This short video presents the different ways this participatory art/research project engages with Van Beuningenplein, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, taking place during October 2025 to March 2026.
Urban tree management applications tend to value a city tree economically, based only on quantifying its ecosystem services – such as cooling and cleaning air, storing carbon, and holding back floodwater. This ‘hard’ data encourages technocratic decisions about the landscape, with major consequences for those who live in it. Cutting down even a sick tree loved by a neighbourhood elicits strong emotions and reactions. Ground truth – A View from Somewhere bridges data perspectives and residents’ lived perceptions by involving local inhabitants in the development of these apps. Using a feminist data-driven art practice to unfold a tree AI companion app and digital twin, they together let the stories that people tell be treated as equally important data, and consider the complexities of inclusion in the neighbourhood. Multiple truths are revealed, to ultimately propose more inclusive and caring relationships between people, technology, and landscape. We speculatively plant fig trees, a new potential native on the tree scene, to help open up processes with the municipality and encourage (non-digital) participation from underserved communities.