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Taming the Forest at Speculum Artium

Taming the Forest at the Speculum Artium Festival [23/09/2022]

Taming the Forest is a hybrid research process and established collaboration in the art-science domain, implemented within the framework of cooperation among students, artists and researchers of the School of Humanities and the School of Arts of the University of Nova Gorica. The video was created and exclusively produced as part of preparations for the Resonances IV SciArt Summer School by the Joint Research Center (JRC) of the European Commission, in response to the theme and concept of NaturArchy: Towards a Natural Contract; with scientific input and involvement from JRC forest scientist Matteo Vizzarri who met with the team from Nova Gorica prior to the Summer School.

As a project, Taming the Forest showcases the constructive nature of collaborations which integrate artistic and scientific approaches, methodologies and semiotics, accounting for their differences. In the video, Taming the Forest provides an interpretation of archival sources about forest management in the Karst at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. At the same time, it also brings new findings about forest management during the afforestation of the Karst, and timely reflections on the human-nature relationship. The complexity of experiencing the forest is given both through maps and photographs as well as in original illustrations of local birds and records of their singing, complemented by images created with artificial intelligence. They are connected into a whole by a sound composition that intertwines with spoken theory on complex systems.

This project will premiere its further, performative phase at the 2022 Speculum Artium festival on the 23rd September 2022 – the research-artistic video will be continued by an experimental biosonification performance-process, Symphotree.

Watch the video on Vimeo.

Authors:

Miha Godec (biosonification live)
Abiral Khadka (video, music score, biosonification live)
Nikita Meden (research, visualisations and photographs)
Tijana Mijušković (research, illustrations)
Kristina Pranjić (concept, research, theory)
Peter Purg (concept, research, theory)

WHEN AND WHERE

  • Sep 23, 2022

  • Location: Trbovlje, Slovenia

About Speculum Artium

Founded in 2008, the Speculum Artium Festival is an annual project in the field of new media art and contemporary techno culture that takes place in the industrial city of Trbovlje.“The festival deals with topics such as information technology, robotics, biomechanics and virtual reality and tries to act as a mediator between art, technology and society. 

still from taming the forest video - close up of a forest
Image credits: Taming the Forest 
Taming the Forest_za Speculum Artium_ANG.pdf
Taming the Forest _ UNG response to NaturArchy _ 2022 _ stage-1.pdf