Artistic research in breeding : The Bifrost Eucalyptus project
(2019)
author(s): Jens Staal
published in: Research Catalogue
Genetic signs of domestication of plants and animals date as far back as the oldest known evidence for other artistic expressions like painting, music and sculpture. Breeding is often seen as a science or a craft and is rarely considered art. The Bifrost art project aims to combine the spectacular bark and growth rate of the rainbow gum Eucalyptus deglupta with the cold hardiness of the cider gum Eucalyptus gunnii and possibly other cold-hardy species. The cold hardiness introgression should make it possible to grow amazing rainbow-colored trees in a European or North American climate. The project has been initiated and is expected to continue for decades or centuries in a distributed, participatory, manner. The project explores breeding as an art form, and through extension landscape and ecosystem manipulations that may last beyond the time when human kind has driven itself to its extinction. The project also questions commonly held beliefs about “pristine” and “natural” as being better than “artificial” and “anthropogenic”.
A study of two dead trees
(last edited: 2020)
author(s): Iver Uhre Dahl
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
In a forest in the Hague there are two dead trees. The trees are neighbours of similar age. The have fallen over next to each other, felled by the rot of an invading fungi, which also appears long dead. The stumps and the roots, still attached to the ground, have been completely hollowed out by the rot. The hollow extends into the earth, seemingly through the roots.
The dark stumps stand in dark contrast to their vivid surroundings. The holes in them, created by the invading rot, and the dryness of dead wood make for a weird acoustic. It began as an attempt to study them. By drawing, climbing, listening to and singing into them I had hoped to unlock the potential I saw. This document is a journal of my observations on the trees, on my place in the forest and a report on the interventions they inspired.
