Counterfield
Reading, Taking and Making from Living Landscapes
Duration
2026 – Ongoing
Researcher
Hanju Seo
Type
Independent Speculative Design Research
People who work with land read it in their own ways. Farmers notice changes in crops and soil, forestry workers judge the condition of trees, foragers know species, seasons and places, and beekeepers read their hives. This knowledge builds up through repeated work, close observation and everyday records.
Cameras, drones, satellites and LiDAR now read the same places from a distance. They can show changes people might miss. They can also make land, workers and other living things easier to watch, measure and manage from outside.
Who gets to read a place? Whose knowledge counts? Who becomes readable, and who can choose not to be?
Counterfield is a speculative design research project that starts from these questions. It begins with people who work directly with land, their tools, practical judgement and handwritten records, and looks at how this knowledge sits alongside the maps and sensing data used by owners, managers and technical systems. It doesn't assume the two are opposed. It looks for where they help each other, where they differ and where they pull against each other.
The work follows five directions:
01. Supporting the ways workers already read their environment.
02. Letting people adjust how much they are observed or recorded.
03. Testing material and digital responses to unwanted sensing.
04. Protecting sensitive places and location data.
05. Showing the gaps and uncertainty in what sensors measure.
The outcomes are left open. They may become wearables, field tools, material experiments, interfaces or software, tested through prototypes, drawings and speculative scenarios.
My work so far has used scanning and sensing to read living environments, and through EarthCode I build sensing tools for land. Counterfield turns that practice back on itself.
Being able to measure more of the living world is not, on its own, a reason to do so.
Counterfield imagines ways for people who work the land to stay out of sensing imposed from above, and to decide for themselves what gets recorded.