DocLab has been the most exciting part of IDFA for 15 years. This is the place for experimentation in form, technology and content; pushing and stretching the boundaries of the medium. I like to plunge in, sometimes with skin and hair. The VR installation Symbiosis gives that opportunity quite literally. You get to enter a post-apocalyptic world, where humans are forced to make connections with other creatures. Climate change has heralded the end of the Anthropocene; we can only continue in symbiotic, new affinities with animals, plants and technology.
The Camille Stories
The work is based on Donna Haraways The Camille Stories (from Staying with the trouble, Making Kin in the Chthulucene) and the user can choose from a human/moth symbiosis, a toad or a single-celled fungus.
A suit controlled with soft robotics should help you leave behind your everyday. human identity and settle into your new guise.
Since the single-celled fungus seemed most exciting to me, I had myself hoisted into a kind of sleeping bag-like suit full of cables and pipes. With the closing, things went wrong for me: the thought of not being able to use my arms and also being cut off from the world by VR goggles was just a bit too much. Thus, I ran directly into my own limit: I would like to plunge into another world but cannot relinquish control. That was a confrontational sensation.
From fungus to butterfly
Fortunately, I was allowed to change roles and was given a suit in which I became a symbiosis of human, butterfly and orchid. I kept my arms! Indeed, they were augmented with antennae whose actual sensory input proved technically unfeasible. That had seemed very exciting to me: how does an insect feel?
Actually, I should have moved squatting in the heavy suit, but most thigh muscles are not strong enough for that. I was allowed to remain upright. My suit was less extreme than that of the toad and the slime fungus, my experience will certainly be different from that of the other participants. I didn't have to struggle with what I suddenly couldn't do, but rather felt like I could do more. I could fly!
Soft Robotics and the feeling of becoming a butterfly
The soft robotics provided pressure against my body with air cushions. Gentle pressure on my back ensured a neatly straight spine. I am an orchid! I am infinitely tall! Pressure against my legs did not make me feel like another being, but it did make me feel touched. A pleasant experience in this touchless period. The pressure of the air in the suit created a sense of connection: I am part of a world with other beings. Is that the feeling of symbiosis?
The suit is an essential part of the experience. Not only because of its weight (it easily weighs a few kilos), and pressure, but also because of the scents and oxytocin it administers. Covered with glass balls of fragrance, they are released on you by a sophisticated system of air supply. The tongue is also stimulated. Together with Michelin-starred restaurant Karpendonkse Hoeve, snacks have been developed for each roll. Before you enter the experience, the hostesses and gents check for food allergies and announce that everything is plant-based. The latter is reassuring when you open your mouth on the cue that you would like to taste the decomposing body of a deer. It tastes salty.
Putting on the suit and all the sensory input help put everyday life behind you. But it is so much together that it distracts from the layering of the story. My butterfly's internal monologue was beautiful, poetic but also punchy to follow. Sometimes I watched without listening, sometimes I listened without experiencing.
"I drink the leakage of your eyes so your soul finds peace. You are liquid, able to change and transform, into whatever it needs to be. The salty sea encapsulated in each of your cells celebrates the symbiotic merging of ancient archaea."
How interactive is it really?
The 15-minute VR is ultimately very linear: you follow the monologue interior of your guise, with a little space to look around yourself. And actually, that's fine. There is so much happening that I wouldn't know how to add to it myself. It was nice to listen to a voice telling me who I was and how I became a butterfly. Did I really feel like a butterfly? No, but it was good to be in virtual space. I could fly along with other monarch butterflies and moved in a beautiful, mysterious environment.
For me, the importance of Symbiosis is in the questions it raises about the medium, and in how to use physicality in VR. My body is there and not there: all visual input has nothing to do with my perceived physicality. But the other stimuli do directly affect it with touch, smell and taste. Perhaps the alignment of the two is a foretaste of the post-anthropocene.
Good to knowSymbiosis by Polymorph is still until 28 November showing at Eye as part of Idfa Doclab and Eye Extended, but all tickets are sold out
There are still tickets for the DocLab Live afternoon at Eye on Tuesday 23 November as part of Symbiosis.
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