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.
Echo of Ruins, through an artistic lens, explores a future where humans and plants are intertwined.
Echo of Ruins offers viewers perspectives of both the future and the past. The past is presented in a mystery laboratory, with a workbench filled with books, specimens, and various experimental tools, inviting the audience to explore the stories of the past. The future, on the other hand, uses virtual reality as a medium to immerse viewers in a narrative of a plant-human co-evolving story. Plant model rendering is based on nature language algorithm, allowing viewers to interact and talk with plants by grabbing virtual blocks.
As an inclusive artist and designer, I have constantly struggled between the concepts of decentering humans and human-centering. Regarding this point, Donna Haraway's discussion of "coexistence" in her book "Staying with Trouble" has inspired me. Make kins with plants, Make kins with nature! Echo of Ruins challenges the traditional boundaries that have long defined human interaction with nature, exploring the hypothesis of building intimate relationships between humans and plants, prompting us to reassess our relationship with a whole new earth.
"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 ecosystemThijs 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.
The work showcases the power of a symbiotic relationship in nature and shares the biggest lesson to be learned from a forest ecosystem: together we are stronger.
The sculpture is made of recycled plastics and is created by using giant 3D printers.
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.
Similarly, adjusting individual artwork to the right size for a group exhibition is also challenging. I had to scale down my original 15x15 ft VR piece to 4x2 ft, which was quite difficult and required sacrifices for the group show. Nonetheless, this change pushed me to express my ideas as perfectly as possible within limited space, further refining my creativity and production skills.
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#.Final Delivery
Work In Progress
