re:Generated Prairie

v1.0 by: Michael Takeo Magruder, 2025

An exhibition reflecting on the cyclical processes of death and rebirth within the entangled systems of science, religion, nature, and culture.

About the Project:

re:Generated Prairie is project by British-American visual artist Michael Takeo Magruder that explores the renewal of the world and human interconnections between nature and technology by creatively reimagining his experiences of Knox College's Green Oaks Biological Field Station.

The artworks – ranging from digital prints and canvases to algorithmic 4K videos and soundscapes – have been created exclusively from mobile phone recordings captured by the artist and his academic collaborator, Prof Robert M Geraci. Through a complex and iterative dialogue between the artist and AI, Takeo reconstructs this source material into vignettes that consider our relationship to the prairie, from the annual controlled burn to the subsequent restoration of the grasslands.

The prairie burn is a moment where humanity takes seriously its obligation toward nature: it replaces accident with intention and emphasizes our crucial role as active participants in the regeneration of the world. re:Generated Prairie invites us to reflect on the cyclical processes of death and rebirth within the entangled systems of science, religion, nature, and culture.

Exhibition Documentation:

This biota, through ten thousand years of living and dying, burning and growing, preying and fleeing, freezing and thawing, built that dark and bloody ground we call prairie.

Aldo Leopold, A Survey of Conservation, c.1938

Artworks:

Reconstructed Landscape{s} – Green Oaks .burn (iteration i)

Reconstructed Landscape{s} – Green Oaks .growth (iteration i)

Reconstructed Flower{s} – Green Oaks

Reconstructed Landscape{s} – Green Oaks .prairie (iteration i)

Reconstructed Firmament{s} + Reconstructed Bio/Geophony{s} – Green Oaks

3 April 2025, almost one year from when I first visited Knox: it was a good day for burning. The winds were calm and the flames (once started) rarely rose above my head; mostly they burned low but steadily, leaving plumes of smoke in their wake. Occasionally chatting with the students who lived and studied at Green Oaks during their spring term, and who safely maintained the burn, I walked through the ashes, crouching down to watch smoke swirl amongst the burnt heaps, feeling the crumble of ash beneath my shoes. The crackle of flames was constant, the smell of smoke driving us to don masks.

It really was everything I could have hoped for: the epic feeling of post-apocalyptic transformation, the witness of destruction and the participation in something that stretched back into the distant past of the prairie itself. Wisps of smoke swirled at the ground, low-lying gusts trailed across the open field, and plumes rose into the sky. Well controlled, the fire crept forward and a stark contrast between the past and future of the grassland emerged: last year's growth on one side, the blackened ash that prefigures the future on the other…

Robert M Geraci, The Burn Experience, 2025

In Dialogue with:

Dr Robert M Geraci [ academic collaboration ]

With Thanks to:

Dr Mary Kent Knight [ project funding ] . Knox College: Program in Religious Studies; Green Oaks Field Research Center; and Seymour Library - Special Collections & Archives [ project support ] . Dr Stuart K Allison, Dr Michelle Fletcher, Paul Luckraft, Dr Aaron Rosen, and Joseph Taylor [ publication texts ] . Martin McGrath [ publication design ] . Prof Mark Holmes, Holly Whittet-Allison, Matt Reed, Alex Fluegel, Zoë Grigoroff, and Fahed Ahmed Joy [ Knox exhibition support ] . Dr Jovi Geraci and Emma Puente [ logistics support ]

Supported by:

re:Generated Prairie was commissioned and produced by the Program in Religious Studies at Knox College with generous support from The Knight Fund for the Study of Religion & Culture.