This presentation reflects on outcomes of the Blast Radius Challenge Lab on Orford Ness led by Barnet and Watt as part of their Close Look, Distant View, symposium (March 2023). They examine how the Lab acts as a catalyst towards transformative readings of landscape through active knowledge exchange between national, international, early career and established academics, the community, and external experts.

Close Look, Distant View is developed by Barnet and Watt in collaboration with curator Emma Roodhouse (Colchester and Ipswich Museums), in partnership with The Hold Suffolk Archives. It brings together artists and researchers from University of Suffolk, Anglia Ruskin University, University of Southampton, California Institute of Technology, and Tate examining new research and shifting perceptions of watery landscapes in art, science and digital technology. This is part of Barnet and Watt’s ongoing research project Blast Radius which explores ways to bring together specialists across disciplines to exchange knowledge within the landscape.

Barnet and Watt employ the site of internationally significant Orford Ness National Nature Reserve as a starting point for Blast Radius. As a former military test site, evaluating explosions towards measuring the extent of destructive capacities, Blast Radius employs similar evaluative technologies, but towards the creation of artworks and the assessment of a site’s ecology; the impact of a creative impulse.

The Challenge Lab employs active field research based around creative collaboration, engaging practice as a means of knowledge exchange to stimulate new ways of examining and understanding the landscape around us.

This paper is an opportunity to reflect on the feasibility of the Challenge Lab as a viable research model and identify future directions for this as a way of working.