Join us in Midway’s Library Saturday, April 15th to peruse some of our most recent library acquisitions, including a number of new architecture books on Frei Otto, Herman Rosa, Alison and Peter Smithson, and David Adjaye, as well as new titles from publishers such as Primary Information, Kunsthalle Bern, and Fundación Jumex Arte Contemporáneo. Many beautiful new monographs will be ready for browsing, including new books on Anicka Yi, Neïl Beloufa, Gordon Parks, Beatriz Milhazes, Christopher Wool, Nan Goldin, Adam Pendleton, Jill Mulleady, Mark Flood, and Wade Guyton. We’ll also be featuring Ben Moren’s new book Reference Ecosystem: Lost 40. Moren will be present with copies of his book available for purchase. Reference Ecosystem: Lost 40 is also available to order online at the following link: https://benmoren.square.site/product/Lost40/3

About Reference Ecosystem: Lost 40
This book contains a selected archive of images generated using an Artificial Intelligence Generative Adversarial Network (GAN), which has been trained using thousands of source photographs of Northern Minnesota’s Lost 40 Scientific and Natural Area (SNA). The SNA is the largest remaining old-growth white pine – red pine forest in the state, and is home to trees over 250 years old. This remnant is one of the few present day remainders of the millions of acres of forest that were logged in Minnesota during the late 19th century, and only remains due to a survey error mis-mapping the area as Coddington Lake.

GAN generated image-based specters of the trees attempt to find a pathway to digitally re-grow the forest from what little present reference material remains. This gesture draws focus to the loss of old growth forest during Minnesota’s logging boom while placing the images in context of present-day climate crisis.

Ben Moren is a media artist whose process captures and reframes the environment through filmmaking, performance, sculpture, sound, and custom software systems to reveal and question anthropocentric viewpoints. His projects explore human perception, simulation, time and scale shifts, documentation, preservation, and our enduring relationship with the natural environment.