Out From the Flood – DevLog V1.0

Out From the Flood is an online digital work released in the summer of 2020. 

It is designed as a long form interaction and dialogue with a research station on the edge of the arctic circle in northern Finland. 

As part of our ongoing work exploring aesthetics and language around environment and climate change we have wanted to work directly with the vast amounts of data generated by the station for a long time. OFTF is a first iteration of this dialogue.

As this is a living project that will change and evolve over the year I wanted to do a brief explainer of the data contained in this version (V1.0) and what you can see and do.

OFTF is made up of high density LiDAR scans of the forest surrounding the station. You can walk around and explore this 50m2 area. The landscape itself is affected and brought to life by data collected from the station and running under all of this is audio recorded in the field by our own OFR recorders. The sound, data and scans are all current and collected in the past month in the lead up to the launch. 

As you explore the map (using the keys WASD and your mouse)  you will uncover some other sound or data zones. Currently shown in the work are : Wind speed and direction driven by 3d data from Anemometer, Soil temperature, Co2 calculations (visible by ‘breathing’ out using the B key on your keyboard) as well as a ghostly reindeer that is eating a patch of lightly simulated lichen. Finally you can also uncover a second location in the form of a rock face at the edge of a flooding river that is currently swollen to almost record levels.

OFTF is there to be explored and exist as an ambient digital work, as the year progresses it will fill with more scans and locations and we are currently working to get live data streamed from the field as well as more sound from out recorders that are capturing around the clock as the world around the forest slowly moves out of lockdown.

OFTF is an experimental piece in that it is trying to show and make tangible very large amounts of data ranging from the Lidar scans, months of recorded audio and dense data readings from sensors in the field. One of the things we want to explore is how to visualise the data’s real world presence and how we can make this invisible global changes tangible for audiences. As we grow our datasets, new interactions and ways of exploring OFTF will emerge as we develop it as a medium with our partners at the research station so keep checking back to see what emerges.