oct 2025 – mar 2026
note: this hybrid arts project is multi faceted and I am gradually developing pages and posts about it!
Urban tree management applications tend to value a city tree economically, based only on quantifying its ecosystem services – such as cooling and cleaning air, storing carbon, and holding back floodwater. This ‘hard’ data encourages technocratic, top-down decisions about the landscape, impact those who live in it. Cutting down even a sick tree loved by a neighbourhood elicits strong emotions and reactions. Ground truth – a view from somewhere bridges data perspectives and residents’ lived perceptions by involving local inhabitants in the development of these apps. Using a ‘feminist data’-driven art practice to unfold a tree AI companion app and digital twin, they together let the stories that people tell be treated as equally important data, and consider the complexities of inclusion in the neighbourhood. Multiple truths are revealed, to ultimately propose more inclusive and caring relationships between people, technology, and landscape. We speculate on planting fig trees, a new potential native on the tree scene, to help open up processes with the municipality and encourage (non-digital) participation from underserved communities.
This short video presents some of the different ways this participatory art/research project engaged with Van Beuningenplein, Amsterdam, The Netherlands. The audio is a speculative conversation with a fig tree, as if it had been planted on the Van Beuningenplein during this project, one possible outcome of the project. My interviews with participants about their relationship with trees only represent their half of the relationship, so I ask this fig tree the same questions I have asked them. This alludes to conversing with a tree’s ai agent in the tree companion app – how much humanisation is ok? we generally have limitations in communicating with trees, mean we generally ascribe human properties to understand them.
The conversation also covers the project concerns in general, and some misconceptions about how we think or care about trees and ecosystems.
speculating on urban green: the square would benefit from cool island effects because the shade is only arround the edge of the playgrounds making it extremely hot in the summer sun. we can use an app like gAIa / GUS (gaia.gus.earth) to speculate on where to plant trees so that we (and biodiversity) gain.
unfortunately van beuningenplein is full of concrete so this will be a follow-up project.
a summary of the different parts of the project and thesis – not all these parts will interest everyone but I will provide a link to the thesis in the public repository here when available.
