Remote Realities Residency
with Trinity Square Video in partnership with Dames Making Games
July-October 2020
For the Remote Realities residency Terán and Vogl proposed a fully immersive, mixed reality experience working with AR/VR, living mycelium biodata-sonification, EEG and, soft-circuit-tactile interfaces. The virtual environment is home to microbial and fungal organisms that dwell in dirt, air, and water within a Boreal forest.
Boreal forests, or taiga, represent the largest terrestrial biome. Forests occupy approximately one-third of Earth's land area, account for over two-thirds of the leaf area of land plants and contain about 70% of carbon present in living things yet despite this significance, humankind continue to have an unbalanced, parasitic like relationship to this important biome.
Due to COVID restrictions Terán, and Vogl worked together towards a scaled down, conceptual verification, with test subject feedback. Within their VR environment realtime fungal biodata-sonification reacts and responds to human touch.
In order to integrate living mycelium biodata within the VR environment neuroscientist/media artist Brendan Lehman was brought into the project. Brendan’s expertise in coding EEG data interactions in VR was a perfect match. Working with Ganoderma lucidum (Reishi) and Pleurotus ostreatus (Oyster mushrooms), and Tosca’s bio-sonification modules realtime fungal reactions were brought into Unity.