Futurefarmers: Silicon Forest

Silicon Forest: Understories of Trees and Data is an exhibition and trans-disciplinary gathering conceptualized by artist collective Futurefarmers. The resulting works in the gallery at PRAx function as a conceptual storyboard, examining reciprocity between ecology, technological futures, and consumption.

A storyboard is an outline for action that imagines the holistic context for each scene; that allows for narrative flow and connection, but also impromptu reorganization. The format of a storyboard enables rich specificity, but also radical shifts in time and locale. What better way to imagine the breadth of wanderings in a research process traversing the river and forest, laboratories, field sites, workshops, basements and a campus’ abandoned energy tunnels? The exhibition, Silicon Forest, imagines the complexity of connecting the ecological, industrial, and technological histories of Oregon State and the surrounding Willamette Valley to a future that addresses the impending energy crisis brought on by the exponential growth of data mining technologies.

Emerging from a year of engagement with Oregon State University students, faculty, and researchers working across physics, astronomy, media history, biology, anthropology, ecology, computer science, and more, was a drive to consider how a future colored by energy consumption can be written with care, imagination, and ingenuity.

About the collective
Futurefarmers is a group of diverse practitioners aligned through an interest in making work that is relevant to the time and place surrounding us. Futurefarmers are artists, designers, architects, anthropologists, writers, computer programmers and farmers with a common interest in creating frameworks for exchange that catalyze moments of “not knowing”.

Through participatory projects, the collective creates spaces and experiences where the assumed logics of the explored disciplines disappear.

Gathered participants
Luhui Whitebear, School of Language, Culture & Society (Oregon State University) / Oksana Ostroverkhova, Physics and Optical Engineering (Oregon State University) / Thomas H. Deluca, PhD, Dean, College of Forestry (Oregon State University) / Anna Friz, Transmission Artist, Film and Digital Media (UC Santa Cruz) / Maude David,  Department of Microbiology (Oregon State University) / Adam Quinn, Professor of History (University of Oregon) / ooooo.be, Techno-feminists, Antwerp, Belgium / Les Walton, Manager Energy Operations (Oregon State University) / Seri Robinson, Professor of Wood, Science and Engineering (Oregon State University) / Nichole Nomura, Associate Director, Stanford Literary Lab (Stanford) / Michael Paul Nelson, Prof. of Environmental Ethics & Philosophy, Forest Ecosystems & Society (Oregon State University) / Machine Listening (James Parker, Joel Stern, Sean Dockray), Melbourne, Australia / David Stimpson, Lab Manager, OSU Seed Lab (Oregon State University) / Andreas Emilio Guerrero, College of Agricultural Sciences (Oregon State University) / Kai Castle, College of Agricultural Sciences (Oregon State University).