London as a Biospheric Reserve (2021)
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Project proposal I have been developing in my practice since 2020, evolving through my research and previous works into its current form germinating from my writing on 'Muddy Waters Taking Back the Land: Contemporary Sculpture and the Ecological Paradigm' (2021) and continuation of 'Synthetic Introspection' (2021) and exploration into environmentalism and digital arts.
Utilising principles of 3d-mapping, I have begun to conduct research for an art piece that will take the form of an interactive, visual digital interface created as a website and with the aesthetic of a video game or virtual reality depicting an alternative manifestation of London. The basis of the project is inspired by the notion of London being defined as a forest, due to the landmass holding over 21% forest land, leading to the categorisation of London as an urban forest.
The project will utilise the Thames Basin as a digital blueprint, where London's cityscapes and skylines would be reimagined entirely as a forest, allowing viewers to explore a virtual, post-humanist, utopian representation of London as a ‘biosphere reserve’, focusing on the harmonisation of the concept of deep time and a philosophical dissemination of the Anthropocene. The opportunity to engage with the digital landscape would prompt interaction with the visual tapestry, such as if there were leaf litter amongst the roots on an oak tree, one could click on it to learn about the symbiosis of how they would contribute to micro & macro ecosystems.
It is intended to be utilised as a tool for speculating what the landmass and ecosystems within in the geologic and geographical position of what London could have been if the city was never created, whilst the interactive element could have multitudinal aspects demonstrating a futuristic trajectory of how Britain’s ecology could have looked if one of the largest and most biodiverse forests remained intact and undisturbed by human intervention. Exploring the notion of the 'altergorithm' - an artistic concept of a fictitious algorithm - it would create a a paralleling algorithm representing the confluence of Epping Forest and the Great North Wood to expand across the entire of the landmass of London creating a biosphere and a re-conceptualising British ecological heritage.
This concept serves a purpose of creating a digital artwork working in coalition with the broader fields of biology, forest ecology/dengrology and symbiotic relationships that occur within pre-existing biological landscapes. I was hoping for it to resituate art into becoming a tool of education surrounding using artistic means to cultivate a deeper understanding of macro & micro ecosystems and their interrelation to broader ecological landscapes. As this would surmount to a large body of research and digital design, I have been hoping to use this project as part of a Masters degree in 'Art & Ecology' or 'Forensic Architecture', or possibly continuing into the level of a PhD due to the desire for all of the information regarding the multiple manifestations of ecology to be biologically correct and informative.
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