski-Korsu lead the participants to a Siikaneva peatland. The bog running and bog sensing experience provoked a great range of reactions, that were discussed in the evening, after a sauna session by the fire at "kota".
Read Mari´s selection of the post-bog feelings here.
Fotos from the EOS Workshop here.
More info:
https://www.ixdm.ch/portfolio/shift-register/
http://shiftregister.info/
Photo: Agnes Meyer-Brandis
The workshop started as an expedition into the forest and the SMEAR II Station at Hyytiälä Forestry Field Station.
It continued as a journey into the soil, into the trees, into the clouds and the hovering matter in between, finally leading the participants into the realm of smallness. The 13 participants investigated the experiments and data that have been produced at the research station. Their own experiments we developed and lots of samples of the invisible were taken. On the way berries, data, aerosols and questions were collected and finally, communicated.
Beside all that we had many teas with trees, and new languages were developed - to enable a fluent communication between the harvesters and the harvested.
* Tea= a traditional beverage made from steeping the processed leaves, buds in water.
Telemetry= The word is derived from Greek roots: tele = remote, and metron = measure.
Tree= There is no universally recognised precise definition of what a tree is, neither botanically nor in common language.
Tea or coffee?
Where are the animals?
Is tea making creating decomposition of destruction?
Do people emit more laughing gas when they are laughing?
Do you prefer wild cloud tea or artificial cloud tea?
Does the value of the ingredients change depending on taste? What creates value?
Are the tools a part of tea making?
-spoons
-cups
Why so much noise? In the wood? Does it affect the measurements?
If all the different people in Juupajoki / Hyytiälä make they chambers, does this create a ”gold” standard for consistent measurement at Hyytiälä or is this specific to the aesthetics/data collection here at this location?
Does the methodology of science expand or restrict the creative process and vice versa, creative -> science?
If the tools have names, do they also have a say in the data?
Define: ironical
Can we make up new words to explain our work or do we need to use existing language to describe what we do?
What is Objective Art vs. Subjective Science? Can we improve each by considering these states?
What could all the data that we throw away tell us?
How does it scale?
What cannot be measured in the forest?
What is the method to find methods?
Does it matter if it matters?
What is objectivity?
Can your intervention be (mis)used, e.g. for military purposes?
Is data meaningful?