SensUs – an international cultural collaboration and extended reality (XR) art project – was initiated by NAIA artists and curators. SensUs tackles contemporary challenges related to climate change, urban and environmental sustainability, and social inclusion. By exploring the interconnection between technology and the environment, the project seeks to create systemic change in how we envision and interact with green urban spaces.
From May 5 to 7, 2023, at the Karlsruhe Art Fair, the augmented reality (AR) platform SensUs Art was launched, featuring new works by Karlsruhe-based artists. In the following months, the platform was expanded with new artworks by Riga-based artists. The new AR exhibition SensUs. Augmented Nature-Cultures opened in Karlsruhe in August 2023, and in Riga in September 2023.
SensUs is an Augmented Reality exhibition that makes visible the invisible processes happening in the urban nature of Karlsruhe. Isabella Münnich, Anna Manankina and Jung Eun Lee have created virtual artworks that examine the symbiotic relationship between biological and social processes, trace historical and current developments of nature-culture, and visualize scientific, ecological and social data. The SensUs virtual artworks are geolocated in specific urban sites (such as museums of natural history, botanical gardens, city forests, or national parks) where nature–culture manifests in its most intertwined and symbiotic way. By focusing on a more-than-human perspective, the SensUs exhibition challenges the previously dominant anthropocentric view of our environment and envisages the future of Karlsruhe as an inclusive and sustainable nature–culture city. The SensUs artworks were funded in 2022 as part of the UNESCO City of Media Arts Karlsruhe project funding program for media arts and will be virtually located at the site of the State Museum of Natural History (available from August 2023), featuring three Karlsruhe based emerging female artists. The exhibition is curated by Rasa Smite and Daria Mille, produced by RIXC and NAIA.
