Visualise The Future — Elaine Ford’s Vision
Check out Elaine’s piece, process, artist statement, and our reactions
On Tuesday March 30th, Traveltech for Scotland launched their ‘Visualise the Future’ project, in which they commissioned four Scottish-based artists the create a visualisation of the future of tech-enabled tourism in the next 20 years.
About Elaine Ford
Elaine Ford is an artist and biologist from Scotland who works to create installations using natural material, VR immersive experiences and photography and film that help to connect us with ourselves as a part of nature. Elaine is also a member of the Traveltech for Scotland community with her business Electrek Explorer which is on a mission to tackle the climate crisis by incentivising low carbon electric travel and eco-tourism. Check out her work here
Elaine’s Vision — Physarum Polycephalum
Artist Statement
“ Life was unicellular at the beginning; the origin of intelligence on Earth.”
“Biological complexity on earth has oscillated on Earth over time, through great flourishings followed by catastrophic extinctions. The arrival of modern humans and our relentless resource consumption is leading to the latest collapse in biodiversity, and accelerating climate change.
Travel and exploration has always been essential for our survival as a species, but now more than ever we must envisage and a future of low carbon travel; enhancing our connection with the natural world to allow us to continue to explore without further damaging our planet.
Some see the future of efficient travel enabled by Artificial Intelligence. But what would the future look like if we were less anthropocentric, and co-designed our future travel with the other organisms that we share the planet with; harnessing their ancient collective intelligence to co-create a more sustainable future?
Elaine explored this question through partnership with a 1 billion year old, unicellular organism called Physarum polycephalum, aka slime mould. Together, Elaine and the slime co-created artwork that explores how drivers of Electric Vehicles could plan their trips across Scotland, between charging points in the most efficient manner. This is one of the most challenging topics in computer science: ‘ the travelling salesman problem’. In a solar-punk future, Elaine envisages novel partnerships between human technologies like AI and natural technologies such as the efficient-network creation ability of slime moulds to tackle complex problems. Inspired by the development of Nature Based Solutions to help solve large scale environmental issues, the artwork applies a natural intelligence approach to route optimisation, exploring the notion of a symbiotic relationship between biology and technology. Growth of the mould over dark shimmering surface evokes images of oil spills, yet is life-affirming as the slime expands and shows us a new way forward. Co-designing the world with non-human life gives nature a voice in planning for the future, and could lead to more sustainable outcomes for us all.”
Check out a Slimelapse piece here, showing the dynamic growth of Elaine’s co-creator:
The process
Josh’s Response (Director of Traveltech)
This is certainly the most unexpected outcome of the bunch. It is also the most radical. This is the first time I’ve directly considered biology, technology and tourism.
We all talk about ‘innovation’ perpetually, often failing to truly think about what we mean by the word ‘innovation’. Elaine suggests that we bring in the knowledge and processes from other disciplines and apply them to the field of tourism. This is actually innovation — by the definition. She poses to us the question whether unexpected, albeit ancient, sources of wisdom could travel technology start meet to meet the sustainability challenges of tourism?
When we look a little closer, biology has been and will be increasingly influential in tourism. Not just the ‘biology’ involved in wildlife and biodiversity preservation and promotion. In preparation of this work Elaine told us that even the ‘slime’ that is the focus of this piece, was studies in the design of the Tokyo Railway System. The design of transport modes is often biologically inspired. Synthetic biology is seen as one area of scientific and technological potential that could create greener fuels, support the circular economy or reduce pollution. These are all critical to the future of travel.
The most pertinent connection for biology and tourism is in the management of travel during the pandemic. Without the current and continued development of rapid diagnostics and vaccines, the travel cannot safely restart. Our vaccine status is likely to be required for international travel. In the future other biological markers may be mandated in our passports to prevent future global health crises.
The specific focus of Elaine’s work is the potential of biological ‘intelligence’ in realising the green infrastructure required for sustainable travel. Elaine’s company, Electrek Explorer is seeking to incentivise the creation of electric vehicle charging stations across Scotland. Although this is art, the practical and immediate use of this should not be ignored. Recent funding announcements show that Scotland is backing sustainable tourism infrastructure. Why shouldn’t slime be one of the deciders for where electric vehicle charging stations are located?
A truly innovative idea. Elaine is a living embodiment to the importance of art, science and technology working in unison to mitigate the impact of global climate change.
Check out a full video of the event here, including Elaine’s presentation and process. Otherwise, read the recap and find the other artists’ work here.
Thank you to everyone who was involved in this project, and to Elaine Ford for her contribution.
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