An Arts Council England funded commission by Salt Road’s Jaime Jackson on digital artworks using AI and Augmented Reality linked to trees in parks across the West Midlands.

An Arts Council England funded commission in partnership with CDE Birmingham hub by Jaime Jackson from Salt Road, with Cannock Chase District Council and The Great Imagining. Made with the collaboration of young people during the Great Imagining Cannock Chase. Audio recordings from year 5 and six pupils at Churchfield primary academy, reading nature empathy text created by young people across Cannock Chase District. The visual work was created with an AI machine learning model, trained with a dataset of 150 school pupils who made drawings of the lines on their hands, drawn as if they were their own roots.

Jaime is running a series of nature place-based relational socially engaged workshops with communities that, together with studio based visual art practice, will lead to the co-production of a digital Augmented Reality artworks for orchards and parks. This is a Biophilic (love of nature) visual art project, taking the principle that we are nature to respond to the earth crisis, helping people connect with nature around them.

AR artwork co-created with FE students at South Staffordshire College for the Great Imagining Cannock Chase

Jaime is working with disadvantaged and marginalised communities across the West Midlands in North Herefordshire, Cannock Chase and East Birmingham to co-produce digital art content exploring people’s awareness of nature.

He is collaborating with climate and ecology scientists in England and Internationally to root the project in their research. And link and disseminate the project with international and English climate and ecology crisis networks including the Biophilic City Network, The Nature of Cities Festival and Culture Declares Emergency.

Climate Science collaboration:

Jaime is collaborating with cross disciplinary climate and ecology researchers using latest scientist research on the underground mycorrhizal network (that connects the roots of a plant with fungi), Biophilia (love of nature), cognitive- ecology benefits and the links between social and environmental justice. Including SPUN the Society for the protection of underground networks, a scientific research organization founded to map mycorrhizal fungal communities and advocate for their protection. As well as the Research Council funded Treescapes program at the University of Birmingham, the Climate Psychology Alliance UK and Ethnobiological research lead by University of Amsterdam.