SYMBIOSIS – a recent exhibition at the Portland Art Museum. Incorporating VR, haptic suits, and even evocative smells, to create a unique immersive experience. They call it “a performative, multiuser, and multisensory installation in which the human body will be redesigned to merge with technology and nature itself.” It’s also a leap forward in interactive storytelling and the future of art installations.
For some background and context, there is a great interview with the creators, on the PAM website, that’s worth a listen: https://portlandartmuseum.org/…/symbiosis-an-interview…/
In brief: PAM CUT // Center for an Untold Tomorrow is the rebirth of the Northwest Film Center with an emphasis on changing how cinematic stories are told. Symbiosis, PAM CUT’s first-ever exhibition, is a perfect example of this new direction. In this interview with Polymorf’s Marcel van Brakel and Mark Meeuwenoord, PAM CUT Director Amy Dotson digs deeper into the creative team’s past, present, and future.
This exhibition ran from November 2022 through February 2023.
One of the first fully sensory Extended Reality (XR) storytelling experiences—including individualized haptic suits, soft robotics, VR audio and visual, as well as taste and smell-based story elements—Symbiosis takes immersive storytelling to a whole new level.
The latest from Dutch experience design collective Polymorf, by directors Marcel van Brakel and Mark Meeuwenoord, in partnership with Studio Biarritz,this XR experience will transport participants 200 years into the future where a rich biosphere of mixed life-forms has taken over the earth: human-animal, and human-machine hybrids. In a performative installation allowing each participant to embody one of these symbiotic life forms, they will use all five senses to transform into entirely new beings and envision a post-human world where there is no competition, only symbiosis.
Some interesting links to references mentioned in the podcast:
IDFA DocLab
CMD Breda
Donna Haraway
Staying with the Trouble
Famous Deaths
Lucy McRae
Stelarc
Marshmallow Laser Feast
Makropol
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