Charline Lalanne, France
charline.lalanne@gmail.com
https://opr.world/
In Scotland I learned how knowledge can be invisible. We cannot tell the entangled relationships of a landscape from a car window. We need to pay a closer look, to pay attention, to get involved to create a desirable future together with the living system. This project is a call for action.
Policies and corporate actions are shaped by KPIs and measurable targets, supported by extensive data collection, even for nature restoration. Yet this data-rich view still leaves out crucial dimensions: community relationships, local knowledge, and the intricate connections among species. All seeds to complete the landscape and share a more holistic view of place. The synthetic geography created by datasets and satellite analyses must be expanded and owned by the people who inhabit the place to show a richer image of a place.
Can we build a bridge between nature restoration and the online world, one that is rooted in community yet open for everyone to participate in? Creating a depth of online seeds that feed actions and knowledge? By acknowledging the small acts, the rituals, the participation, and the many entanglements the shape place we seek to reclaim another form of data: the seed that is situated, consented, specific and owned by the people who create it.
Creating a seeding web: a seed is a unit of participatory ecological imagination, of situated, relational action within both physical and digital ecosystems. Living systems are entangled with geography, geology, biology, chemistry, and all forms of life. In this space, you will be able to create your own web of life-supporting actions. Whether you are talking to your plant, to replanting the landscape with a local NGO, you will be able to share your interactions with the living world through this online community and support ways of seeing, knowing and caring for living systems in a more holistic place-based way.
Here no numbers, no scrapping, only rituals that will help grow your online seed:
Activated synthetic geography:
The three strata of the island are built on the lens of Ambiguous Territory: Architecture, Landscape, and the Postnatural(2022)
- Atmospheric / Geographic: the climate around your seed will define its ability to grow. Any action you put in place to help with air or water quality will impact positively your synthetic atmosphere: using public transport, planting a tree, participating on climate action events
- Biologic / User behaviour: To grow your seed you need to make sure its ecosystem is activated: are you supporting its related species? Are you making sure there are pollinators? How do you bring care into action?
- Geologic / History: Soil is the ground of our whole life support system. Do you feed the ground? Is the soil around you fertile?
Through those layers, actions and time, we will see your seed growing or dying. This project aims for us to revise the matrix of evaluation and to integrate relationality into our perception what a complete landscape is. We want to ask you how your seed can become a forest? What actions in the physical world can you do to make it grow?
Synthetic geography is the transforming perception of geographical landscapes, systems or processes through the lens of ecological and online data. Through the creation of your own synthetic geography you will be able to participate in a new form of data: one that is situated, consented and cared for, both in the physical and digital world.
Anywhere and Everywhere wants to bridge matter, data and living systems. It shows how we see and learn, how one personal story of a living entity is relating to other species: creating habitats, feeding others, participating in soil health like processes of decay. Here, digital AI acts as a partner in ecosystem relationships and health. It can also serve as a tool to share ecological knowledge and envision larger, interconnected landscapes.