Visual Cultures of Forest Carbon - Stephen Cornford, Theo Stanley
Stephen Cornford ( United Kingdom ), Theo Stanley ( United Kingdom )
The rise of carbon governance and greenhouse gas removal agendas are leading forests to be measured with unprecedented detail. New data visualisation techniques combining drones, terrestrial laser scanning and LiDAR build 3D models which can estimate forest biomass and sequestered carbon with greater accuracy and granularity than ever before. These measurements now play an active role in carbon markets. Accurate measurement, reporting, and verification of forest carbon are vital to the legitimacy of carbon accounting and therefore foundational to Net Zero policies. Yet, there are significant uncertainties and methodological challenges about how to ‘best’ account for carbon.
Theo and Stephen are working on an interdisciplinary art-science film which will critically examine the role of imaging technologies and data visualisations in measuring, reporting, and verifying measurements of forest carbon. The film will reveal how the technical, aesthetic and political are combined in these visualisations of forest, highlighting important yet largely obscured issues relating to epistemic justice and equity.
This residency is funded by the Department of Art & Media Technology at Winchester School of Art, University of Southampton.