Collaborative sound piece with composer Daniel Townsend.

Re:Peat is a recent EDUFI Fulbright Finland Fellowship research project focusing on peatland extraction and restoration in Finland. Our hyperspectral images were made with a Specim FX-17 camera using wavelengths of 900 – 1700 nanometers. These images allow us to see details in soil structure invisible to the naked eye. We hear two sonified core samples, the unrestored sample panned left and restored panned right, moving low to high. Ash, an industrial byproduct from burning peat for power and heat at Toppila station in Oulu, has been used to treat the soil, de-acidifying it and perhaps leading to a viable novel ecosystem for reindeer forage.

My work combines experimental art + ecological science to explore mechanics of plant physiology. By translating these processes into artworks, I aim to build affinity with unfamiliar ecologies apparently out of sight or possessing different temporalities than our own. My practice combines digital sensing technology, such as bio-data sonification, and analog processes including painting with ink I make from locally-sourced plant matter – so the materials used in the piece add another layer of data.

When public understanding of ecological problems is limited, creative artists have been historically successful in uncovering background narratives, thereby shaping how scientifically-declared emergencies are perceived and acted upon. How do we balance a sense of urgency in the time of climate change with potential unintended consequences of our interventions?

Bio: Anne Yoncha (US) is Assistant Professor of Art at East Central University in Ada, Oklahoma. Born and raised in Wilmington, Delaware, she earned her MFA at the University of Montana and recently completed a Fulbright fellowship at the Natural Resources Institute Finland, working with restorationists to make collaborative art-science work about former peat extraction sites outside Oulu. Her practice combines digital sensing technology, such as bio-data sonification, and analog, traditional processes including painting with ink she makes from locally-sourced plant matter. Her ongoing research with the HAB (High Altitude Bioprospecting) working group began in Fall 2019 at Field_Notes, a residency of Finland’s Bio Art Society at Kilpisjärvi Biological Station in subarctic Lapland, where she worked with artists, biologists, and programmers to attempt to detect high-altitude microbes using a heli-kite. Tree Talk, her temporary site-specific installation sonifying invisible processes within a stand of Ponderosa pines, was selected as the 2018 Emerging Artist project at Blackfoot Pathways Sculpture in the Wild in Lincoln, Montana.