Machine Wilderness ongoing research program

Machine Wilderness is a platform organized by Zone2Source together with Theun Karelse from FoAM bringing together experts from many different disciplines and backgrounds to explore emerging hybrid ecologies where nature, technology and art intertwine. The emerging climate crisis and environmental damage show that our design processes underestimate the level of exposure of our landscapes to human activity. Our infrastructures, technologies and machines are not temporary visitors to our landscapes, they are permanent inhabitants.

Machine Wilderness is an arts and science program which explores what design processes could look like if they take local conditions in landscapes as their starting point. How can our technologies relate to the subtleties and grace of natural populations, mineral flows, foodchains and layers of communication? There is a focus on environmental robotics, or ‘entities’ as actors in shared habitats. What does their presence mean ecologically, culturally and sociologically, within a longterm view of interacting populations surfing collectively on the geological and meteorological currents that carry them.

We set out to map the hybrid relationships between our technologies and landscapes through exhibitions, debates, workshops, residencies and expeditions.

Machine Wilderness was launched on the 2nd of November 2015 during a symposium at Artis (see public program/lectures and debates on www.machinewilderness.net).

Machine Wilderness – Zone 2 Source – Amstelpark, paviljoen het Glazen Huis
Exhibition with Ian Ingram, Driessens & Verstappen, Rihards Vitols en Jip van Leeuwenstein

Since we organized amongst others:

• a field and design workshop at FoAM in Cornwall, UK,
• several discussions, symposiums and workshops in the Amstelpark,
• expeditions at the Bio arts centre in Finland,
• presentation at RICX conference in Riga,
• presentation at Micro-Clima in Venice
• Design Weekend at the Victoria & Albert Museum.
• In 2018 we organized a Machine Wilderness exhibition and series of residencies in het Glazen Huis in the Amstelpark.
• From February – June 2022 (postponed due to Covid19 from original dates on april 12 to oktober 2020) artists – Heather Davis, Driessens &Verstappen, Ivan Henriques, Antti Tenetz, Ian Ingram, Ivan Henriques, Spela Petric and Thomas Twaites – will work for several weeks at Artis Zoo, presenting their research and findings in an extensive public program Machine Wilderness at Artis.

For more information, see the projectwebsite  www.machinewilderness.net
or read this interview with Regina Debatty in her blog We make Money not Art or this article in Engineering the Future

Machine Wilderness has been supported by Stimuleringsfonds Creatieve Industrie, Mondriaan Fonds, Stichting Doen, Amsterdam Fonds voor de Kunst, VSB Fonds