A Conversation Between Trees connected the Mata Atlantica Forest (in Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro) with Rockingham Forest, Hadley Woods and Sherwood Forest (England). An interactive art installation visualised environmental and climate data in forests, alongside a schools exchange between schools in Rio de Janeiro and Nottingham, workshops and interventions. The project was created by Active Ingredient originally in collaboration with Paulo Hartmann and Marcelo Godoy from Mobilfest BR, and developed with artist/curator Silvia Leal, Horizon Digital Economy at the University of Nottingham, Dr Carlo Buontempo at the Hadley Centre, MET Office UK and Bruno Rezende at the Rio Botanical Gardens.

The interactive installation visualised live environmental data collected from remote trees in forests in the UK and Brazil, alongside both historical and forecast global CO2 data. A turntable on the Climate Machine rotates with a stack of paper on it, while a drawing arm that holds a heating element (a
soldering iron) moves in and out; each paper disc represents a single year of CO2 readings, that were then hung in the gallery showing each year of global CO2 data from 1959-2011. Visitors also took part in a mobile sensing experience in a nearby forest.

Rachel received an honourable mention for the academic paper published about A Conversation Between Trees, and it was also included as one of the two case studies in her PhD and in several other publications:
2014 Jacobs R. The Artists’ Footprint, PHD Thesis, University of Nottingham
http://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/14450/3/artists_footprint_ethesis.pdf

2013 Jacobs R, Benford S, Selby M, Golembewski M, Price D, Giannachi G. A
conversation between trees: what data feels like in the forest. InProceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems 2013 Apr 27 (pp. 129-138). ACM. (Honourable Mention Award)
https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/2470654.2470673

AI – Conversation Between Trees. from Jeffery Baker on Vimeo.