Lindsey French

Drunken Text Messages from an Oak Tree
Cell phone video; 4.5 x 2.25 x 0.25 in.

Motivated by respectful collaboration with the natural world, I draw on a background of landscape studies and ecological activism to engage in gestures of communication with landscapes and the nonhuman. My practice is an open series of projects and research aimed toward decentering a human-centric experience, to practice and propose alternatives to human-centered ecosystems, in an era of climate change and ecological crises.

Using technological mediation I search for new forms of communication with the natural world. Aided by electronic sensors and algorithms, I engage with individual organisms through processes of signaling, listening, and interpreting.

My work situates me sensually in different roles among plants, landscapes, and other materials as media, message, and facilitator of communication. I want to focus on feeling because it moves us away from communication being strictly cognitive. In ‘written by trees’ I am an editor and listener, reversing literary gestures by querying an oak tree in a durational project using sensors, custom software, and algorithmic gestures.

I find my role as a human role in a global ecosystem contingent, uncertain. From this profound vulnerability I practice new myths of identity, assert quiet opposition, hover in the slippages between self and environment, and engage in practices of active and sensual listening.