From the 22nd to the 27th August, the Synocene team organised a Citizen engagement workshop with the local community of the Glengarriff Harbour and Woodland Natura 2000 site, following their work during their residency in Brussels with Lucia Iglesias Blanco and Marina Xenofontos from DG Environment, as well as their remote work with District Conservation Officer, Cork Region & NPWS Eagle Sightings respondent, Clare Heardman, District Conservation Officer, Cork Region & NPWS Eagle Sightings respondent.
Hosting a total of 10 sessions, artists Marina Wainer and Sam Nester worked with the local community of this Natura 2000 site, and through the use of masks and pre-recorded sounds, led them on walks in the forest to experience a familiar place differently, alter their perceptions, think about and feel their relationship with the natural beings and elements that live there in a different way.
The next step was for the participants to engage in interactions with AI - with the assistance of Isabelle Hupont Torres and engineer and interaction developer Sylvie Tissot - which embodied elements or natural beings of the Glengarriff woodland, as a way to link back to the walk. They recorded questions, answers, dialogues and narratives aimed at de-centering our anthropocentric positioning, narratives in which humans, the natural world and technology come together.
They also asked the participants to record both their feedback and feelings about the experience in the woodland, their thoughts on the Synocene and on our relationship to the natural world and AI. Extracts from the texts and some of the sound materials will be used in the final installation, as well as in the video they are planning to make for the participants about the workshop. With the material gathered during the workshop (field recordings, participant feedback sounds and AI text), the next stage is to create the sound elements for the installation, bringing together the different voices of Synocene (humans, the natural world and AI).
The Synocene team has from the start been keen to replicate the citizen engagement workshop experience, with other communities in other Natura 2000 sites, and in this way enrich and diverify the narratives that will be part of the sound installation and enhance links with Natura 2000 communities. Whatever the experience of the participants, the enthusiasm and commitment of participants were reported as very strong.
Visit the project page to find out more about the project Synocene which is being developed in the framework on NaturArchy: Toward a Natural Contract and the artists involved.
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Images: shots by the Synocene team of the Glengariff forest during the workshop
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