Monoculture, Monotechnics, Mononature
Sensorial Installation - 2022
This work is developed from an investigation with and about the eucalyptus. Currently, the eucalyptus is the most planted tree species in Brazil, despite its Australian origin. While in Australia the eucalyptus forests cover about 77% of the native forest area and are responsible for maintaining much of the country’s biodiversity, in Brazil it was introduced in a controversial monoculture logic that leaves behind the so-called “green deserts”. Considered sacred by the Australian aboriginal population, the same type of tree generates constant conflicts with Brazilian indigenous communities who suffer from land disputes, the blocking of sunlight, and the use of pesticides near their territories. Through this duality, the work explores the dangers of adopting a single hegemonic vision of nature, culture, and technology without taking into account local variations.
The work is a sensorial installation consisting of a series of ceramic vases with dried eucalyptus branches, an ultrasonic sensor and a real-time generated video. The video is created from a scanned 3D model of a eucalyptus tree. This digital model is also embedded in a monoculture logic, where it is copied and pasted several times. This occurs in a generative process mediated through the ultrasonic sensor that captures the public’s movement throughout the exhibition period. As the public gets closer, the image of the 3D model multiplies more and more. As the images repeat themselves, they become less recognizable, decomposing the image by repetition.
Maps of the location of eucalyptus forests in Australia and Brazil are also present in the video, they undergo the same type of operation, and through repetition, they have their positioning and scale altered and superimposed.
The work proposes a monoculture of 3D models, with a repetition on such a scale that it decomposes the forming image. The installation explores the urgency of a technodiverse multiplicity to face the challenges of the Anthropocene. It proposes contact as transformation through the extra-human-vegetal relationship. It points to approximation as alteration by the empty repetition of copies of 3D models that lose their reference.