Installations

The interactive artwork Foresta Inclusive: (ex)tending towards explores the complexity of the natural world, as it plays out beyond limited human sensory perception. The work uses data collected during the summer of 2022 from a tree at the rare Charitable Reserve in Cambridge ON, as a driver for nearly all aspects of the visual, acoustic and olfactory elements in the work. The work is an interactive and sensorially rich environment that can be experienced in a parallel winter-time synchronicity at the NAISA Gallery and Café.
 


This is a two part distributed project: Foresta Inclusive - the sculptural sensor pods installed in a forest that transmitted forest data to the Internet of Things (IoT) prototyping platform Shiftr, and (ex)tending towards - the multi-sensory interactive installation created from this data stream. The in-gallery installation visualizes the more-than-human experience of the tree in real time and expresses this complexity through a combination of light, sound, and scent.



(ex)tending towards gives form to human/forest alliances, and is driven by the following questions: What does it mean to be alive and have agency?, How can we re-train ourselves to slow down and listen to voices that have been marginalized for millennia?, and What sort of perceptual and mental shifts must occur in order to recognize and value the liveliness and precious vibrancy of individuals that do not share the same language nor temporal reality?



This work explores ways to slow down human engagement, and also makes visible the daily experience of a tree. Inspired by tree rings as evidence of yearly growth, the visualization uses the same logic to image the last 24hrs of the tree’s life, where the outer ring shows contemporary values and each subsequent smaller ring the values from the previous hour. The interface for the visualization is a one-meter-tall cork cylinder that is also a scent sculpture that releases the scent of geosmin (the smell of a forest after it rains) every time it rains in real-time. To interact with the visualization, the participant can hold their hand 3” above the interface and slowly move it forward, enabling them to explore the 3D space. Additionally, there is a point cloud visualization of the tree that was sensed during the summer of 2022. This visualization was created from a LIDAR scan done by the Modelling and Spatial Analysis Lab at the University of Waterloo using a very large drone. This point cloud representation also contains the sensors on its trunk and is affected in real time by the recorded data. To tie all of the elements together, earth has been imported into the gallery – holding the original sensor pods as well as the cylindrical interface. In its entirety this installation creates an embodied and exploratory space where the deep time of a tree’s life is remembered, and the human body is slowed down in the engagement.

The sound component of the work was created specifically for this exhibition. It too is generated from the data, but instead of using recordings of the forest soundscape at rare, synthesized sounds analogous to the sounds that would have been heard, are used. This work is the first in a series exploring ways of using technology as a tool to place human and non-human into a dialogical relationship, where both voices are equal despite perceived differences (temporal reality, im/mobility, non/verbal).



Credits:

Hrysovlanti Maheras: Sound Design

Faadhi Fauzi: Three.js
Ilze (Kavi) Briede: 3D modelling and Touch Designer
Marius Kintel: Firmware support
An Vu: Pod hardware duplication

Grace Grothaus: Photogrammetry


rare Charitable Reserve, Cambridge, Ontario: site hosting of Foresta Inclusive


Dr Derek Robinson, Modelling and Spatial Analysis Lab, University of Waterloo, ON. CA: Drone and Lidar scanning


Financial Support:

York University
Social Sciences and Research Council of Canada
Environments of Change Partnership Grant, Social Sciences and Research Council of Canada. University of Waterloo. ON. CA