By interacting with art, flux scientists gain fresh ideas and by visiting research stations, artists source inspiration from flux science. Ulla, Finish art curator and flux scientist Timo explain to listeners in vivid detail what it is like to work at the Hyytiälä research station and experience the permanent multidisciplinary art exhibit hosted in the forest.
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In this episode of Meet the Fluxers, we learn about how Finland's Hyytiälä forest research station evolved into a space where scientific research and contemporary art coexist. Timo and Ulla reflect on serendipity and how the magical atmosphere at Hyytiälä station fosters unexpected insights and innovations. The Hyytiälä station is home to extensive instrumentation for monitoring carbon dioxide, water vapor, and methane fluxes over forests, lakes, and peatlands, including one of Europe's longest-running eddy covariance flux towers. The Climate Whirl and Periferia art programs invite visitors to experience nature with a fresh perspective with installations like "After the Rain" and "The Weep of the Trees". These programs demonstrate how conversations between art and science benefit both communities — scientists are challenged to go outside of their comfort zone while artists find inspiration in the scientific inquiry and measurement equipment and data. Both guests emphasize the value of creative freedom in both science and art, noting that neither art nor science should be merely a tool for the other.
Transcript
Maoya: Tell us a bit of what it was like when you arrived at the forest station for the first time.
Ulla: The first time that I arrived to Hyytiälä was 2011 or 12. I was invited by a forest scientist, Eija Juurola. Before going there, we had been in contact because she wanted to start something in Hyytiälä that would connect the artists and scientists there. I love forests, but at first, it's like any other Finnish forest, like everywhere. Then, I was taken to the SMEAR forest. This is a weird place. The soundscape, the weird measuring devices. Other people I also met in this first visit, they were so enthusiastic of the research, the summer courses, the forest students staying there. It was kind of like, all this enthusiasm that made an impression to me.
Timo: Hyytiälä has already history which is longer than 100 years for education of forestry students to work and learn the forestry in the field. I visited in ‘94 because of science, and that was the time when we started to build up their scientific station which is called SMEAR, s-m-e-a-r, quite a weird name. We started to plan measuring atmosphere, forest material, and energy flows. It took from me about two years before I really had established there our flux measurements. I have been visiting there quite much. Something like 100 people can easily stay there.
Whenever I go there, the kitchen is making little bit old fashioned Finnish food using quite much salt, and fats and we are eating a lot of potatoes. It takes me back to my childhood. One Ph.D. student was there the whole summer making their carbon sulfide flux measurements. And she came as a “just married” for a honeymoon, with her husband to Hyytiälä because they like forest, they like nature. They were mushrooming there and everything.
Maoya: What has inspired you since you know, working there for such a long time?
Timo: It's, in Europe, one of the longest eddy covariance flux series or carbon dioxide water vapor. We are also getting flux measurements over the lake, and as far as I know, it's the longest flux record over the lake ever measured. There is also the natural pristine wetland, peatland, where we have also a very long time series and methane eddy covariance time series and as far as I know, it's also the longest in the world. Especially the atmospheric measurements, they are really a unique setup for measuring aerosol particles and atmospheric chemistry. To combine also, all of this eco-physiological and the soil studies, and boundary layer and micromet studies, it allows to also detect very small trends, what's happening and try to explain where the trends are coming from. You can catch some extraordinary, extreme situations, like drought, very wet periods, and so on when you are measuring 24/7, 30 years.
Hyytiälä is very famous as a place where have been recognized or observed for the first time ever, the formation of some very tiny atmospheric particles, on the nanometer scale and trying to figure out what are the mechanisms which are producing these particles in the forest.
Maoya: Tell us a little bit more of the history of how art got settled and established at the forest station.
Ulla: A Finnish well-known visual artist, Terike Haapoja, found Hyytiälä because she was thinking about a series of artworks and she needed more information on the carbon cycle in nature. She was taken, of course, to this SMEAR station that is full of chambers. This visit for Terike to Hyytiälä was very, very important for all arts and the artworks that she created after this visit and the dialogue with the scientists at Hyytiälä. Eija and other people, they wrote the project and got funding, and we launched Climate Whirl Art Program.
Maoya: Was this something a little bit unexpected for you to get involved in? Or was this something you were hoping to do all along?
Timo: It was something like a carpe diem, because I have always been somewhat devoted to art and especially visual art. Although I must admit, I'm not a mass consumer, because of the lack of time.
Ulla: In Aalto University in Espoo, they had this idea of launching a Biological Arts Laboratory. Because I had this background of combining arts with sciences, they proposed me to work in this project and I was a project manager in Biofilia Base for Biological Arts. The laboratory was opened in 2012. Eija got in contact and Hyytiälä swallowed me entirely. I think it was more close to my passions to work in a forest than in a laboratory.
Maoya: What are the activities, and what are maybe some of the example art pieces?
Ulla: Periferia, the art exhibition that is now in the station was opened in June ‘23 and it consists of eight artworks from contemporary artists. For me, it's impossible to describe them here because most of them are open air, they are in a peatland, they are in a forest. They are in ever-changing environments.
Timo: They can be very conceptual. So, I really like this, how there is a broad range in the style of how these artworks have been done. There is one artwork located in the wetland. When I typically go, whatever is the season, I remove my shoes, I remove my socks, and I go walk there on the bare feet. Sometimes there has been some foreigners with me. They are looking at me, mouth open. Then they walk there, and they say that they are first time ever maybe walking in the wetland. This art can be interactive and pushing people to something unexpected.
There is something like Stonehenge, and then I went there, exactly in the middle of this shape in midnight in June when there was solstice. So, the solstice in Finland is really short, and I went there and I was waiting for something magic to happen. Very, very nice experience.
Ulla: This piece is called “After the Rain” by architect Juhani Pallasmaa. The artwork makes people see these very familiar places in a different way. Also, we have a very interesting art piece in a pine forest. It's called “The Weep of the Trees”, where people can sit in a small greenhouse in the middle of the forest and you listen to this very strange sound piece. This is one of the artworks that divides the opinions very much. These experiences are very subjective. In a normal forest, you could not have electricity, for example, and now we have installations that are quite demanding. We also have this know-how to keep these art installations alive in these very special conditions.
Jess: How is the attitude towards the environment different in Finland? And how does that impact your ability to do science?
Timo: Finnish land area is covered something like 80% by forests. A really big fraction of that is managed forest, so it's not pristine forest, but a forest in any case. Over the years, when we have travel into Finland, I have a lot of comments that what will happen if the car breaks? Are we then dying? Are the wolves coming and eating us? They are at least semi-serious with these questions, they are scared. One person from the LI-COR company, he was calling his wife and saying, “Do you know I’m in the wild woods in Finland?” I was thinking, “Oh my God, we are not really in wild woods.” It’s a relationship with the environment and also to forests. In Finnish fictional films, the forest is often thought to be a place where you are safe. If you look at other Anglo-Saxon films, the forest and woods are often scary and the place for horrors. There is something scary in between it will attack you.
Ulla: The bogs, for the Finnish, have been places they are respectful [of], and bogs have been in mythologies and so they are dangerous places. You can disappear in the bog, and so-so.
Maoya: How are these, the forest, the climate, and the flux science, creative contexts for the artists? In what ways is this fueling their work?
Timo: It's more coming from this atmosphere and feelings, and also seeing how you measure things in the field. Hyytiälä forest, it's a big-scale laboratory full of different boxes, full of different tubes. There are a lot of towers. So many things are covered by some sensors. Then comes the curiosity that what we are really getting out of that? And some have utilized the data. They can be very conceptual.
We are something like producers for artists. I think this is the bottom line for doing art, that artists should have free hands to do those things. Whoever comes there and becomes very interested in these pieces of art, there is a lot of information available on our website. The artists are also famous. They have websites. People can go there and find more information. They certainly can figure out this connection to all of this science.
Jess: Are you hoping that there's a specific message that they receive, or some action that they take after?
Ulla: There are a lot of interests, especially in Finland now, towards forests and the climate. There are a lot of inquiries related to forest ecology, forest science, climate change, and so on. It’s very important that these inquiries are taken seriously and this is what we are trying to do, is think who would be the person artists could talk to. It’s not all so easy for artists to find the right people to be in contact with. What the scientists can do is contribute your knowledge and your enthusiasm. Waste some time, chance some conversation that might not lead to something that is productive. You never know where these conversations can take you. This can also bring you new ideas.
Timo: Art and science should be done without any purposes. I mean, that it's not important whether they have applicative values, or they have some economical values. Those are secondary things, alternatives. The most important thing is that human beings are made to make art, and are made to make science. It's also important that scientists and artists are maintaining this voice. Everything shouldn't be under the pressure of economical values. Our attitude related to Hyytiälä is communicating these values.
Jess: What's the makeup of the people who come out to the station and visit?
Ulla: Visitors from the place are people who come there because of their studies, their research. There are nowadays very different events in Hyytiälä. Also, there's a tradition that different years of study, they return to Hyytiälä to remember their study years. But nowadays because Periferia has been quite a lot in the media in Finland, people find it. Now we have these wanderers.
The visitors now, they are from many paths of life. Foresting company managers, teachers from Finland and abroad, diplomats, presidents, decision makers. You have to understand, also, that forest, and the forest industry in Finland, is very very important. It's really heavy, and the traditions around that are very heavy. So, many people come there.
Timo: University staff in general, so also deans and faculty representatives, President of University, we call it the rector, vice rector and so on, it could be important that they see that something like that is going on in their university. People may come, also, from some other universities and also outside Finland. Secondary school and high school students, they are making excursions to Hyytiälä with teachers.
Maoya: How do we continue to create conditions for this?
Timo: So we have also had over the years, the art residency program. Now, we don't have separate funding for that anymore, but this visibility threshold is reached. Now, there are artists who are aware of Hyytiälä. They are then finding their own funding, then they come there for the art residency. That brings some sustainability. Then as artwork continues, then some new pieces of art may come there, some new artists and so on. Organizing climate science students, art students, summer schools, that needs special funding. Sometimes we are successful, sometimes not, and the competition is quite hard. On the other hand, at the moment in Finland, there are quite many private foundations who really like to give funding for very fundamental science and artwork.
Ulla: It's complex because there are so many stakeholders. There is the university, there are the funders, there are the general public, then there are other art institutions who are offering exhibitions and cultural contents. We are in the middle of this picture. We have to find a balance. A forest field station is not an art museum. There is no staff that is taking care of the masses. If suddenly, there starts to be buses and buses of people and they mess up that measuring station, this will be the end of the whole project! So, it could be that too much success would kill the project. Keeping the balance is something very important and it can be complex.
And, just to mention, there is a very important art museum 40 kilometers from Hyytiälä called Serlachius Art Museum. One of artists who has been working and continuing her work at Hyytiälä since 10 years ago, now, Agnes Meyer-Brandis, she's a German artist, she will have a solo exhibition in Mänttä for one year. It's really nice because we will have an exhibition of one of the artists who is a really long-term collaborator and many scientists in our University of Helsinki already know her personally. It’s kind of like a way to see an art exhibition in a real museum, not in a forest, where these really complex science questions are given to the public. In this museum, there are thousands of thousands of visitors during the year.
I think it's so beautiful that each time an artist contacts me and comes kind of like, “Yeah, I have been thinking about this…” You would never imagine all these different thoughts that people have related to this same station. There is a really rich variety of different questions that are present in Hyytiälä. This question of visualizing or popularizing science, it's so misleading in a sense that if you try to direct things to some direction that, “Yeah, now we want some artwork of this,” you are really making a mistake. You could never imagine all these different approaches that artists have when they are in contact with us. It's always a surprise, what different persons can think about and why they are curious and why they want to know more.
Timo: This is also very bilateral, what artists get and what scientists get. Quite often, scientists are thinking about this art exhibition in the science station. So we are able to, scientists are able to, advertise and open the science like in Hyytiälä. So, people who are coming here because of the art, then they are also exposed to issues of climate change, environmental changes, biodiversity loss, and that kind of thing, which is important. But then when we are thinking like that, then we are seeing art as a tool for science. It shouldn't be only like that.
I have also noticed already, now over these few years, that it can also go another direction. Because Hyytiälä is visited much more by scientists from different backgrounds, different countries, different levels of career, and when they come there and then they are exposed to art, that is also giving them something. So then, from that perspective, science is the tool for art. I have even seen sometimes happening that there have been some scientists who haven't been so interested in modern contemporary conceptual art, and have some prejudices.
Some say, “What is that? This is not for me.” But when going there, have admitted that this is really interesting and he's getting something out of that. So that's also important, that it's going in both directions. So, everybody gets something which is out of your own basic fundamental knowledge and background. The second thing, what I want to say very shortly is that, if I am thinking personally, I would say that this art collaboration has made me meet new types of people. For me it's always quite nice to talk and hang around and listen to how the artists are talking about and how they are thinking. They are really giving thought provoking things from different angles which also then put me to think a little bit differently. Artists are much different than scientists. On the other hand, they are also very much similar. But, it has been very, very rich for me to communicate with the artists.