Julia Oldham & Chris Still

Julia Oldham (Eugene, OR) partnered with Chris Still, Professor of Forest Ecosystems and Society at Oregon State University.

Project

Julia Oldham created single and multi-channel video installations that explore ecological cycles through color data using a range of lens-based technologies. By transforming scientific imagery and field data into immersive experiences, Julia’s artwork offers a dynamic and expansive visual examination of changing landscapes in the Pacific Northwest USA.

Artist Bio

Julia Oldham is a digital media artist with a research intensive practice, frequently involving scientists as collaborators. She visualizes the uneasy collision of nature and technology in a fragile world. She documents extant environments such as the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone in Ukraine, clear cut forests in Oregon, and swaths of derelict wilderness in New York City. She also builds fictional worlds through drawing and animation. With tenderness and humor, Julia explores her own conflicting feelings about human progress through her narrative works, envisioning speculative futures and exploring scientific history. Discover more of Julia’s work at juliaoldham.com and follow @juliaoldham.

Science Collaboration

Research in the Still lab focuses on the physiological responses of forests and grasslands to seasonal and interannual weather variation and ongoing climate change, along with resulting impacts of those changes on carbon and water cycling. This research is conducted at different space scales, from plants to ecosystems, and combines measurements with remote sensing and process modeling. A major effort of Still’s research group is running the Metolius site cluster. These sites span a range of forest ages and sizes as well as disturbance history from fire and logging and are located along one of the steepest precipitation gradients in North America from the Cascade crest eastward to the Oregon high desert. Research at these sites includes eddy covariance-based measurement of carbon, water, and energy exchanges, as well as monitoring tree water fluxes using sap flow sensors, soil carbon fluxes using chambers, as well canopy temperature, structure and functioning with various imagers.

Artwork

Pondering: 4-channel video documentation of seasonal changes in a field research site in the Deschutes National Forest (see more)
September: Orange: 3-channel video installation that explores 24 Cascadia locations increasingly marked by wildfire (see more)
18//Flux: 1-channel video organizing RGB data into hourly stripes to show over a decade of tree growth in 3 minutes. (see more)
Analemma: Collaborative video project with Dr. Dave Bowling and Dr. Andrew Richardson, which mapped an analemma shape using PhenoCam data from an Ameriflux tower in Flagstaff, AZ. (see more)

Activities & Exhibitions

March 1 - August 3, Forest Hope Through Innovation, featuring "September: Orange 8" and "Pondering" at the World Forestry Center, Portland, OR (exhibit info here)
January 22 - March 7, 2026: Currents: Experiments in Art-Science Collaboration, featuring "18//FLUX" at PRAx, Corvallis, OR (exhibit info here)
January, 2025: September: Orange installation in Ray Theater, PRAx, Corvallis OR (exhibit info here)
December 16, 2025: Presentation, Creative Curiosity in fluxART Reveals Beauty and Wonder of Ecosystem Science, American Geophysical Union Annual Meeting, New Orleans LA
October, 2025: Embodying the Biosphere' Breath art showcase featuring "September: Orange 8" Alembic, Berkeley CA (news story)
July 5, 2025: Artificial Inspiration with Julia and Jake, Meet the Fluxers Podcast (Episode 10)
April 28, 2025: Ecoinformatics Lecture, Richardson’s Lab, Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff, AZ (news story)
March 12, 2025: Forest, Ecosystem and Society Lecture, Still’s lab, Oregon State University, OR
December 11, 2024: 18//Flux video presentation, Google Booth, American Geophysical Union Annual Meeting, Washington DC (news story)
December 10, 2024: FLUX public artist lecture, Sitka Center for Art and Ecology in Otis, OR
November 12, 2024: FLUX public artist lecture, The Evergreen State College in Olympia, WA
October, 2024: Ameriflux Bartlett Experimental Forest (US-Bar) site visit, NH
September 12, 2024, public art lecture, University of Wisconsin, Madison WI
September 4, 2024: 18//Flux and Forest Palette presentation, Ameriflux annual meeting, Berkeley CA (news story)
June 2024 - ongoing: Ameriflux Metolius (US-Me4 and US-Me6) site visits, field recordings, and drone footage collection (news story)

Acknowledgements

This project is supported by FLUXNET through the National Science Foundation’s Accelerating Research through International Network-to-Network Collaborations (AccelNet) program, Award 2113978 and the L.L. Stewart Fellowship awarded by the Patricia Valian Reser Center for the Creative Arts (PRAx). Data was also provided by the PhenoCam Network, supported by the National Science Foundation, U.S. Department of Agriculture, U.S. Department of Energy, U.S. Geological Survey, Northeastern States Research Cooperative, and USA National Phenology Network.