About the Lab

Canemah Nature Laboratory is a personal research practice based in Oregon City, Oregon, at the edge of Willamette Falls—a site sacred to the Clackamas people for millennia, and one of the most significant natural features in the Pacific Northwest.

The name Canemah comes from Chinookan and means "the canoe place"—a reference to the portage routes that indigenous peoples used to navigate around the falls for thousands of years.

The Work

The work here explores the intersection of environmental monitoring, sensor networks, human-AI collaboration, and tools for ecological awareness. Projects range from practical monitoring systems to experimental games and writing.

All projects are documented in the CNL Archive, which serves as the lab's technical memory—specifications, field notes, protocols, and working papers that trace the evolution of ideas from inception to implementation.

Approach

This is not an institution but a practice. The tools built here are for thinking with, not just thinking about. Every sensor, every interface, every piece of code is an experiment in paying attention—to place, to patterns, to the relationships between data and meaning.

Much of the recent work involves collaboration with AI systems, particularly Claude. The essays at Coffee with Claude explore what this collaboration means and how it shapes the work.

Contact

The lab is maintained by Michael Hamilton. For inquiries, the best way to reach out is through the projects themselves or via the essay site.