Areca Roe

This piece was developed as part of the Art(ists) on the Verge 9 Fellowship.

The video demonstrates how Founder Effect looks, but can't mimic the interactive part of it. The piece is viewed in 360° with an app inside a VR headset. Brief animations are triggered by the viewer's gaze—in other words, when a viewer looks in a certain direction, the animation begins.

In Founder Effect, the humans sense or divine the ghostly creatures that have evolved in response to current and future human-caused environmental stressors. My collaborator, illustrator Suzanne Vallie, and I considered some of the issues we are facing, such as air and water pollution, extreme weather events such as droughts and floods, and plastic pollution in oceans. Then I extrapolated to consider how animals might evolve to deal with these stressors. (One real-world example is the peppered moth of Europe, which evolved during the Industrial Revolution to become darker in tone, camouflaging the moth into soot covered-bark.) These imaginary creatures seem to haunt the human actors in the video, causing them to react or interact. They haunt, yet the perseverance of the imagined animals is hopeful, optimistic in an odd way.

Thank you to Martin Grider and Chuck Olsen for technical assistance in developing the piece.

2017-2018

This video was done in conjunction with the Habitat photo project. Enrichment is the term used in zoos for toys or items to enrich the experience of the captive animals. 

2013

2016