New Horizon Initiative

New Horizon Initiative (2022)

Together with visual artist Gus Drake The “New Horizon Initiative” analyzes and visualizes the different interests of non-human life in a landscape to advocate for inclusive decision-making.

Inspired by the Rights of the Nature movement, our ‘New Horizon Initiative’ is intended to empower non-human life and give them a voice in the formulation of political and governmental participation and thus contribute to the Sustainable Development Goals.

What would a landscape look like if non-human life such as plants, animals, insects were in charge? How does a bee see the landscape? What is the perspective of a tree? How does a snake see the world? How can these perspectives, the interests of non-human life, help to make executives aware that they are responsible for all life forms in their organizational decision-making? Decision-making in which the interests of non-human life should have the same value as the interests of humans.

We presented our first visual stakeholder analysis at the UN Climate Change Conference (COP27) in Sharm-El-Sheikh. We showed what this tourist resort would have looked like if human design included the interests of insects, reptiles, mammals and birds? By showing how non-human entities perceive their environment, the “New Horizon Initiative” provides an AI rendered visual stakeholder analysis to “protect, restore and promote sustainable use of ecosystems and halt biodiversity loss” (SDG 15). Our thinking towards non-human life needs an urgent paradigmatic shift to “combat climate change and its impact” (SDG 13).

THE SINAI EXPERIMENT

We position ‘New Horizon Initiative’ at the intersection of science, technology and art, to inspire new ways of engaging in dialogue on climate change. We use scientific data that we visualize and use Artificial Intelligence to create an ideal landscape image. Through the lens of “machine vision,” the viewer is presented with a series of idealized landscapes.

In order to promote inclusive decision making around ‘the rights of nature’ and influence organizational and political decision making, we see two platforms within this project to be active, namely; literally in the boardroom through presentations of the ‘New Horizon Initiative’ method and within the artistic domain; galleries, fine arts museums and festivals to exhibit the created images.

EMSHAVEN

Interactive Dashboard

This interactive dashboard acts as a predictive model and a tool to visualize abstract data. It allows us to foresee what a specific location-bound environment might look like if the interests of non-human life were respected in the landscape design.

The New Horizon Initiative aims to incorporate complex, abstract data into landscape visualization, including policy frameworks, political realities, soil and water quality, and carbon and nitrogen emissions.

By processing this information, the tool creates a visual stakeholder analysis using Artificial Intelligence. This generates an idealized landscape image where the interests and perspectives of non-human entities are given shape, promoting inclusive decision-making and a shift toward an ecocentric approach.