Green Gazing
Immersive, interactive, projection, sound and movement installation project
Funded by OAC Research and Creation, OAC Exhibitions Assistance
Presented by:
(1) Ada X, Montréal, 2020-2021
(2) DARC, Ottawa, 2021
(3) Workman Arts, Toronto, 2021
(4) Vancouver Mural Festival Winter Arts, Victoria, 2024
(5) City of Victoria, 2024
Abstract
An immersive multimedia participatory movement exchange using responsive data collected from sensors on botanicals in a room that are transformed in real-time to video and sound. Inspired by the geographic location, a guided movement workshop / experience is offered in the space either led in-person by Ashley Bowa (Black Theatre Workshop), a guest teacher, or provided through narrated prompts on the surrounding speakers. The room, filled with plants, has full wall projections of botanicals from the region which have filters that increase and decrease in intensity based on the input data from the plants which varies as they respond to the energy of the people in the same space. There are places to rest and sit with exercise mats, pillows, chairs provided and the ambient electronic sound and videoscape becomes a co-creation between plant, participant and artist. An accompanying “Field Guide” zine created specifically for each location, explains the technology, gives tips on your house plants, and introduces you to local underrepresented ecologists.
Green Gazing has been presented in a number of formats since its inception and initial programming during the COVID-19 pandemic. It can be as big as a 360° immersive projection installation and as ephemeral as an online (eg. Zoom) movement workshop. It can be presented on a screen with a plant, it can be in daylight, it can be at night, it can be indoor, it can be outdoor. Below highlights our presentation experiences. With each change in location the site-specific printed zine called “FIELD GUIDE” was modified to suit its new place. Feel free to download, print and distribute any FIELD GUIDE, links below.
(1) Ada X, Montreal – Htmlles Festival “Slow Tech”, 2020. Exhibition curated by Natacha Clitandre
Nov 6 – Dec 2, 2020
Ada X Documentation 2021_Crédit photo : Jean-Michael Seminaro
Ada X produced a physical risograph publication “Slow Tech” accompanying their Htmlles Festival which Green Gazing appears in. Digital version is linked below.
https://www.ada-x.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/2022PUB52609O_Slow_Tech_EN.pdf
Text from “Movement Practice, Green Gazing” in Slow Tech by Joy Xiang:
We have seen the world burn. This isn’t the only time it’s burned, or been metaphorically and physically razed in the name of colonial and capitalist expansion. But, from wildfires in the Amazon to California to Australia, the media has increasingly zoned in to apocalyptic images as part of our understanding of anthropological climate change. The later years of the last decade marked a tidal shift in the narrative, which now openly asks how much time humans have left to stop seemingly imminent large-scale catastrophe.
But, slow down.
If there ever was a rehearsal for better understanding our relation to the environment and to each other, it’s not over. Everything is practice and practice is meaningful; it is the action, the affect.
Collaborators Lesley Marshall and Ashley Bowa understand this well, as they give possibilities for a new relational order between humans and nature in Green Gazing. Uninterested in speaking for plants, which would reproduce harmful hierarchies, they use immersive installation and experimental movement workshops to act as semi-translators for the non-human life already present around us—the difference between using and being with nature. Approaching from feminist lenses and a combined background in performance, video projection, irreverent media art, movement-based healing work, and the politics of wellness, Marshall and Bowa offer realistic tactics to strengthen our ability to bond with plant life.
Green Gazing unfolds in multiple acts, asking: what does it mean to embody a liberation movement? By translating biofeedback (the measured electrical signals of plant processes) into data, then image, graph, music, or movement, the artists cast learning back through the sensing body. Technology becomes a translation tool—though harrowed by its own contributions to environmental degradation and resource depletion, it also forms a common bridge to allow humans to visualize their co-creation with plant life. Studio XX’s thematic Slow Tech recognizes these contradictions, and the alternatives available to us to reimagine and reclaim narratives of the end times.
To create experimental movements that turn into guided exercises for participants, Bowa and Marshall look to plants—how they grow and respond to their environment. Time slows when it is sieved through the body; movement seeds the possibility of a relation-in-becoming.
Joy Xiang
_____
Ashley Bowa is an emerging filmmaker, media artist and arts educator based in Toronto. She is also trained as a yoga and pilates instructor and in outdoor education.
Lesley Marshall / LES666 is an award-winning filmmaker and intermedia artist. Projection art by Lesley has been performed at the National Art Centre, Montreal Jazz Fest, and CentrePHI.
Joy Xiang is a writer, poet and arts worker who engages themes of migration, material flows, and media nostalgia and futurity. She is an editor at Canadian Art.
(2) DARC, Ottawa – in Space Grey. Exhibition curated by Aynse Ducharme
Exhibition: September 23 – December 9, 2021
Virtual Movement Class: Nov 4th at 3-4pm, 2021
On Nov 4th, a virtual class was held on Zoom where plant video feedback was shown on one screen, live audio meditation and movement prompts from Ashley and movement was modelled by Lesley. The piece was also featured on DARC’s Knot Project Space Podcast Episode 2.
Knot Project Space Podcast in Space Grey | Maize Longboat, Ashley Bowa, and Lesley Marshall.
Full Episode
Clip from Episode
Download FIELD GUIDE here!
(3) Workman Arts, Toronto – Rendez-With Madness Festival 2021
Green Gazing was presented in a web3 space for the Rendez-Vous With Madness Festival by Workman Arts in Toronto. Along with the web3 gallery online exhibition an online video conference and movement experience with panel discussion was hosted in tandem. Plant video feedback was shown on one screen, live audio meditation and movement prompts from Ashley and movement was modeled by Lesley.
Download Field Guide here!
(4) Winter Arts Festival presented by Vancouver Mural Festival, Victoria 2024
Green Gazing was presented in a fully realized in-person exhibition in Victoria BC for the Winter Arts Festival in 2024. Taking over the Market Square warehouse space, 4 walled projections, daily guided in-person movement and meditation experiences were offered led by Ashley and Lesley. The installation and immersive experience was open to the public during festival hours with pre-recorded audio prompts and ambient music outside of the scheduled events. The plants in the space were active in generating the bio feedback reflected in real-time with kaleidoscoping projections of plants.
