How Scientists & Artists Engage the Creative Life Force of Nature

richblundell.com www.ritaleduc.com oika.com As you walk through Hubbard Brook Forest you will encounter strange objects. Plastic nets and bins, bags, and tags, pins, pipes, and panels. These are the tools of science. This forest is a place designated for exploration, experimentation, manipulation and measurement. These are the markers of human curiosity and discovery. They document how science generates knowledge, with reverence, about how nature works.
The scientific method is reductive by design. That is to say, science breaks complexity down into simpler parts in order to understand the world. There are strict rules to doing science, and for good reason.
Art, on the other hand, is a manifestation of indomitable human will, creativity and self-expression. Art follows different rules than science, or none at all, and for good reason.
I started my career as a scientist, trained in the ways of science. My collaborator is an artist, trained in the ways of art. Hubbard brook is an experimental forest shaped by glaciers and time. Ecology Extended is our experiment to traverse the boundaries of art and science. Our work here is to immerse ourselves in the nature of Hubbard Brook and its science, to listen for any ecological intelligence that may be carried from nature into culture by art.
The Science:
In 2016 and 17 scientists at Hubbard Brook Experimental Forest in New Hampshire designed an experiment to study the effects of ice storms on forests. Over the course of successive winter nights they created artificial ice storms that coated branches with ice. The experiment yielded much important knowledge on how to standardize the measurement of ice impact and how forests respond to disruptive events. But there were surprising discoveries too, about the inherent reserves of creativity, adaptation and the hidden resilience of ecosystems.
The Art
Rita and I used a methodology different from that of science to ask questions and listen to the forest. We hiked the trails, bouldered the contours of the brook and sought out hidden places. We spent time among the trees and the detritus of the Ice Storm Experiment. We considered science, but our approach was more contemplative, imaginal, poetic and playful.
When we spent time in the plots of ISE, mostly we sensed the inherent creativity of the forest. We sensed it in the trees, bending back into thriving, and we sensed it in ourselves bending back into belonging. We came into contact with a creative, ecological intelligence that we call Oika.
There is Oika in the painting. From the angular strictures of science, comes life that strives to be. We see energies strike like lightning, emerge from the brook and ascend into ethereal clouds of awareness. This is the atmosphere of a place asserting itself.
As we processed our own data, and created, I learned indigenous myths about giants that shaped the land, and its inhabitants. I came to understand how these myths of giants were actually referring to glaciers. These are the stories of generations past who were here to witness the power of ice on places and people.
An Indigenous Interpretation:
This “Great Spirit” animates nature in human terms. Such myths keep the relationship to the land alive over generations through oral traditions. Indigenous traditions know the Great Spirit by many names, Chief Standing Bear of the Lakota Nation invokes the Gici Niweskw as the Wakan Tanka
…a great unifying life force that flows in and through all things - the flowers of the plains, blowing winds, rocks, trees, birds, animals - and was the same force that had been breathed into the first man. Thus all things were kindred, and were brought together by the same Great Mystery.
I believe our project came into contact with the forces of Gici Wakaw. I believe science does too, but may prefer, for good reasons, not to speak of such giants.
Art, on the other hand, reserves the right to speak in any way it wants on behalf of people and places. This is how the intelligence of nature can reach culture.
Since the Ice Storm Experiment, the plots have largely healed. The scientists are reporting how the ecological dynamics have begun to stabilize. You can see it in the graphs and read about it in their journals. The artist has felt and expressed the babbling creativity of the brook and the bend of the branches through colors and forms of pixel and paint on the wall. The Abenaki might even say that Gici Niweskw has attended to the disturbance. And if I’ve done my job faithfully, you might be able to faintly feel the Oika in this little room.
We all have ways of saying it, but if you spend enough time in the woods you too will feel the Giant in the Forest.
The artist, Rita Leduc reveals giants in her own way.
www.ritaleduc....
The Ice Storm Experiment reveals them in a scientific way.
hubbardbrook.o...

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The experiences and concepts of Oika explored in this video are now being confirmed by natural science, new cognitive psychology, and emerging theories of mind and consciousness. You can learn more and get certified as an Oika Cultural creative at oika.com