Describe and provide an example of a precedent project that informs your work:

Starting out as an ecologist deeply informs my artistic multimedia work as you will see in my portfolio. For instance, I absolutely love that your call for artists underscores the importance of symbiosis in a living world. It touches my heart because I understand symbiosis in a very direct way, having studied intensively the mycorrhizal networks that allow plants to communicate in vast underground networks. I was lucky enough to be part of a pioneering lab that studied mycorrhizae associated with the most resilient plants of the Cascade mountains. I spent my time looking at the mycorrhizal root tips under a microscope and photographing each one, extracting and reading its DNA using what seemed like a magic light machine, identifying new species, and understanding the immensity of this largely unknown and unseen below ground universe. It was then that I realized then the deep importance of symbiotic relationships, since they are more fundamental than previously understood in creating a living world. Therefore my work often uses metaphors derived from symbiotic relationships to explore the stories and possibilities for living systems in a rapidly changing climate and world.

I also have worked as a landscape plant ecologist, using GIS and multivariate analysis to understand vegetation patterns across vast areas of the Cascades and Siskiyou Mountains of Oregon. This ability to shift scales from mycorrhizal DNA to landscape dynamics also has had a large impact on the artist-ecologist I have become. Addressing socio-ecological regeneration at multiple scales is a fundamental mind set that I think we need to embrace more as storytellers and artists. All of these ways of thinking would be familiar to systems thinkers and this is why I share them here. This open call is the first I have found that directly calls for living systems thinkers, and I am so happy to see that this is bubbling up in our culture. Hence, even though I only found this call on the last day I felt I had to take the time to apply, and if nothing else take my hat off to you all for making this creative and important space for new possibilities!

Share a portfolio project that highlights your artistic focus and technical skillset.

One project that really encompasses both my artistic focused and technical skill set is a interactive documentary I made titled Resilience. Resilience is an multilayered story about community resilience in the High Andes of Peru. Communities all throughout the Andes are facing more intense drought and flood cycles due to climate change then other areas of the globe. This is particularly challenging because many indigenous and low income people live in this bioregion, along with countless precious plant and animal species. This project was created to tell the stories of two such communities that are finding ways to organize and adapt through ecological restoration. The project was intended to provide support and hope for other communities that may be experiencing these same challenges. In addition to the more conceptual/artist interactive documentary version, the film work was also made into a short 25 minute film that is currently being screened in various Andean communities by the nonprofits that I collaborated with on the project.

The web interface version of this project was designed using the metaphor of a weaving loom as a living system. The interface which weaves together many different conceptual threads representing key elements at play in these stories of resilience and restoration. The conceptual threads all have short 1-2 minute video clips associated with them and the weaving loom interface literally weaves these clips into unique 5 minute micro-documentaries. The films themselves are emergent properties because story pattern depends on the users choices and therefore takes on unique patterns. This project came from a desire to explore the principles of complex living systems with multimedia to see if new forms of storytelling could emerge. The UX/UI was designed from the ground up based on the living systems principles such as: connectivity, nonlinearity, uncertainty, emergence, scale-shifting, self-organization, and feedback loops. The documentary script behind this design, was literally “written” as a woven story fabric that has similar narratives organized along “conceptual threads” on the x and y axis of the storytelling interface. This work has been exhibited in shows in Spain and the US.

To learn more about the project please visit this description page: Resilience - To experience the interactive documentary visit: idocresilience.com

One additional portfolio piece I want to point out is the preliminary work called An Atlas of Distressed Geographies. It is closely related to the proposal I submitted to this call, and gives a sense of the preliminary aesthetic direction I am moving towards. Please learn more here: The Atlas

* Please note that when recently transferring the resilience interface to a new host, a bug in the code has led to the short documentaries not playing properly. I am working with a programmer and it should be back up in the next week. Too see the short films that are embedded in the interface right away please visit: Resilience film verses

Kelly, why you are applying to this program? How does it fit into your overall career goals? 

When I came across this open call, I was astonished and incredibly happy to see that this kind of fusion between the multimedia arts – living systems thinking existed. I am a hybrid ecologist - artist with a lifelong focus on regenerative ecological design and living systems thinking. I started my career as an ecologist studying the underground mycorrhizal networks and the ecology of landscapes, with a focus on botanical diversity. After working professionally in this field, I entered an Environmental Studies MSc program and had a stark realization that all of the data and scientific reports in the world was not going to help us, we had to touch people’s hearts, and learn to seep into the bone marrow. We are drowning in data and what we need now is compelling and empowering stories that highlight both the struggles and the incredible possibilities for the regenerating living systems. So, I embarked on a MFA in Digital Arts and New Media an ended up making several films, interactive documentary works, and other multimedia pieces, all with a specific focus on living systems and developing emotive audio-visual storytelling systems.

Furthermore as astounding luck would have it, I happened to find two of the founders of the ecological art movement as mentors in my MFA program, Newton and Helen Harrison. After graduating I worked with them intensively for 3 years in the studio and art-science organization they founded, called The Center for the Study of the Force Majeure. Helen has passed away now, but I was blessed to take her final masterclass and work with them both. One of the most important aspects of the work at our studio was to always (as artists!) find ways to care for and regenerate living systems, or the “life web” as Newton would always say. In the early 70s Newton and Helen took a vow to do no work as artists that did not benefit the earth, and our collective work was explicitly guided by learning directly from our observations of living systems. Using both analytical and meditative methods of observation. Through working with them, I saw how the synergy of artistic wholism and the exacting nature of the ecological sciences could create truly powerful visions and even begin to shape new cultural narratives, instead of just being a bunch of data or scientific jargon. My own practice is now dedicated to this reunification of mind.

I have recently been accepted into a PhD program at UC Santa Cruz in Film and Digital Media and will begin my studies in September of this year. I know that being part of this group of living systems artists would deeply enrich my academic experience, and in turn I can leverage my university contacts to realize this work to its full potential. It feels like a very beneficial symbiosis and exchange. For all these reasons and more, when I found an open call for an immersive art installation that focused of the wellbeing of living systems, I had to get an application in. This is especially true because I have a team of artists and scientists behind me, including a respected elder in this field, Newton Harrison. Yet, as an emerging artist myself, I would benefit so much from the support and community that being part of this program would bring. This would allow me to take a dream-concept and make it a reality which is my favorite kind of endeavor. I appreciate your consideration of my slightly unconventional, but heartfelt application. I do very much hope to hear back, and would be happy to further discuss ideas, it would mean the world to me. Either way, keep up the amazing work.