In the Molonglo River Reserve, on the western edge of Canberra, artificial habitat structures have been installed as part of ongoing restoration efforts. Some of these structures are fitted with motion-triggered cameras, recording images and video of wildlife using them. Molonglo Life provides an interface for tagging, exploring and visualising these digital encounters.
This project is part of the Barrer Hill Habitecture collaboration, between ACT Parks and Conservation, the ANU School of Art and Design, and architect Joyce Hwang. Life Support, the habitecture structure that Hwang designed, is one of the structures fitted with cameras.
Molonglo Life is part of an ongoing research project rethinking digital interfaces to biodiversity and environmental data. It harvests images from Buckeye wireless cameras, stores them in a MySQL database, and serves them to an AngularJS web interface via an API written in Slim.