Treehugger: Wawona
Treehugger: Wawona is a multisensory mixed-reality installation that reveals the powerful inner workings of a sequoia tree by visualising the circulation of water from its deep roots, through its gigantic trunk, to its leaves. Viewers are immersed in a hypnotic flow of water, with their perception of time altered to mirror the temporality of a 3,000-year-old sequoia. The installation invites audiences to connect deeply with the tree’s ancient rhythms, offering a glimpse into the majestic and enduring cycle of life that sustains one of nature’s most awe-inspiring giants.
Treehugger: Wawona is a multi-user, multisensory mixed reality installation, centred on a vast tactile sculpture of a giant redwood tree, the viewer dons a VR headset, places their head into the tree’s knot and is transported into its secret inner world. The longer someone hugs the tree, the deeper they drift into treetime: a hidden dimension that lies just beyond the limit of our senses.
How can technology provide us with novel ways to connect with nature Treehugger explores this question with a mixed-reality VR installation. The project makes visible the powerful inner systems of a sequoia tree by visualizing the circulation of water from its deep roots, through its gigantic trunk, to its leaves. The audience are immersed in a hypnotic flow of water and energy, while their perception of time is altered, in relation to the temporality of a 3000-year-old sequoia tree.
What is it to experience a Giant Sequoia as a living breathing being? These trees exist on a scale the human mind struggles to comprehend. The largest individual organisms on Earth, they grow taller than a ten-storey building and live more than three thousand years. Everything human seems so small and insignificant in the presence of a being so great.
Treehugger: Wawona accelerates time and takes participants on a journey beyond the normal boundaries of the human animal. In this place of ‘tree time’ auidence are free to explore the deep rhythms that underpin life on earth. Treehugger: Wawona, reveals the secret life of the giant sequoia and questions our relationship with the natural world at a time of crisis and change.
The giant sequoias in Northern California reach a size and age where human imagination reaches its limit. They are the largest single organisms on earth. They can grow taller than a ten-storey building and live for more than three thousand years. The more we know about them, the more questions arise.
In collaboration with leading researchers from the London Natural History Museum and the University of Salford, Treehugger used a combination of the three-dimensional laser scanning; LIDAR, white light scanning to create high-resolution volumes and textures. The digital representation creates a distortion of the usual human perception of space and time and makes the invisible visible. For Treehugger, scientific data was used to create a graphic simulation of how water and carbon dioxide flow through the tree.
B- Scanning the giant sequoia tree in Sequoia National Park, California
The soundscape extends the scientific data by acoustically reproducing the vascular system of the tree. The capture of biosignals was generated via the representation of data into sounds via hardware and software co-developed by sound artist and environmental designer Mileece I’Anson. The bioacoustics of the Sequoia National Park are audibly represented via a binaural soundscape of the tree – this is created when a separate sound with a slightly different frequency hits each ear. For this, the soundtrack of birds, insects, amphibians, rain and wind was mixed in a sound weave to create an immersive sound field in which visitors can move around.
Awards
Tribeca Film Festival, Storyscapes Award, 2017
VR Arles Festival – Best VR Film, 2018
Selected Exhibitions:
Cinekids Festival, Netherlands, 2016
Southbank Centre, UK, 2016
STRP, Netherlands, 2017
Tribeca Film Festival, USA, 2017
Migrations Festival, UK, 2017
Future of Storytelling, USA, 2017
Us By Night, Belgium, /2017
Phi Centre, Montreal, 2018
VR Arles, France, 2018
OMM, Turkey, 2019
KFF (Kaohsiung Film Festival), Taiwan, 2019
CCCB, Spain, 2021
New Now Festival, Germany, 2021
Frankfurter Kunstverein, Germany, 2021
Tai Kwun, Hong Kong , /2022
Selected Press:
CNN
Time Magazine
Fast Company
BBC
Fisheye Magazine
Credits:
Concept by: Marshmallow Laser Feast
Direction: Robin McNicholas, Ersin Han Ersin, Barney Steel
Collaborating Artist: Natan Sinigaglia
Executive Producer: Eleanor (Nell) Whitley
Executive Producer: Mike Jones
Senior Producer (US): Armand Weeresinghe
Production Manager: Mark Geary
Production Support: Cordelia MacDonald
Binaural soundscape, plant bio-data capture and composition: Mileece I’Anson
Custom Binaural Audio Engine Designer: Antoine Bertin
3D Designer: Harvard Tveito
VVVV Developers: Chris Plant, Tebjan Halm
Junior Developer: Laine Kočãne
Photogrammetry & VFX Supervisor: Scott Metzger
LIDAR Scanning & Photogrammetry: Mimic
Root System Modelling: Ironklad
Installation Technologist: Hayden Anyasi
Tree Sculpture Fabrication: Octant Objects / Other Fabrications / ML Fabcuts
Seamstress: Natalie Wilkins
With thanks to:
Natural History Museum
Salford University
The Macaulay Library at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, New York