Gathering Downstream

Southern, Jen (2022) Gathering Downstream. [Exhibition]

Abstract

This new art work asks the question What can machines learn about climate change from moss, meadows, trees, rocks and rivers? Moss and early spinning and weaving machines gathered at Quarry Bank, both relying on the dampness in the air to thrive. The steep valley carved into rock by the power of the river holds the moisture close, and provided power for the mill. Water runs through the project, oozing, trickling, pouring and raging through the cells of plants, the valleys rock, the engineered weirs and waterwheels of the mill, the oceans of the transatlantic slave trade triangle that the cotton industry was based on, and the floods and droughts of contemporary weather change. As water flows downstream it gathers with it histories, pollutants, debris and energy, what we put in here gathers further downstream. Gathering is also a way in which we can come together as humans, with technical and natural systems to reflect on the impact of the unintended consequences that the industrial revolution is having on our climate. Gathering Downstream is an installation of 5 videos made with machine learning software. Each video merges two sets of images to make a new hybrid, and in doing so it draws together the movement of water through time, from the climate when red limestone was deposited, the layering of live moss into peat beds, the water power dependant toil of mill workers, to present day environmental concerns. Each video relates to an unintended consequence of the industrial revolution and factories like the Gregs. Collectively they also question what the unintended consequences of current actions, technologies and industries will be. Each of the videos is a gathering in itself, as it brings together histories, natural systems, technical systems and futures, in an attempt to understand the complexity of the consequences of our actions.