About the project:

Rewilding is a nature restoration movement that aims to repair degraded ecosystems through the restoration of ecological processes that human activities have previously disrupted.

Where traditional conservation asks for the protection of existing landscapes, rewilding seeks to restore and protect 'wilder' landscapes that may no longer exist in the physical world or living memory. In this sense, rewilding is not just about land management and ecosystem interventions, but also the retelling of past, present and future narratives.

After Wilding is a speculative documentary about how the community of Maple Farm, a small-scale rewilding initiative in Surrey, imagine the future impact of their work and the future of British nature at large. Based on a series of interviews with community members, the film uses machine-learning synthesised images to imagine what it would be like to visit a significantly rewilded Maple Farm in June 2042, twenty years from today.

This project was developed during a one-year design residency at Maple Farm Rewilding Project organised and hosted by Youngwilders.

Watch the film:

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Gallery:

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Attributions:

Thank you to all of the Maple Farm community members who contributed their visions of the future to this project.

This project was developed with supervision, advice, feedback and contributions from:

• Youngwilders,
• Maple Farm Rewilding Project,
• Digital Ecologies,
• Maël Hénaff,
• and the faculty of MA Material Futures.

Voice acting:

• Stephen Dalton as The Wilder,
• Kezia Turner as The Volunteer,
• and Amy Brown as The Landowner.

Sound effects:

• Soundjay,
• acclivity (freesound.org),
• dobroide (freesound.org),
• HerbertBoland (freesound.org),
• Arctura (freesound.org),
• chris_sciacca (freesound.org),
• odilonmarcenaro (freesound.org),
• mike_stranks (freesound.org),
• jackthemurray (freesound.org),
• jackmichaelking (freesound.org),
• Andy_Westcott (freesound.org),
• nlux (freesound.org),
• ollytc (freesound.org),
• Marc Angerson (xeno-canto.org),
• and Simon Elliot (xeno-canto.org).

Machine-learning image synthesis tools:

• OASIS image synthesis model,
• COCO-STUFF image dataset,
• Super SloMo video frame interpolation model,
• and adobe240fps video frame dataset.