Julia Christensen: Professor of Integrated Media and Chair of the … – The Oberlin Review

Last week, Professor of Integrated Media and Chair of the StudioArt department Julia Christensenpresented her ongoing project, TheTree of Life, at the California Institute of Technology. Christensenswork explores the intersection ofart and technology.

This interview has been edited forlength and clarity.

You just presented your project, The Tree of Life, at theInterplanetary Small SatelliteConference at Caltech. What isThe Tree of Life?

The Tree of Life is a global public art piece that includes a seriesof living trees around the globe,which we are harnessing to actas living terrestrial antennae thatcan communicate with a spacecraft were designing to push theconstraints of obsolescence thatare maintained by a capitalisttechnology structure, to thinkabout technology as long-lastingand sustainable. So thats the beginning. The trees have sensorson them that are reading dataabout light, moisture, and temperature, and we are sonifyingthat data continuously. The treeantennae have been sending outthe song about their light, moisture, and temperature experience,and the spacecraft receives thatfile. Meanwhile, the spacecraftis sending a similar song aboutits operational experience to thetrees. So both songs are put together to make a duet about ourlife on Earth in conversation withtechnology that we built.

The whole idea was originally inspired when I was asked toenvision an art project to be embedded on an interstellar spacecraft that was conceptually timedto leave Earth in the year 2016. Iwanted to create a song or a storyfrom the perspective of trees onearth, rather than from the perspective of humans. A lot of mycollaborators are space scientistsat the Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena, and we formed a nonprofitcalled The Space Song Foundation to support the project.

Is the focus of The Space SongFoundation to support oneproject, or was the foundationstarted to expand on the conversations started by The Treeof Life project?

The mission statement of SpaceSong is to support The Tree of Lifeproject and explore and expandideas about design at the intersection of art, science, and technology, to think about sustainable design on Earth and in outer space,because there are a lot of designprinciples that are designed to dothe test or answer a question orfinish the experiment, and sometimes thats just done in a six-month window. The thing thathappens to all of that technologywhen its designed for such a specific function is something we seeon Earth all of the time, becausewere dealing with electronics onsuch an extraordinary scale. Thesame questions apply to the technology that were launching intoouter space, and were at a pointwhere dead technology is goingto create sort of this exoskeletonorbiting our planet. So these questions are super timely. Also, in order to do deep space exploration,to go to another solar system, weneed technology that is able to notonly travel, you know, 4.2 lightyears away or whatever, but alsooperate that entire time. Itll takedecades for a spacecraft to get toa destination that distant, so wealso have to be thinking about thelong-term operation and technology in order to envision interstellar missions.

So how do we start thinkingabout sustainable design forspace technology?

Theres the spacecraft itself. Wehave been working with a teamof engineers and space scientistssince 2018 to develop schematicsfor CubeSat, a small, toaster-sized spacecraft that can operatefor 200 years. The interestingthing about this process is thatengineers are trained to think inshort timelines, asking, how dowe get the data that we need in sixmonths? And so when we madethis proposition to them, to designthis CubeSat that will last 200years, they were sort of befuddled they wanted to know, Yeah,but whats it gonna do? And wesaid, Actually, what its going todo is secondary; longevity is thecentral design intention here.As soon as the engineers began toembrace that the main test waslongevity, it changed the way thatwere thinking about design.

It often seems that our current culture makes us unableto think long term. Does thismake designing with the purpose of longevity difficult?

I think that our public imaginations about the future, in away, are being constrained byupgrade culture. I wrote a bookthat was just published a coupleof years ago called Upgrade Available about this idea that becausethe upgrade is always available,its hard for us to think long terminto the future without consider-ing constant disruption. And soThe Tree of Life project is a way ofputting our imagination on a 200-year time scale so we can committo a future in a way that technology is antithetical to. And withthe trees, part of the question thatwe were asking is if a spacecraft istrying to send us data in 150 yearsfrom interstellar destination, howare we going to receive that data?How do we get a JPEG in the year2250? So, we started to thinkabout how we really need to lookback at earlier technological systems, to think about fidelity in thelong term. Radio just kept comingback. You know, a radio wave isa radio wave, its not going to become obsolete. We can change theway that we transmit it or receiveit, but if the laws of physics aretrue across the universe, whichwe think they are, a sine wave isa sine wave. My colleagues whowork on NASA projects, they lovethis project, because its so Back tothe Future. We have to look backto look forward.

What do you think being anartist doing this work providesto these conversations of technology? Does it take an artisticeye to design something thatreimagines current perceptions of longevity?

Recently, somebody was introducing me at a talk and theycalled me an embedded artist. Ivenever really thought about thatterm in relation to myself, but Ikind of like it because its sort oflike embedding an artist at the table with people who are trying tosolve some other kind of problem.Some of my engineer colleaguessay that artists help them thinkthrough their thinking, becausewe can slow things down. Werelike, Well, why dont we justmake it empty? Also, I thinkthat having an artist in the roomempowers scientists to see thework that theyre doing as creative, you know, and not so analytical. I mean, working with mycolleagues in Space Song, I thinkit helps them see that really, wereall kind of on this existential planeof asking these questions aboutwho we are and where we are.

ast week, Professor of Integrated Media and Chair of the StudioArt department Julia Christensenpresented her ongoing project, TheTree of Life, at the California Institute of Technology. Christensenswork explores the intersection ofart and technology.