Cry, struggle for words or simply feel alive in ACMI’s visual feast

You’ve never seen a tree quite like this. It’s almost impossible to stand in front of this digitally created projection of an enormous kapok tree from the Colombian rainforest and ever look at the natural environment in the same way again.

You can peer through the layers of nutrient networks being absorbed by its roots and see the almost mystical process of photosynthesis that produces the oxygen we all breathe, demonstrating the tree’s role as a living bridge between the soil and the sky.

To stare at this five-metre-high screen, whether in total darkness and silence or surrounded by others, brings a remarkable sense of wonder and a reminder of the deep link between humans and nature.

“Art has a great resonant power to take complex issues, distil them into relatable feelings, and make them tangible,” says Ersin Han Ersin, a partner and creative director at London-based experimental digital art collective Marshmallow Laser Feast, who spent weeks mapping the tree in early 2020.

Marshmallow Laser Feast: Works of Nature, 2023. Credit: Eugene Hyland

To create this giant digital tree, Sanctuary of the Unseen Forest, the group travelled to the Colombian Amazon to conduct a series of Lidar scanning sessions, ambisonic field recordings, and interviews with indigenous leaders and ethnobotanists to identify species and their stories.

“The tree’s heartbeat reverberates through the room as we visualise the invisible – the flow of nutrients,” Ersin says. “This pulsing draws the audience in on a journey from the crown to the soil. There they meet the woven mycelial bridge between land and the sky. As the visitors breathe with the tree, the installation becomes a sanctuary, a place to reflect and contemplate our place within the wider systems of nature.”

It is just one of the five major digital artworks that make up Marshmallow Laser Feast: Works of Nature in an awe-inspiring world premiere exhibition at Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI).

Marshmallow Laser Feast, Distortions in Spacetime, 2018.Credit: Courtesy of the artists

The collective’s cutting-edge work has mesmerised audiences across the globe – from Sundance and Tribeca Film Festivals to London’s V&A Museum and beyond – using immersive technology to deepen our understanding of, and connection to, the world around us. Viewers can struggle for words in the minutes immediately after viewing their creations. In the New York screening of one of the five works in the ACMI exhibition, some visitors cried.

Marshmallow Laser Feast co-founder Ersin Han Ersin: “The installation becomes a sanctuary.″⁣

Via guided meditation and transcendent, interactive large-screen experiences, visitors evolve from droplets of water to majestic and ancient trees, cells and black holes – gaining a deeper understanding of the natural world, and their place within it.

The collective has collaborated with biologists, geologists, gaming specialists and spatial audio engineers as well as creatives including filmmaker Terrence Malick,actress Cate Blanchett, poet Daisy Lafarge, and Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood.

Founded in 2012, a fascination with all things intangible has led the collective to tackle one of the most complex issues of our time: the climate crisis. It hopes that the installations will encourage people to connect with the natural world and in turn protect it.

“The more we fall in love with the natural world, the more evident it has become to put our creative expression in service of bettering this relationship,” Ersin says. “For us, as an artist collective, combining scientific knowledge, emerging immersive technologies, and experiential art to tap into a world beyond the limits of human senses is essential.”

While their work spans a range of mediums, deciding on the right one for each project is vital if they want their storytelling to resonate with audiences.

“We tend to set creative boundaries that are often pointing at a small group of potential mediums, and as we progress into the research phase they are loosely decided, leaving enough room for experimentation with different mediums for happy accidents,” Ersin says.

Marshmallow Laser Feast, Evolver, 2020.Credit: Paul McGeiver

Evolver, a virtual reality exhibit about human breath, takes visitors on a voyage through the body, following the flow of oxygen to its origin as a single living cell. Originally devised as a VR experience, the work has been reimagined for ACMI.

It includes a meditation space with narration from Blanchett, who murmurs in your ear about the relationship between your body and the world beyond it. It’s a visual journey of the breath, and a hypnotic sequence that connects the birth of a cell with the cosmos. Visitors have the option of experiencing it in the original VR format with a headset add-on.

It was through the collaboration with Malick that the collective was able to link up with the Blue Jasmine actress.

“I’ve got no idea how all that happened,” says MLF co-founder Barney Steel. “It was like a synchronicity tsunami … one thing led to another and, yeah, we were pinching ourselves.”

Marshmallow Laser Feast, Evolver, 2023.Credit: Courtesy of the artists and Wave Museum

Steel, who produced U2 music videos in a previous life, says this will be the first time Evolver has been seen with full-scale projections and multichannel sound installations.

“It’s not just virtual reality, but also thinking about screens as windows into the virtual world,” he says. “So this will be the … fullest expression of it.”

Visually, human breath streams and swirls around you like the Milky Way; blood vents as explosively as lava. The path of the molecules that appear to surround you can be modestly altered by swooping your hand across your body.

ACMI chief executive Seb Chan describes Works of Nature as an “unforgettable experience” that could inspire everyone to work towards a better future.

“This exhibition reflects the power of large-scale moving image works and creative use of projection technologies to produce immersive experiences that demonstrate how our bodies and the natural world are so intrinsically connected,” he says.

Marshmallow Laser Feast, Distortions in Spacetime, 2018.Credit: Courtesy of the artists.

Other works include Distortions in Spacetime, an interactive audiovisual installation that helps us grasp the connection between human life and the cosmos; The Tides Within Us, large-scale images that map the passage of oxygen from our lungs to our heart and body; and We Live in an Ocean of Air, a 20-minute meditation on the out-breath that uncovers further connections between plants and people.

Steel hopes the experience will give the audience a “newfound sense of awe and wonder”, or simply the feeling of “just being alive”.

“You might come in with a certain idea of what a tree is, or what a tree is in relationship to you, but the artwork will let you experience how your out-breath flows into a tree, and then how the tree’s out-breath flows into your body,” Steel says. “Simply put, in order for you to exist and breathe in the first place, you’re woven into a relationship with the plant kingdom.”

Marshmallow Laser Feast: Works of Nature is at ACMI, November 23 until April 14, 2024.

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