Maps and networks: Research and development

 

I made this collage to show my idea. I was thinking I’d have a photo of deforestation on the wall, maybe from google maps and then project a video of a forest on top. I was also thinking that I could maybe add videos of animals to the projection. They would fill the “ghost forest”. If I used google maps though, the ghost forest too would have to be from above. I’m not sure how easy it would be to find videos of animals from above, but maybe it doesn’t matter if the perspectives don’t quite match. I think I could have two or three scenes like this, but I will see how it develops.

After that collage I thought I should do one with images from google maps, to show what it would look like if the view was from above. Here’s what I came up with:

Richard Long

Long is an award winning landscape artist and sculptor. His themes are very similar to what I wanted to explore. He is all about leaving a mark in nature, in a landscape and how we change them. Lots of his work is simply created by him walking or for example dropping water from his water bottle to watch the lines form on the ground. Long has also done lots of work for exhibitions. I was thinking about natural networks and paths in nature and Long is an artist who plays with that. I could show paths and maybe roots across my forest and even the deforested area.

1967 A Line Made by Walking:

“Nature, the diversity of places, natural and cosmic phenomena, natural materials, movement, time and distance were to become my subject matter.”

Richard Long, 2015. https://www.artimage.org.uk/news/2015/image-focus-richard-long-describes-a-line-made-by-walking/

Other works:

I find his work incredibly interesting and it´s very relevant to what I was thinking of doing for this project. Super interesting take on leaving a mark on landscape, and his being just one person doing it. 

His website http://www.richardlong.org/ for some inspiration

Julien Nonnon "Crying Animals"

I Used A Powerful Projector To Create My 'Crying Animals' Series, That Showcases Endangered Species | Bored Panda

Nonnon is also commenting on the disappearance of animals. For this series he projected images of crying animals onto the face of the alps, to bring awareness to the endangered species in that area. I thought this was quite like the ghost animals I wanted to project. It is interesting he showed them crying, or in distress. Maybe I could add this to my project too. I think this sort of thing could be quite dramatic against scenes or a scene of destruction.

Alexis Kandra

Alexis Kandra paints endangered species. I think they are beautiful and again, relevant to my project. I’d love for my ghost forest to look as full and colourful. Looking at these paintings actually made me think again about painting or drawing for this project. I wanted to be experimental and something I don’t usually do, but I feel like drawing is what I’m best at. I could maybe add animated animals instead of just videos to my ghost forest, I’m not sure if that would bring anything new though. 

https://earther.gizmodo.com/this-artist-paints-endangered-animals-to-remind-us-what-1838158978

I love these sort of projects. It’s like keeping the species alive.