23. Wild Avatars: Nature in Virtual Reality

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to breathe yourself into your own body? To flow with the out-breath of trees into your own fractaling lungs, to dance ribbonlike into an ancient ceiba’s vasculature, to stitch an ecosystem together as a mycelium highways sparkling with energy? In this episode we explore the transformational potential of virtual reality through the work of Marshmallow Laser Feast, an artist collective that has emerged as a leading VR creators in the last decade. 

They exhibited internationally from London to New York, Melbourne to Seoul, their work included in major exhibitions at institutions including the Barbican Centre, Saatchi Gallery, Sundance Film Festival, and SXSW. 'In The Eyes Of The Animal' was nominated for the Design of the Year by Design Museum Beazley Awards and won the Wired Innovation Award (2016). Most recently, the team at MLF won the Tribeca Film Festival Storyscapes Award for Innovation in Storytelling and Best VR Film at VR Arles Festival for ‘TreeHugger, Wawona’. 

Ersin Han Ersin is the director of MLF and describes to us how they use dazzlingly aesthetic real-time VR experiences to explore the invisible perspectives of nature’s lifeworlds – and how they are constantly pushing the bounds of what technology makes possible in expanding our ecological sensitivities. I enquire into:

• Who they need to speak to in order to create their masterpieces and translate the umwelts of other species? What other scientists, poets, musicians, make this possible?
• What is it that virtual reality can create that no other medium can?
• What is the building block of a multisensory story?
• What are some of the astounding ways that other beings experience the world that are divergent from the human?
• How could global education be redesigned based on kinesthetic educative tools like VR?

Episode Website Link.

Show Links:

• Marshmallow Laser Feast
• TED talk
• Vimeo of MLF
• Soulful connection with trees: Dartington
• Lifeworlds Episode with Karen Bakker
• Observations on Being by MLF
• AI piece from Berggruen Institute
• Abandon Normal Devices Festival

Look out for meditations, poems, readings, and other snippets of inspiration in between episodes.

Music: Electric Ethnicity by Igor Dvorkin, Duncan Pittock & Ellie Kidd

Photo credit: MLF exhibition at AMCI in Australia (photo from their website)

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