As part of the Ars Bioarctica residency program we proposed a team residency consisting of L.A. based artist/maker Ian Ingram, Finnish artist Antti Tenetz and Theun Karelse.
The team arrived at the station during the summer equinox. This means permanent daylight. It's a strange thing to witness when a day doesn't end. According to our host Leena, people in the area just choose their preferred rhythm of sleep. Basically this is an ongoing day that lasts hundreds of hours. Local wildlife has adapted to this, with Cloudberry as an extreme example, this little plant only fruits where permanent daylight showers it with the energy it needs to fruit. It basically fruits in one day, but one that lasts hundreds of hours. It only does so here in the extreme north of Europe.
We start immediately after arriving with opening the windows, setting up equipment and establishing a 'meat-pile' to engage with local wildlife. The team will work on developing a robot that interacts with the local crows, adapt the camera system of a drone to see in the spectrum that local hawks see in and hunt rodents (image below) and during the residency we explore additional experiments in 'robochory' (the dispersal of plant seeds by machines).
A video impression of the residency by Theun: (click on image)
