What do trees talk about? The minerals in the earth? The concentration of CO2 in the air? Or maybe about us?
online premier: 24 April 2021
The project can be visited continuously.
The basis of the two artists’ joint project is the desire to create art through the joining of art and technology and examining the role of narrative within the new work. Both artists work with sound in public space. While Thor McIntyre-Burnie’s prior projects are based on curating many fragments of spoken word voices into immersive multi-channel scenarios to explore, where there is no fixed narrative; Ambrus Ivanyos and the Meetlab collective created works where fiction and scientific fact were inextricably tied together into branching narratives and explorative journeys.
There is a growing new field of scientific research into the natural world called Bioacoustics that has been uncovering some ground-breaking discoveries about how plants use, sense and emit sound. We are not talking about putting sensors on leaves to generate some synthesised music, we’re talking about actual sonic transmission and reception of plants and more importantly, the fact that these discoveries offer a paradigm shift in how we perceive the intelligence and sentience of plants.
Ambrus & Thor have embarked on a mission to see how they can use their immersive and interactive artforms and their passion of art in public space to further advance this line of scientific enquiry through devising a new augmented reality form of pubic art. -Specifically looking at our relationship with urban tree’s, whom the artist conject may have a closer symbiosis with us humans when growing isolated within our city (or human forests). Their aim is to invite the public to explore new ways to notice, interact and listen to the trees in our streets.
The premise of their enquiry is based on the question, if plants and trees can in some strange way, listen and speak. How can we learn to try and understand or perceive this language – this mode of communication? And of course, as the self-conscious monkeys that we are, we must ask what are they talking about? The minerals in the earth? The concentration of CO2 in the air? About the sunshine? Or maybe is it about us?The artists invite you to enter into and explore their laboratory as they explore this line of enquiry. Open to the public for the first time through the use of a model in a virtual space. They will showcase further development phases of their project later on in a mixed reality real and virtual sound installation in a park in Budapest.
For more information about the artists and the festival please check:
http://www.aswarm.com
https://portfolio.meetlab.hu
Supported by
National Cultural Foundation
In Situ (as part of the Creative Europe program)