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Memory Code
A term coined by Lynne Kelley. Ways of encoding environmental, ethological and cultural knowledge directly into the environment (or objects)
Hiking with Monsters
Notes an a student program run by Theun.
Session1 Fieldwork
- Intro fieldwork practice
- Assignment: what place would you like to explore, how would you do it?
- Assignment 4th year: How do you share that exploration with others?
Session2 What lives here now.
- Intro Nederlands landscape.
- Set up whatsapp (or otherwise)
- Field assignment:
find a creature that interests you, how would you design a way to communicatie with it? - Or what qualities does it have? How do you think it informs itself about the world around it? Name it based on those qualities.
Session3 Regeneration
- Regenerative practices
- What would your area need? How can habitat be reinvigorated, restored?
- Field assignment: Take a 1 hour hike from the perspective of your animal. Try to experience the world through it’s eyes, ears, of antennae. Slow as snail, fast as a bird. Report your experience and design a way for others to experience the perspective of your animal during a hike. How can someone experience the world from that perspective?
Assignment 4th year: How can local people become active participants in that reconnection?- Research assignment: What lived in your area before? What do you think is missing now? What qualities does your environment lack?
Session4 Rewilding
What would your area need? Which organisms can regenerate it?- Make groups: if you look at your animals, where are opportunities for coexistence? How could this animal live there? What would be needed? Rewilding.
Group: what do each of your animals need? Where do their interests match or clash? How could such different needs be brought together? (Afterwards give example of Aboriginal totems).
- What timescale do you design for?
- Field assignment: what natural cycles are missing, disrupted? How to reconnect. (Any size, tiny ant tunnel)
- Choose an environmental process in your neighbourhood. Translate its properties into a being.
Session5 Team work
Based on previous lesson, work in groups on one organism. Who are the experts?assignment: Design a research team: what kinds of expertise are needed? (What is in it for them?)assignment 4th year: Design a research week. Location. Team. Question.(Don’t design the team sitting in your classroom. Do it on location!)- What does your area need? What natural cycles are missing, disrupted? How to reconnect. What qualities are lacking in your area? Make a list of these qualities. Give them to an other group and they will design a creature (character design, mythological being) based on those. At the end of the class we see if those Monsters fit their purpose.
- field assignment: hike with your Monster through your area: what do you notice from the monsters perspective?
Assignment 4th year: How can the monster / creature activate local people? Or more formally: how can locals people become active participants in reconnecting environmental processes?
Session6 Animals as guides
What qualities do animals need to thrive? (Elephants memory, bioindicators, animals/plants as messengers)Ecologist can see this area needs… wolves. (Trophic cascades)Assignment: (I give 5 animals and plants) in groups: what are the qualities of those animals?Assignment after class: translate those qualities into a human being a character.(In what ways does that help to think about the role of animals, in what ways does it hinder?)
Session7
- Qualities of animals and plants in the long now.
- Australia and aboriginals. Tending the wild.
- Assignment: memory walk
Session8
- Memory walk field test together.
- Assignment: design a multi generational knowledge system. How can our understanding and experience of the environment be shared across time?
- (Floppy disc vs. songline)
Session10
- Discuss the multigenerational knowledge systems.