The Lichen_ART project
Project outline
This project focuses on developing and researching ambitious, immersive works designed for public presentation. It takes a cross-disciplinary approach to exploring the interactions between plant life and climate, with a particular emphasis on the symbiotic organism lichen. The research investigates how art can heighten our awareness of subtle environmental changes, fostering observation, intuition, and insight rooted in our unique phenomenological experience of the natural world. It also examines how these experiential perspectives can complement scientific understandings of climate change and biodiversity loss, offering alternative modes of engagement. Balancing empirical measurement and modelling with our innate capacity for sensory perception and intuition, the project seeks to bridge scientific inquiry and embodied experience.
What is a lichen?
Lichens are symbiotic organisms composed of a fungal body and either algae or cyanobacteria, which serve as the photosynthetic partners. The algae or cyanobacteria generate nutrients through photosynthesis and share them with the fungi. In return, the fungi provide shelter, protection from harsh conditions, and essential minerals and water absorbed from rainfall.
Initially, lichens were classified as plants—a belief that persisted until the 1860s. However, in 1868, Swiss botanist Simon Schwendener closely examined their structure and discovered that lichens are composite organisms, consisting of fungi living in partnership with microscopic algae. His findings challenged the prevailing taxonomy and met with resistance from the scientific community, as they disrupted the established classification system.
Despite the initial scepticism, Schwendener and his colleagues used microscopes to successfully separate the fungal and algal components, ultimately proving that lichens are not plants but rather a unique symbiotic relationship between fungi and algae.
Further research has since deepened our understanding of lichens, and recent discoveries reveal that they are even more complex than previously thought—comprising not just two, but three organisms: two types of fungi and an alga.
Why are lichens bioindicators?
Lichens are highly sensitive organisms, yet they have developed effective ways to protect themselves. Their structure consists of a fungal body (or sometimes two fungi), forming a stiff, crusty outer layer and a spongy, loose interior. This outer layer shields them from harsh environmental conditions, such as extreme temperatures and prolonged dryness. Lichens can survive long periods without water by becoming dormant—when their moisture content drops, photosynthesis ceases, and they enter an inactive state. However, as soon as they absorb water, even from a single raindrop, they quickly revive and resume activity.
Unlike plants, lichens lack traditional roots, so they have adapted to absorb nutrients directly from their surroundings. They possess specialized uptake systems that allow them to extract anions such as nitrates and sulfates from the air. This makes them particularly vulnerable to air pollution. In fact, lichens that once thrived in areas with good air quality began to decline drastically in polluted regions. By the 1960s, some species—recognized as bioindicators of air quality—started to die off in heavily polluted environments.
Their sensitivity is further heightened by the absence of a protective wall layer like that found in plants, leaving them more exposed to environmental threats.
Matilda C.Knowles
Our journey was inspired by the pioneering work of Matilda C. Knowles, Ireland’s first lichenologist. While studying lichens at Howth Head, she observed that they grow in distinct zones along the shore—a discovery that contributed significantly to the field.
Knowles was a leading authority on Irish lichens, identifying hundreds of species across the country and even discovering several previously unknown to science. Her most significant work, The Lichens of Ireland, was published in 1929 and spanned an impressive 255 pages.
Many of the specimens she collected during her research are now preserved in the Herbarium of the National Botanic Gardens in Glasnevin, Dublin.
Rocks covered with lichens at Howth Head, Co Dublin.
Ramalina sp. lichen collected by Matilda C. Knowles in 1912, stored in The National Herbarium, Dublin 9.
Together with Chloe Brenen, I visited several key locations where Matilda C. Knowles collected lichens, the most picturesque being Howth Head. To examine air quality and assess the presence of bioindicator lichens in different areas, I used diffusion tubes to measure NO₂ pollution levels at four distinct sites:
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County Wicklow – where Matilda collected notable Usnea lichens.
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Howth – where she first observed lichens growing in distinct zones.
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Trinity College Dublin – near Nassau Street, where Matilda lived while working at the National Herbarium (now the Natural History Museum).
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National Botanic Gardens – where her lichen collection is preserved.
The results revealed low pollution levels in the Vale of Clara, low to moderate levels in Howth and the National Botanic Gardens, and moderate to high levels at Trinity College Dublin.
Chloe Brenan
Chloe Brenan’s practice is concerned with modes of attention, emphasising our somatic capacity to tacitly experience, infer and intuit the world’s patternings and murmurings. Through a combination of moving images, photography, sound, print, installation and text she explores the porosity of the body and its indivisibility from its environment, particularly as it is contextualised against the unstable backdrop of the climate crisis. She is interested in how forces are registered and measured - both experientially and materially - in human and non-human bodies, exploring the possibilities of different and expanded modes of sense-making and attunement. Informed by feminist and new materialist epistemologies works often involve close and careful examinations of the poetic haptics of daily life, processes on the edge of perception that call into question boundaries between bodies, intimate spaces and the wider environment.
For more information on Chloe's work and ongoing project check here
