"Odd New Spring: Towards Evolving Landscapes and a Reorientation in Design Practice" is an artistic research PhD project that explores methods for designers to engage with local environments, interdisciplinary communities, and professional fields in new ways. The project repositions unwanted plants, specifically Invasive Alien Plant Species, as a foundation for knowledge creation and new local activities. This approach challenges the perception of these plants as strictly agonistic and reframes them in the context of sustainability, production, and resource management. Through the artistic practice, the plants are connected to stories from the past and visions for the future, encouraging reflection on current classifications and relations.
The work culminated in the exhibition "Odd New Spring" at the University Museum in Bergen's Natural History Collections. Here, experimental artefacts, storytelling objects, interdisciplinary dialogues, and reflections point towards a new design position. The project envisions the designer as a bridge-builder across disciplines, fostering sustainable practices and coexistence within local landscapes.
Supervised by Mette L'orange (architect MNAL and visual artist) and Tim Parry-Williams (Professor of Art: Textiles, KMD).
Photo: Odd New Spring 2024, Siren Elise Wilhelmsen
"Heaven on Earth: Revelation of the 10th Avatar" makes connections between ancient myths and Earth's topography that correspond to Hinduism's ten incarnations of Vishnu, resulting in visual evidence of the prophesied return of Kalki to usher in the Golden Age of Satya Yuga.
Exploring synergies between the study of the medium Hélène Smith at the turn of the 20th century and contemporary notions of subjectivity, artificiality and intelligence in the age of AI, the question of locating intelligence will not be a question with a binary answer in this paper. It will be shifted to multiple sites in an assimilative assemblage, exploring how identification might work from a rather metabolic side of the conversation. Weaving a thinking continuum on the evolving human-machine complexes beyond circular debates, Hélène Smith's ambiguous Martian writings are fed into GPT; an act intended as a metaphor and method for overcoming our binary contradiction of intelligence as either “natural” or “artificial”, ultimately generating new subjectivities, fluid variables or even contradictory insights. In this context, a meditation with speculative moments is attempted through human-machine inter-written texts, enacted through inter-twined speeches that reciprocally represent and interpret their own transitive nature.
Hilma af Klint (1862-1944) is considered a pioneer of abstract painting. However, she herself hardly saw her artistic works as products or opus, but rather as a coherent system. Accordingly, the contribution presents and unfolds af Klint's paintings as an alternative version of modernism, an ecosystem or digestive system. This also takes up the mediumistic origin of the paintings: af Klint visualises transcendental messages. Looking forward and seeking out new possibilities (Bashkoff, 2018), she paints for a future that she perceives clairvoyantly.
In text and images, the piece "Metabolic Drawings – Or: Drawing metabolic" develops a speculative landscape that follows the images and convictions of Hilma af Klint: Historical facts are interwoven with pictorial descriptions and culminate in a utopian or dystopian future. Theoretical approaches from Queer Studies and Speculative Feminism are adopted to critically question the reception of af Klint's paintings and of herself. In a way, the essay can be seen as a digestion of digestion.
This paper presents an exploration of the interconnectedness between vital metabolic processes of human respiration and phytoplankton photosynthesis. By weaving together ecological sciences with cultural anthropology, eco-feminism, environmental humanities, and artistic practices the paper delves into the intricate metabolic interplay between phytoplankton and humans.
Grounded in the notion of "breathing-with," it navigates through physiological, biological, and sensorial dimensions to elucidate the profound connections between respiration and photosynthesis as metabolic media, fostering alliances in multispecies encounters.
Drawing inspiration from the biological laboratory and the microscopic realm of chlorophyll-bearing organisms, the transformative power of photosynthesis in shaping the planetary atmosphere and sustaining life is highlighted. While underscoring the pivotal role of phytoplankton in oxygen production and carbon dioxide sequestration, it elucidates the challenges and synergistic impacts of oceanic oxygen depletion driven by anthropogenic activities.
Beyond a mere metabolic function, breath emerges as a metaphorical interface for collective action and co-conspiracy, transcending boundaries between human and non-human entities. As such it advocates for a deeper engagement with planetary ecologies and a reimagining of our relationality with the more-than-human world.
Through artistic inquiry and experimental methods, the paper invites readers to reflect on the profound implications of our interconnectedness with phytoplankton, urging a renewed commitment to symbiotic coexistence. In this sense, the act of breathing goes beyond its metabolic function, extending as a form of collective agency in confronting the challenges of an ever-changing world.
