Lena Taßler (Media Art and Design)
Jede Sekunde werden Massen an Daten ausgetauscht. Ein Informationsnetz, unter Menschen und Maschinen. Pulsierend. Unentwegt. Kommunikation über Kontinente hinweg. Im Kontrast; der Wald. Ruhe. Harmonie. Vor unseren Augen verborgen pulsiert auch hier ein Netz aus Informationen. Bäume kommunizieren über Wurzeln, Pilzgeflechte und Duftstoffe. The Wood Wide Web überspannt ganze Wälder.
Every moment masses of data get exchanged. A mesh of informations, through humans and machines. Pulsating. Non-stop. Communication passing over continents in seconds. In contrast; the woods. Silence. Harmony. But hidden from our eyes there is also a busy network. Trees are communicating via roots, mushrooms and fragrances. The Wood Wide Web can connect hole forests.
With this project i wanted to visualize this hidden connection, to maybe also reflect our connection to nature. (For more information: Terra X Beitrag: https://www.zdf.de/dokumentation/terra-x/plus-schule-wie-baeume-kommunizieren-100.html) The idea came while experimenting with different techniques in the course. Before i haven't had any experiences with VR. I was surprised how surreal and at the same time natural it feels to look through the headset. 360° videos were kind of intensifying this feeling. As well as stopmotion-animation, because of the combination of magical moving of real objects.
Here is a test i animated with hand fans in the forest, which should act as lungs of the plants. Or just butterfly-like things. It’s out of about 30 photos, which already took quite some time and what is sadly very visible by looking at the moving shadows.
Another one happened after sunset. No shadows, but huge change of light intensity. Experimenting with lightpainting solved this problem so that the video can be played back and forth on repeat nearly unnoticed. It’s made by walking through the dark forest with a flashlight, while the Ricoh Theta V 360 camera took a photo with an exposure time of three seconds every four seconds.
First here the raw version straight out of the camera, consisting of 300 pictures. Later i edited the video with DaVinci Resolve to look even more surreal. For the sound i was running around with a VR-headset, following the light line with a controller. In Unity the movement got translated to sound in space.