Current Projects

HAKOTO

Performing otherness.
After Plein Air, we were interested in developing a pair of portable, performative instruments that would allow us to work outdoors and develop new practices and methods to push our work with trees in new ways. HAKOTO was designed in 2022 as a pair of ‘body instruments’ that we wear to measure and hear indications of life force in tree leaves. In 2023, we extended the system to engage sphagnum moss and other plants in peatlands.  

HAKATO monitors two sets of specific data: airflow, carbon dioxide, humidity, leaf temperature, air temperature and sunlight. There are two sets of sensors monitoring both the atmospheric baseline and the actual conditions at the surface of a leaf. There is a standard mathematical method that indicates the rate of photosynthesis and transpiration in a tree leaf by comparing the two data sets. The data is fed into a sound program created by Chris Malcolm, which processes real-time data, producing unique and dynamic sounds, reflecting atmospheric conditions and the metabolism of different plants.

LEER Exhibition at the Leitrim Sculpture Centre.

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Walking with The Darkness:
A Landscape Dialogue

Indications of Consciousness
Darkness is a large Irish Cob, a horse some describe as clever, cheeky and gentle. One friend claims he is the hoofed equivalent of a Labrador retriever. He is a native herbivore of the Gaelic Archipelago we live on. He sees and hears things at great distances and has a discerning sense of smell and taste. He has been teaching us what he knows as a field expert in the consumption of the vegetation of Scotland since 2019.

At this point, we have documented years of his movement in a field. We have gathered plant samples, photographs and videos that reveal the significant range of wild plants he has a taste for and when he eats them throughout the year. We have three notebooks of pictures and written narratives reflecting his extraordinary agency, intelligence, memory, and care for other living things. He has a grasp of English and has been teaching us to speak a bit of Houyhnhnm.

This effort is complemented by ongoing reading with members of the Living Organisms and Their Choices, Research Network, at the University of Edinburgh, Initiated in 2018 by Prof Pauline Phemister and an international group of artists, philosophers, theorists and scientists.

Critical Forest Art Practices

Recovering Cultural Ecologies
Our interests in forests and landscapes were shaped by over ten years of work in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where we developed work about the generative nature value of post-industrial landscapes. That work resulted in conferences, exhibitions, public programmes, and public interest research under Nine Mile Run and 3 Rivers 2nd Nature. With significant funding from local foundations and state and federal sources, we were able to sustain an ongoing interdisciplinary, expert/citizen dialogue about the form and function of Post-Industrial public space. This defined our research, within the Studio for Creative Inquiry at Carnegie Mellon University between 1997 and 2005.

Coming to the UK in 2005, we moved to Scotland in 2012 when we began to think about forests again. This would result in an ongoing study of the Caledonian Pinewoods of Scotland. With funding from Creative Scotland we were able to plan extensive work on the Black Wood of Rannoch. Outcomes from that effort include a book that takes a deep mapping approach to that forest, as well as a public interest conference, exhibitions and publications.

Aspects of this work continue and are embedded in the HAKOTO tree work.

Click here for a video produced for exhibition at the Intermedia Gallery at the Centre for Contemporary Art in Glasgow, Scotland.

Exhibition Development

Conversations are underway in Ireland, Netherlands, and Scotland about exhibitions and residencies relevant to HAKOTO work with Northern European peat bogs. Venues in the US and Asia are also being sought.

Contact us for inquiries about exhibitions and residencies.

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