Thinking like a forest
Mixed Reality Performance and Ongoing Research
In collaboration with Lena-Maria Stupitzky
Thinking like a Forest is an exercise in ecological computation. Through a bodily, exploratory performance, we discuss how forests are involved in algorithmic arrangements. Sensors, algorithms, and computing methods interweave with monitored moss and the invisible branches of an all-connecting rhizome. The forest "vegetalizes" computational processes and opens up new perspectives on computation: Is a remotely sensed forest fire paranoid? Does a spruce tree melancholically simulate its looming death? Are pollen flight, photosynthesis, and phytohormones atmospheric modeling processes?
Through Augmented Reality interfaces, we delve into these hybrid worlds. We learn to see the world as point clouds. We uncover the terrain through remote sensing, and search for signs in the thicket. In the end, we might find ourselves transformed - material thoughts in a hybrid digital ecology.
More will follow soon...