Cultivating place-based intelligence through art, relational data practices, and evolving technologies.

About

Soda Lake Studio is an Alberta-based creative research lab exploring how ecological systems, community knowledge, and machine learning converge in shared public space.

Founded by KJ Andres, the studio builds on a history of sonic, experiential, sensor-based, and participatory art. Current research develops localized AI frameworks shaped by environmental signals, community narratives, and site-responsive data to generate interactive, place-based intelligence.

The studio moves between artistic practice, public cultural contexts, and experimental machine learning systems.

What We’re Building

Soda Lake Studio is prototyping a modular AI toolkit for cultivating place-based intelligence within public and cultural contexts.

The system enables partners to:

• Gather structured, community-generated datasets through guided data gleaning
• Integrate environmental and sensory inputs in real time
• Fine-tune machine learning models using localized ecological data
• Deploy site-responsive AI interpreters in public space
• Facilitate shared learning around ecological knowledge and AI literacy

Unlike mass-scale AI platforms, this framework prioritizes ethical data governance, edge deployment, and deep contextual integration within specific communities and ecologies.

  • Community Data Gleaning

    Participatory methods for collecting localized ecological, sensory, and narrative datasets through workshops, field recording, drawing, and environmental sensing.

    Localized AI Mediation (Spore Framework)

    A modular, place-responsive AI system that grows from community-generated data and operates as an interpretive interface within institutional and public environments.

    Ecological Systems & Public Space

    Designing installations and frameworks that respond to land, climate, and lived experience through hybrid physical-digital systems.

  • Prototype-level systems have been demonstrated through interactive installations and artistic contexts. The studio is currently exploring institutional pilot deployments and applied AI partnerships.

  • Soda Lake Studio collaborates with cultural institutions, municipalities, research partners, and interdisciplinary technologists to prototype context-aware AI systems rooted in place.

    Get in touch via email here.

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