SWIRLING waves of pink and purple engulf me as I soar through the trees, the chatter of the forest punctuated by angry buzzing and clicking noises close to my ears. Is this what it鈥檚 like to be a ? No idea, but it is pretty convincing.
Deep in the Grizedale Forest, in the UK鈥檚 Lake District, a group of us sit on tree stumps wearing moss-covered virtual reality helmets. We鈥檙e being challenged to consider reality beyond our human limits by seeing the forest through the eyes of a midge, a dragonfly and then a frog. The immersive experience was created by multimedia artists Marshmallow Laser Feast as part of last month鈥檚 Abandon Normal Devices festival.
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As a starting point, the artists captured the forest through a combination of Lidar scanning, 360-degree drone photography and bespoke software. One of the creators, Barney Steel, says they used the midge鈥檚 ability to detect carbon dioxide in human breath at up to 200 metres as inspiration for a view of the forest that reveals the flow and density of CO2 in air. 鈥淲e created a colour palette that imagines higher CO2 density as a red hue. The trees breathe, sucking in the red and exhaling a cooler palette of oxygen,鈥� he adds.
The next stage is to scan insects using micro-CT scanners and electron microscopes, and build 3D models so audiences feel even closer to the animals. Later, the artists plan to explore bats, using microphones in VR helmets to record human sound and turn it into visual data.
Images from top to bottom: Marshmallow Laser Feast, Luca Marziale
This article appeared in print under the headline 鈥淒ay in the life of a midge鈥�
