Creative & dance journal – By Andrew Wood

The Bridge

I cycled across a road bridge on my regular ride out of Oxford. Below the bridge is a road with four lanes and lots of traffic: the A40 Northern Bypass. There was a stationary police car with lights flashing and a police officer shouting towards a woman who’d climbed over the bridge guardrails. It seemed she might jump. A very dangerous situation.

Residuals #11 Charcoal making in a kiln

On 26 May, I visited the Warburg Reserve in Oxfordshire – a beech woodland which is managed by the wildlife charity BBOWT. It hosts a charcoal kiln in which wood is made into charcoal /wood biochar. I joined the staff and volunteers in charcoal making which included the log I’d cut into sections for my charcoal sculpture and a ready-made sculpture too.

Residuals #11 Charcoal sculpting

The residuals series started with charcoal granules being moved and pressed onto a paper surface. Charcoal is produced when wood is subject to pyrolysis – or burning in a oxygen starved environment. In Residuals #11, I investigate the possibilities created by interceding in the charcoal production process; and researching charcoal production at a charcoal kiln.

Part 2: Evaluating a literature review using AI (‘Artificial Intelligence’) – a case study – crop trials using charcoal/biochar and potatoes

In Part 1 of this series, I instructed AI machines from three different companies to create a literature review for the same subject/review title. In this second part, I evaluate the literature cited by the AI tools: does it exist and indeed, is it relevant. Surprisingly, some references don’t exist and some are not relevant!

Mass flow – a dance

Mass flow is a dance inspired by sea ice and its movement on the Baltic Sea this winter past. My experience of dancing contact improvisation in trios and the Skiing-on-Skin 2026 dance festival also added to my thoughts for it. Here I present an initial ‘score’ which guides the performance: it’s not a strict choreograph but guidelines and a direction of travel.

Journey across the Baltic Sea

I travelled overnight from Helsinki, Finland on Thursday 19 February 2026 to Stockholm, Sweden across the Baltic sea. It was my return journey from attending a dance festival. See photographs.

Part 1: Writing a literature review using AI (‘Artificial Intelligence’) – a case study – crop trials using charcoal/biochar and potatoes

If you write a paper for publication in an academic journal then you need a literature review. So I used AI tools from OpenAI (Chat GPT), Google (Gemini) and Anthropic (Claude) to create a review for a paper about crop trials using charcoal (biochar from wood) as a plant fertilizer. Here’s the results and how I used them.

Sea ice and mass flow

I travelled overnight from Stockholm to Helsinki on February 5 across the Baltic sea by ship to the Skiing on Skin 2026 dance festival. This year is much colder than last year, and the sea ice is more extensive. This mass flow of ice on sea, makes me think of movement and dance. Here’s photographs and thoughts.

Poster! ‘Integrate Your Practice’ for ECSA 2026 conference, Oulu, Finland

This poster for the European Citizen Science Association conference in Oulu, Finland (3-6 March) shows how the co-created art practice (‘Residuals’ series) was integrated with the science practice of co-created crop trials – both of which used charcoal/biochar. The A1 poster included an ontology of human and more-than-human-expression. See the poster (PDF 3 MBytes).