Echo of Ruins

an immersive VR experience about the past and future of co-evolution life between human and nature.

Final Delivery






Statement

Humans must mourn the past while building new relationships from the ruins.

"In the new earth, we are not alone.
The wind brings us messages, and I live next to the thorn."









Influence

Tree roots invite us back into the ecosystem
Thijs Biersteker, Stefano Mancuso
ECONTINUUM uses the scientific data of tree communication to mimic the electric and chemical chatter of trees and invites the audience into their conversation.
These giant transparent root networks can measure the air quality, and the humidity in the room, and communicate based on these biometric messages, sending warning signals and sharing nutrients to keep each other in balance.
The sensors in the work absorb the visitor's behavior into the tree conversation, enabling the work to gain lessons from its visitors.  To let the visitors learn the beauty of a possible continuum into a symbiotic future with nature.









Concept Map






Challenges

How should I adapt to the constantly changing ideas? This is perhaps the greatest challenge I faced in my thesis project. The initial prototype was completely different from the final delivery. As I continued learning, and visiting different museums and galleries, my thoughts and inspirations kept evolving, forcing me to revise, refine, and even abandon earlier models and completed installations to present my concepts more effectively.






Design
The audience came to the table, observed the details of the device, and then put on a VR headset, interfaced with their hands, dragging the square, and merging the virtual and reality.

VR is the most direct interaction. The audience drags the blue squares in the future forest through the hand-grasping action, and each time the squares dragged by the audience come from the position placed by the previous user. This is not only the interaction between the audience and the plant consciousness (the squares), but also with the audience
 
I developed VR in Unity, where I used the hand instead of the actual controller as a control factor in the VR effects, and programmed in c#.





Preview of Exhibition