[ISEA2022] Paper: Rewa Wright & Simon Howden — Extensions of Reality: Plants and the Technological Virtual

Abstract

Short paper. Remote presentation, date: June 10

Keywords: Mozilla Hubs, Plant Blindness, Mixed Reality, Posthumanism, Climate Catastrophe, Anthropocene

This paper explores a selection of mixed, virtual and extended reality artworks (MR/VR/XR), through the theoretical lens of post-humanism applied to media art, as well as practice-led conjunctions of media and devices.

This paper explores a selection of mixed, virtual and extended reality artworks (MR/VR/XR), through the theoretical lens of posthumanism applied to media art, as well as practice-led conjunctions of media and devices. Exploring recent works by the authors’ and others, we speculate on plant blindness and homo sapiens immersion in the ‘technological virtual’, arguing this is not necessarily a retreat from the organic. The context of this paper is the ongoing pandemic, where artists have been forced to re-form their practices online, in the sphere of the technological virtual. For artist’s working with plants as co-composers, this challenge involves avoiding the evolutionary trap of ‘plant blindness’, while utilising algorithmic processes that are programmed to be blind to the organic.

  • Rewa Wright. I am indigenous Maori from Ngati Taweke/Te Rarawa/Te Uri o Hau hapu of Aotearoa/New Zealand. As a transdisciplinary media art and design researcher my work examines the entangled relations between human and nonhuman bodies and forces, through a diffractive methodology, linking confluent techniques and methods. Drawing on critical posthumanities, new materialism and Indigenous thinking, my overall focus concerns how emergent technologies such as bio-sensing, augmented and extended reality both stimulate and challenge performative interaction in virtual spaces. In media art research, my practice-based investigations fuse emergent computer vision and sensing technologies with scientifically informed research into plants as nonhuman co-creators and the First Nations’ knowledge system of Mātauranga Māori, a foundation of my Indigenous heritage. In design research, virtual environments incorporate bio-data sensed from the human body. My design research investigating virtual environments for remote healthcare has contributed to a significant Australia Research Council Grant within the “Connected Sensors For Health’ Industrial Transformation Hub. Source: https://rewawright.com
  • Simon Howden is a conceptual artist, sound designer, and a Billboard music producer. He holds an MFA (Intermedia/Sculpture) from Elam School of Fine Arts at the University of Auckland, and completed his BFA in Film at Ilam School of Fine Arts at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand. [Source: https://digitalartarchive.siggraph.org]