Erich Berger is the Director of the Bioart Lodge, now numbering over 100 members, based in Helsinki, Finland. He spoke with Hannah Star Rogers following Field_Notes: Ecology of Senses to talk over the origins of the program, what makes a field laboratory important for artists, and the Bioart Society's future plans.

Hannah Rogers: The Bioart Lodge was founded at the Biological Station in Kilpisjärvi, which is an amazing identify in the far north of Republic of finland—home to ongoing scientific research, but also some remarkable art projects. I wonder if y'all could talk a chip nearly that beginning moment of how the program came together.

Erich Berger: The Bioart Society was founded at that place in 2008, and so we had from the very beginning a very potent relationship with the Kilpisjärvi Biological Station. The station supported the idea of being a site for transdisciplinary piece of work from the beginning. Back and then, nobody was specifically experienced in the field, but in that location was enthusiastic momentum. The group was quite diverse, from digital and media artists to environmental artists, painters, photographers, and then on. In Finland it is very mutual to go alee and make an association for a mutual-interest group, and this was the outset of the Bioart Society.

Rogers: What is Field_Notes?

Berger: Some refer to it as a workshop or residency, but for me it is a field laboratory. A group of about xl practitioners with diverse professional groundwork from fine art, scientific discipline, and other disciplines encounter for one week at the Kilpisjärvi Biological Station to work in unlike groups under an umbrella topic. The work in these groups tin can take different forms but substantially is located in the field—the landscape—and uses this surround every bit a research and test site, every bit a catalyst to dive into the unlike questions posed. The groups are encouraged not to produce anything specific similar an artwork, but instead explore their question, deport out experiments, and get together materials of all kinds that could help them sympathise their question or find answers. To allow this freedom is one of the strong points of Field_Notes. You could likewise say that nosotros inquire what artistic fieldwork in the landscape could exist. This freedom can also be seen facilitating spaces of possibility—creating a space enfolded by a question, but not confined by whatever one method on how to answer it.

Rogers: Could you explain a bit more than about the origins of Field_Notes?

Berger: Nosotros started to piece of work at the Kilpisjärvi Biological Station in 2009 as one of twenty nodes on the planet to expect into topics with regard to the human status. This program was initiated by Ars Electronica and our topic was climate change. We worked for two months onsite and produced a conference and a serial of artworks. This showed us the potential of the Kilpisjärvi Biological Station and the uniqueness of the mural. Next, we started a residency program named Ars Bioartica; then we produced site-specific workshops, which were scaled up to become Field_Notes.

Rogers: Could you dissect the theme "Ecology of Senses" for us?

Berger: It came out of the ii-year Hybrid Matters program, which was equanimous of a field lab, symposium, exhibition, and other activities nether the same proper name, where we were investigating hybrid ecology, the convergence of our environment with engineering science, and, substantially, the intentional and unintentional transformation of our planet through human activity. In a hybrid ecology, you have all these dissimilar actors: the biological ones, like humans, other animals, and plants, simply as well technological ones, like algorithms, software, tech infrastructure, and and then forth. Through Ecology of Senses, we wanted to explore the role of sensing within this convergence: the means we make sense of the globe, how worlds are made through our senses, and the changing sense of self that comes forth with that.

Key to the theme is the notion that humans expanded our original sensorium considerably with technology. The spectrum is wide: in it we observe our own man torso senses, but as well animal- and biosensors and electronic sensors. We tin can already grab a glimpse of a fully quantified computational planet with its kickoff implementations of orbit-tracked, networked bird and fish swarms, or fully wired forests. A general excitement about technological sensing possibilities with their reliable product of objectivity has led us to give less value human being and beast senses or phenomena and ecology indicators around us, considered to exist subjective. Ecology of Senses wanted to explore this gap and to engage with the inner and outer landscapes, create field experiments, find and establish test sites, and set up observatories and excavations. We did this by establishing five dissimilar groups of about six experts, each hosted by an invited practitioner.

SOLU Space, briefing and opening. Helsinki, Finland, 2018.

Rogers: I tin can see that one thing that makes the organization unique is that people who want to work with art and science take come to a station not to use the lab, but to be in the field. Kilpisjärvi Biological Station has adept labs and [scientific] collections, and some people are using them, nonetheless the focus remains the field. Do yous retrieve that has to do with the people who create a type of bioart work that doesn't actually come from the lab, or is that but one attribute?

Berger: Lab work can be done anywhere. That is the main betoken of it: to create a work environment that can exist reproduced past others every bit long every bit the conditions are the same. Then for this we exercise not need to get to Kilpisjärvi. Fieldwork, on the other manus, is site-specific; information technology can't be reproduced somewhere else. That we exercise fieldwork in Kilpisjärvi stems from the fact that the biological station is supporting the states and that its subarctic environment and environmental is unique in Europe. From the very beginning, nosotros have been working within a very wide spectrum. Traditionally bioart was a laboratory practice, which we do also, just we have expanded on this with the thought of updating traditional ecology art to explore what environmental fine art is nether the contemporary (bio)technological condition. There is more almost this in our first book Field Notes: From Landscape to Laboratory.

Rogers: My observation is that language is and so important to this group. I understand that, within the group, there is an avoidance of the word "nature." Could you talk about that?

Berger: One example of this was in HYBRID MATTERs, in which we avoided falling dorsum on binaries like "natural/artificial."ane Nature is a very romantic concept, and in our everyday thinking it does not necessarily include humans. Information technology is a place to go when you want to relax, be alone, or feel the sublime. We wanted to operate within a language where it is clear that there is no place left on this planet which is non part of this convergence I mentioned before. The concept of nature allows  the illusion that there is a separation between our activities and our surroundings, and elides the fact that nosotros are currently destroying the foundations of our existence on this planet.

Rogers: Many people at Field_Notes seem to have made art with digital technologies in the by, and many still do. Could you lot talk almost the trajectory of working with the digital as an fine art medium and bailiwick, and so working with the living world out in the field?

Erich Berger, fieldwork profile, 2018.

Berger: Yes, that is true for some people, but the digital arts was as well the place where bioart was shown for the commencement fourth dimension and people got inspired. Another reason might be that artists interested in technology take experienced the transformative ability it tin can have—just think of the world pre-1990 and the earth now. Not even thirty years, and how much our lives have inverse. And then if y'all have even a little flake of an idea about biotechnology, information technology is easy to extrapolate what an immense transformative power it will have over the adjacent twenty years. Artists are motivated to explore this transition not only through the lens of new materials and technology, simply that of the ethical and political implications—biopolitics.

Rogers: Another matter that many people associate with bioart is a critical view of scientific discipline and technology: an explicit or implicit critique of scientific institutions or biotechnology, or the way those things fit or don't fit into society. But it seems the Bioart Society has embraced not only a range of practices and subjects, only too orientations toward the subjects of science, applied science, and the environs.

Berger: Equally mentioned above, nosotros never tried to stick with bioart as it was originally understood. You can see that in our program. We don't ask in what medium do artists work in lodge to exist considered to participate in our activities. We are interested in their motivations and their questions. From the very first, we wanted to be a place for emerging creative practices. If we restricted ourselves, we would only find and experience those things that we already know. In the most general sense, we are interested in the contemporary biological condition.

Rogers: Tin you talk virtually the relationships at the Biological Station that make Field_Notes possible?

Berger: The station's manager, Antero Järvinen, was part of the Bioart Society from the very beginning. He is very generous, and continuously encouraged our work without interfering in it. He will soon retire, and we hope that the new director will keep to support our work.

Rogers: Many art-science organizations were founded around the needs of specific artists or the promotion of particular artists or styles of artwork. It seems to me that this is one of the features that separates this group from others.

Berger: The Bioart Social club started with a grouping of fifteen people: artists, scientists, and curators. We came together not to promote our own piece of work, simply instead to create a platform for professionals to be able to develop and bear out art-scientific discipline piece of work.

Rogers: Could yous tell the states nigh the new space that has merely opened in Helsinki?

Berger: For the by ten years we take worked without a permanent space, collaborating with others when nosotros needed it. Most three years ago, we did a couple of internal self-assessment workshops with our board and saw that nosotros have, on the one hand, quite a bit of unused potential in our program, and on the other, that there is an increasing number of practitioners interested in the type of work and opportunities we are offering. So we sketched out a plan in response to this, which, in the end, crystallized as SOLU—an artistic platform and laboratory for art, science, and lodge. We now have a space in Helsinki that functions as gallery, forum, workshop, library, and product role; we still maintain our vital collaborations and activities within our big local and international network.

Rogers: So what does the future look like for Field_Notes?

Berger: The topic for 2019 will be "The Heavens." We will expect into everything above basis. Until now, nosotros have only been working with the land. Now nosotros want to plough our gaze up to await at the biology and the ecology of the atmosphere and atmospheric phenomena, but also beyond into the solar organisation to talk over conditions of life and address topics like xeno- and exobiology.

Erich Berger is an creative person, curator, and cultural worker based in Helsinki. He directs the Bioart Society, creating interdisciplinary encounters between fine art and science. His artistic interests lie in processes, which he investigates through installations, situations, performances, and interfaces. Throughout his artistic practice, he has explored the materiality of data and information and engineering every bit creative material. His current interest in issues of deep time and hybrid environmental led him to work with geological processes, radiogenic phenomena, and their sociopolitical implications in the here and now. Berger's award-winning work has been exhibited widely in various museums, galleries, and major fine art events worldwide.

Hannah Star Rogers researches the intersection of fine art and science, specially critiques of science in contemporary art. Her publications take appeared inLeonardo,Configurations,The Kenyon Review, and theLA Review of Books. She received an MFA from Columbia University and a PhD from Cornell University in Science and Engineering Studies. Her exhibitionMaking Science Visible: The Photography of Berenice Abbott received an exhibits prize from the British Club for the History of Scientific discipline. She is past Director of Research and Collaboration for Arizona Country Academy'southEmerge: Artists and Scientists Redesign the Hereafter. Her current curatorial project isArt's Piece of work in the Age of Biotechnology: Shaping our Genetic Futures. She is a visiting scholar in STIS at the Academy of Edinburgh and teaches at Strathclyde University.