ambient occlusion:
desired paths

site specific installation
exhibited at LA Artcore, Los Angeles, California
curated by Pranay Reddy + Wednesday Kim
2022

For their first US exhibition, room69 draws their attention to the ecological and spiritual essence of the forest. The collective has mapped, scanned and virtualized Austria’s Donau Auen Nationalpark and extended the scans into a fragmented space coinciding with their relationship to technology, humanity and nature.

The scan acts as a foregrounding backdrop for a discursive exchange and serves as a template for future interactions between the natural environment exhibiting the possibility of hybrid systems that incorporate both nature and technology. In rethinking the relationship between humanity, technology and the natural, the role of the imagined provides an alternative vocabulary with which to reorient our approach to new eco-realities. It encourages us to speculate on a plausible yet unfamiliar version of the world we live in today. The imagined questions our positions and redefines established norms that weaken our evolving planet, reorienting our place and perspectives. We deploy this technique to consider the many interactional experiences and relationships that exist in both natural settings and digital technology. When we engage with these technologies, we see an opportunity to highlight nature’s myriad ways of recombining and surviving beyond the norms and expectations imposed by humans.

In this installation (operating between the documental register of existing situations and the invention of new locations, generally simulated and ephemeral) a multi-channel projection of a fragmented 3D Scanned natural environment provides the collective, room69, with the possibility of looking at nature from a different angle.

While the natural space remains untouched, the virtual world created via fragmented data of the Nationalpark can be explored through pathways in the exhibition space which suggest new perspectives on how the natural space can be viewed while preserving its natural state. Further, the conserved world can be experienced via Google Street View, unfolding via Google Maps over the duration of the exhibition and forever online located at the geotag of the exhibition space at LA Artcore in the Brewery Annex in Los Angeles.

The scans and thus the translation process were guided by an expert of the National Park, who offered her gaze at details which makes the forest as a Habitat unique. The Danube National Park preserves Central Europe's last large floodplain landscape on more than 9,600 hectares. With its establishment in 1996, the habitat was placed under sustainable international protection. Since then, nature has been able to develop here free from economic constraints. The riparian forests are developing into species-rich forest wilderness. According to the motto "Free river - Wild Forest", the original natural character is being restored to the floodplain landscape. Rare animal and plant species have returned or improved their populations.

The scans and thus the translation process were guided by an expert of the National Park, who offered her gaze at details which makes the forest as a Habitat unique. The Danube National Park preserves Central Europe's last large floodplain landscape on more than 9,600 hectares. With its establishment in 1996, the habitat was placed under sustainable international protection. Since then, nature has been able to develop here free from economic constraints. The riparian forests are developing into species-rich forest wilderness. According to the motto "Free river - Wild Forest", the original natural character is being restored to the floodplain landscape. Rare animal and plant species have returned or improved their populations.

room69 aims to move towards new ecologies and reimagined futures or eco-realities, using strategies of observation, interaction, speculation, queer tactics, fiction and history. The installation also combines raw earth scattered rhythmically across the gallery room, with an augmented sense of belonging, fresh scent and a layered visual experience, extended through sculptural elements. The sound installation provided by Roman Fleischmann expands the experience of the virtual world by using the technique of granular synthesis over Material and Data collected in the Forest. The half-human controlled process suggests a glitched glimpse of the audio atmosphere in the new digital environment.

When we experience an environment in a manner that is fully aware of its perceptual depth and richness and in which perception dominates, we are in an aesthetic realm. A place where the imagined can exist.

thank you to the generous contributions, collaborations and support of

Natasha Bajc, Angel Castillo, Danila Cervantes, Tony Clough, Leslie Foster, Wednesday Kim, Joyce Kohl, Bianca Nozaki, Labkhand Olfatmanesh, Roy Jean Park, Snezana Petrovic, Cedric Tai

The Kaman Foundation

Nationalpark Donau - Auen

Freunde der bildenden Künste

Universität für angewandte Kunst

ambient occlusion: desired paths

ambient occlusion:
desired paths