Close Encounters: art, presence and environmental engagement at Loch Lomond

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What role can site-specific artwork, in the context of a nature reserve, play in strengthening multispecies connection during diverse kinds of visitor experience?Research Questions: What role can site-specific artwork, in the context of a nature reserve, play in strengthening multispecies connection during diverse kinds of visitor experience? In what ways can artwork embody and communicate knowledge relating to current environmental/scientific research and conservation practices? Academic research stresses the importance of connectedness to nature for pro-environmental behaviours, yet recent advances in the geohumanities, ecocriticism, and science and technology studies have unsettled simplistic conceptions of the intersecting relationship between nature, scienceand human experience. The nature reserve is a useful test-site for thinking about these issues. It can be configured not only as a place for protection and recreation, but also where meaningful connections are made, at personal, ecosystemic and global scales. This project will explore how the complexities of these connecting relationships can be embodied in artistic practice and ifinteractive sculpture can generate new forms of tacit knowledge and understanding of complex ecologies through sensory experience.Sited in the Loch Lomond reserve, Close Encounters will explore the use of sculptureto generate new modes of visitor engagement, foregrounding connection between person and place,reserved-nature and wider ecosystems, andpatterns of presence and absence. Loch Lomond is uniquely suited to this research: bought by the RSPB and partners in 2012, the reserve is still establishing both conservation andengagement practices. The diverse ecologies ofthe reserve makea rich and complex sitefor creative enquiry, including wet woodland dominated by native Alder; minerotrophic peatland fen; grassland and wildflower meadow, open lochand the course and floodplain of Endrik Water. These biodiverse habitats provide a unique experience for visitors and a complex conservation challenge for the RSPB, who are managing four overlapping national and European conservation designations.