The successful NAIA launch featured three newly developed augmented art projects presented at the Karlsruhe UNESCO City of Media Arts festival, Media Art is Here.
paper trees
Eva-Maria Lopez in cooperation with Maija Demitere and ASTE.gallery
The tree, an important element in biodiversity, is placed in relation to paper consumption in the artwork. Augmented reality is used to create virtual linden trees (Tilia cordata) and paper stacks. The paper stacks show the relationship of the tree as a producer of raw materials. For the global climate, the consumption of wood – for a daily product like paper – plays an important role, because every 5th tree is felled just for paper. In Germany, 55 kg of graphic paper, such as copy paper, is consumed per person and per year. The 12 virtual trees are therefore only enough for the annual needs of about 60 persons.
With AR, paper trees visualises the connection between nature’s resources and our own consumption in a new way.
SensUs. Augmented Nature-Cultures
Curated by Daria Mille, Rasa Smite and Raitis Smits. Artists: Anna Manankina, Jung Eun Lee, Isabella Münnich, Sabīne Šnē, Jurģis Peters, Rihards Vītols, Zane Zelmene.
SensUs is an Augmented Reality exhibition that makes visible the invisible processes happening in the urban nature of Karlsruhe. SensUs artists have created virtual artworks interrogating the symbiotic relationship between biological and social processes, tracing historical and contemporary developments of nature–culture, and visualising scientific, ecological and social data.
The SensUs virtual artworks are geo-located 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.
Die Hochzeit von Himmel und Hölle
Gerardo Nolasco-Rózsás
The title of this project is an homage to the book of the same name by poet William Blake which was written during a time of great political and social change due to the French Revolution. The AR-performance has two cartoon characters as the main actors: A hippopotamus (Rousseaus noble savage) is dancing with a crocodile (Thomas Hobbes Leviathan). This dance is the starting point for a reflection on our own personal natural state.