Visual Ecolophonic

Location: reserch developed in Northen Finland, with the support of INDA Chulalongkorn UNiversity and Ars Bioartica  
 https://bioartsociety.fi/projects/ars-bioarctica
Type: Installation, exhibited at Oslo Triennale 2019
http://oslotriennale.no/en/aboutoat2019
Status: completed
Year: September 2019
Collaborators: Tikumporn Panichakan + Tanapat Adulteerakit, Thanakorn Phonthanakornkul, Satida Adsavakulchai, Chinnapat Asavabenya, Arnon Vongarnon, Apisada Hanbunjerd, Sakaokaew Jindawitchu, Rachapon Jidapasirikul, Natnicha Pornteparak, Chanakarn Pongteekayu, Kodchakorn Promjaree, Hattakarn Lertyongphati (INDA Y2 students)

According to Wittgenstein, our vocabulary is our (perhaps restrictive) tool to interpret the world. That’s maybe why North Sami language contains a large quantity of different terms to describe things like snow and reindeers, as both are substantial components within the universe of the Sami people.

The reindeer herders of northern Finland can be considered a valuable example of alternative social and economic structure, as the balance between effort and profit of their main activity is very far from any efficiency of contemporary economies.

The Sami population maintains an extraordinary symbiotic relationship with their specific companion species, the reindeer, and with landscape, geography and with the surrounding nature at large. Therefore their terminology, and the different shades it expresses, can help us understand certain specific environmental relationships.

The installation, showcased at Oslo Triennale 2019, proposed an augmented storytelling dictionary of selected terms of Sami Language. The terms have been materialized in more abstract acrylic cut illustrations, recalling folk Sami wood-cut printing techniques, emerging from a bed of silicon lichens, that have been augmented reveleaning each narrative and analytical documents.

Visitors can first understand the broader sense of the terms selection, and subsequently engage with their deeper meaning and ecosystemic network of relationships, shown in augmented reality. Narrative drawings, technical diagrams, specific measurements have been superimposed in AR to the speculative material ecology of the niche, increasing the performative approach to the installation.