Art, Technology, Virtual And Extended Realities On Show

After moving to an online exhibition in 2020 and 2021 due to lockdown, Ars Electronica Garden Aotearoa is open to the public in a physical exhibition for the first time, in Wellington in June.

In the exhibition at Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington, visitors will see and experience immersive, interactive, virtual and mixed realities created by researchers, designers, scientists and artists from across Aotearoa New Zealand.
Ars Electronica is the world’s largest media festival which is held annually in Linz, Austria, an international festival that uses the digital revolution as a platform to explore cutting-edge technologies and their potential impact. 
For the past three years, researchers from the arc/sec Lab in the School of Architecture and Planning at the University of Auckland and the Digital Architecture Research Alliance (DARA) at Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington have partnered with Ars Electronica and UniServices, the University of Auckland’s research impact company, to present Garden Aotearoa. 
The 2020 and 2021 Garden Aotearoa exhibitions were planned as a hybrid physical and online exhibition, but lockdowns prevented the physical exhibition going ahead. This, the first physical exhibition of Ars Electronica Garden Aotearoa features around 15 installations as well as performances, demonstrations and talks.
Installations from the University of Auckland include LightSense, a collaboration between the arc/sec Lab, the Augmented Human Lab and the Empathic Computing Lab at the Auckland Bioengineering Institute (ABI), and the New Dexterity Group in the University’s Faculty of Engineering.
In this, a large-scale kinetic lightweight structure (12m x 3m) is combined with holographic, digital animations, and an integrated AI system that has been trained with 60,000 poems to lead and sustain conversations with visitors. It then responds to the emotional tenor of the conversation by changing shape, immersing visitors in Pavilions of Love, Anger, Curiosity and Joy.
The XR Tumour Project meanwhile, immerses visitors in the data of a cancer patient in an interactive extended reality (XR) setting, an ‘arena’ that combines physical architecture with digital clinical information.
This project is a collaboration between the Faculty of Medical and Health Sciences, the Centre for eResearch and the arc/sec at the University of Auckland. It began when a patient with inoperable cancer donated their tissue for research into the progression of their disease.
XR Tumour Project allows multiple users to interact with the 3D model of tumours simultaneously, and with a range of different types of information including genomics, scans, x-rays and biopsy information.
“The project is an exploration of how the evolution of cancer can be represented visually, by combining detailed genomic, pathological, spatial and temporal data,” says Associate Professor Uwe Rieger, who heads the arc/sec lab at the University. “It is also about exploring the potential of an interactive tool that will let clinical experts, physicians and patients visualise and discuss their disease and treatment.”
Also featured in Garden Aotearoa is Maritime_Trace_Exposure, an interactive narrative from the artist group An Architecture of the Sea, co-founded by Dr Mizuho Nishioka and Tane Moleta from the Wellington Faculty of Architecture and Design Innovation, who co-create with fellow researchers and experienced artists Wayne Barrar and Dr Kerry Hines.
Maritime_Trace_Exposure uses photography, poetry, and virtual space to create a maritime space through simulations and imagining technologies. The work contrasts the imagined space with the ‘real world’ maritime space and explores sampling and observation of the sea in a new way. One part of the work examines both real and artificial fish scales and questions the concepts of ‘real’ and ‘virtual’, while another combines subterranean landform data and streaming weather patterns to create a new virtual landscape.
The creative arts is the ideal discipline to test the boundaries of emerging technologies, but also explore its potential impact on our ecology, our culture, and on our societies, says Dr Rieger. This is point of festivals such as Ars Electronica festival. “Ars Electronica allows new ideas to be presented, and for people to see and experience and explore what these new ideas and technologies can do. It’s important we do that.”

Ars Electronica Garden Aotearoa has been supported by Creative New Zealand.

Find out more about schedule of events at Ars Electronica Garden Aotearoa 2022, on 16-22 June at Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington.
 

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