Futurefarmers: Silicon Forest
Silicon Forest: Understories of Trees and Data
When: April 18 – June 21, 2025
Where: Stirek Gallery
Gallery Hours:
- Tuesday - Friday, 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.
- Tours held at 2 p.m. every Friday.
- Saturdays, 12:00 p.m. - 4:00 p.m.
- Sunday and Monday, Closed
Silicon Forest: Understories of Trees and Data is an exhibition and trans-disciplinary gathering conceptualized by artist collective Futurefarmers. The resulting works in the gallery at PRAx function as a conceptual storyboard, examining reciprocity between ecology, technological futures and consumption.
The term "silicon forest" (analogous to California's "Silicon Valley") refers to the uniquely positioned industrial corridor of Oregon and the state of Washington. Manufacturing of technological hardware and data storage in the Pacific Northwest illustrates a profound literal and conceptual connection between the growing necessity for networks — the mechanisms by which the ecological features of our landscape speak to one another and help us to store and transmit information of our own.
Emerging from a year of engagement with Oregon State University students, faculty, and researchers working across physics, astronomy, media history, biology, anthropology, ecology, computer science, and more, was a drive to consider how a future colored by energy consumption can be written with care, imagination, and ingenuity.
Futurefarmers present a series of material gestures reflecting the university's hopes around technological innovation, environmental policy, and capacity for being thoughtful actors in each.
About the Collective
Futurefarmers is a group of diverse practitioners aligned through an interest in making work that is relevant to the time and place surrounding us. Futurefarmers are artists, designers, architects, anthropologists, writers, computer programmers and farmers with a common interest in creating frameworks for exchange that catalyze moments of "not knowing."
Through participatory projects, the collective creates spaces and experiences where the assumed logics of the explored disciplines disappear.
Gathered Participants
- Luhui Whitebear, School of Language, Culture & Society (Oregon State University)
- Oksana Ostroverkhova, Physics and Optical Engineering (Oregon State University)
- Thomas H. Deluca, PhD, Dean, College of Forestry (Oregon State University)
- Anna Friz, Transmission Artist, Film and Digital Media (UC Santa Cruz)
- Maude David, Department of Microbiology (Oregon State University)
- Adam Quinn, Professor of History (University of Oregon)
- ooooo.be, Techno-feminists, Antwerp, Belgium
- Les Walton, Manager Energy Operations (Oregon State University)
- Seri Robinson, Professor of Wood, Science and Engineering (Oregon State University)
- Nichole Nomura, Associate Director, Stanford Literary Lab (Stanford)
- Michael Paul Nelson, Prof. of Environmental Ethics & Philosophy, Forest Ecosystems & Society (Oregon State University)
- Machine Listening (James Parker, Joel Stern, Sean Dockray), Melbourne, Australia
- David Stimpson, Lab Manager, OSU Seed Lab (Oregon State University)
- Andreas Emilio Guerrero, College of Agricultural Sciences (Oregon State University)
- Kai Castle, College of Agricultural Sciences (Oregon State University)