The Future Ecology Initiative

DPrime Research is an ensemble of artist-academics specializing in cultural production informed by the intersection of technology, research and the arts. Starting in 2013, we will begin work on The Future Ecology Initiative: a long-term conceptual and speculative inquiry into possible ecologies of the future. Our first large-scale project in this endeavor is Heterogenous Ecologies. An extension of our explorations into the complexity of natural systems, this project will be an exploration, documentation, and recontextualization of the Cascadia Bioregion, an area of enormous ecological complexity that stretches across borders in the Pacific Northwest. The objective of the project will be to co-locate, describe and connect ecological "others" within the region — creating an intermingling across space and time that seeks to challenge the very definition of ecology. Employing a diverse set of technologies and materials — including ecological data collection, environmental sensing, field recordings, software agents and custom-built unmanned autonomous vehicles (i.e., "drones") — we will execute expeditions across Cascadia in order to construct a large-scale ecological portrait of the region that explores its environmental, historical and cultural complexity.

Target: Cascadia Bioregion

The Cascadia Bioregion has numerous places that are of ecological, historical and cultural significance. The objective of the Heterogeneous Ecologies project is to locate and describe ecological "others" among these significant places. This will be undertaken in 4 phases:

Phase 1: Using customized eco-droning techniques, DPrime will execute expeditions to collect various kinds ecological and environmental data.

Phase 2: Then, using pattern matching algorithms, heuristic orthomosaic mapping techniques and subjective inferencing of data attributes, DPrime artist-researchers will locate the constitutive otherness between two distinct ecosystems.

Phase 3: After determining correlations between ecosystems, the next phase of the project will consist of identifying paths within those ecosystems that exhibit similar or otherwise related subjective and statistical characteristics (e.g. tree concentrations, sonic characteristics, emotional valence). Virtual software agents will then be deployed to run expeditions using features of the DPrime eco-data repository™ to generate tracklogs and ecological models. These will then be used to metaphorically "bridge paths", virtually connecting the two ecosystems.

Phase 4: using GPS, augmented reality and mobile applications, these bridged paths will then mapped out so to construct a new virtual ecology, integrating ecologically, culturally and historically diverse areas of the Cascadia Bioregion.

As an example, consider the following scenario. Hiking expeditions undertaken along the numerous general areas in Cascadia such as the Columbia River Basin in eastern Washington, the wetlands of the South Okanagan in southern British Columbia and old growth forests on Vancouver Island in southeastern British Columbia. Data collection will be undertaken via drones and custom mobile sensor kits. The data will include ecological and environmental data, sound and aerial video and photography. The aerial images, combined with the sound and sensor data from all the regions explored will be examined using the methods described above. The matching pairs of "others" that were obtained, the virtual software expeditions, tracklogs and ecological models and renderings of the new virtual ecologies will then be displayed as a gallery installation

In addition, another component of this project will feature a real-time event. This will entail the use of live telepresence and a real-time datalink with the multiple drones. For example, 3 or more drones located in various areas across Cascadia all feeding real time data to one central location (e.g., a gallery) where they are intermixed and intermingled based on prewritten computer algorithms. What we like to call "quorum eco-droning". This can be used as a sort of launch event for the gallery exhibition mentioned above.

other scenarios:

• temporary/portable research stations
• smartphone app
• art historical context, complexity, etc...

add one line saying it's an extension of the cybernetic concepts of Biopoiesis applied to a exploration of a possible future ecologies...