Today I went out to an exhibition at the Saatchi Gallery called ‘Salon 009: We live in an ocean of air’ run by Marshmallow Laser Fest. This exhibition was so perfectly related to my topic as it was about reconnecting people to the natural world, which is what my whole project is about as I think in the modern world now, we really do not appreciate nature enough.
The exhibition was a sensual experience aided by virtual reality headsets and hand monitors; this allowed us to see ourselves in a forest and move around to explore the landscape. At one point the virtual reality switched to a giant but more abstract tree (at this point I thought that something was going wrong with my headset, but fortunately not); the branches of this ancient tree started moving and swirling around us almost feeling like it was engulfing you, and at the same time you could hear the leaves and birds and feel a breeze on the back of your neck. It was and amazing experience to be honest, really exciting and immersive, and I think it was successful in connecting the participant to nature. Unfortunately, due to the nature of the exhibition I couldn’t take any physical recordings of my experience, never-the-less there is alot that I took from it.
This exhibition was inspiring for my work, and I feel that engaging the senses (as in this exhibition) will be quite an effective way to bring my project theme across and help build a string sense of a ‘world’ or setting for my project. As I am taking a textile route, I will be making alot of samples and I hope to create some really rich textures for a tactile element, and possibly look into how I could use sound as well.
an.andycaptures 