Pixel of Grassland

Program Details

A core of soil holds more variation, memory, and form than any single image can carry. "Pixel of Grassland" works with soils and signals gathered from Wilding* landscapes, running them through imaging and audio protocols of slicing, scanning, and geometric reconstruction until that variation becomes visible and audible in real time. With each pass, the system notices something different.

"Pixel of Grassland" begins with felt experience and asks whether encountering that complexity more fully might make it worth protecting. The National Geographic Society advances this work through its support of Mag Agriculture Wilding Director Omar de Kok-Mercado, a National Geographic Explorer with the Food for Tomorrow program, a collaboration between the Society and PepsiCo.

*Wilding is a long-term regenerative agriculture strategy led by Mad Agriculture and developed with farmers and partners across conservation, corporate, philanthropic, and utility sectors. By treating habitat as essential infrastructure, Wilding brings farming, conservation, and infrastructure design together to create biodiversity corridors through working lands. Rather than attempting to return the land to a prehuman wilderness, it embraces people as ecological keystones capable of designing post-industrial landscapes that are complex, connected, productive, and alive.

Location

Park Hall
Main Floor Sanctuary
307 Polk Street
Sauk City, WI 53583

• Keynote presentation
• Inside

Contributor

Omar de Kok-Mercado (he/him)
https://www.omardekokmercado.com/
Instagram: @madagriculture

Omar de Kok-Mercado farms in the Driftless region of Wisconsin, where he also studies soils as a scientist and artist. His practice moves across generative audiovisual performance, agroecology, analog synthesis, film, and physical media, held together by a shared method: establish situations, let material respond, keep the responses active. He founded Wilding and the Wild Grid at Mad Agriculture, a 50-year project to functionally connect perennial native habitat across the USA.