Time of Doubles: Flux by Haru Ji (Korea) and Graham Wakefield (UK), 2011, immersive interactive art installation
Time of Doubles: Flux is one of the version of their Artificial Nature series which is a research project and an evolving art installation since 2008. It is an immersive interactive art installation, which consist of stereoscopic projection with an arc- shaped screen, 3D depth camera sensing, and a surround array of active loudspeakers. And it aims to let audiences to experience mirror existences.
There are different creatures on the screen, such as small green balls are protists (they look like frog somehow), long transparent snake-like life-forms in blue are bigger marine animals, and orange particle of sun are humans. All of these elements are formed a food chain and imitated ecosystem.
Fig.1. Stereoscopic projection with an arc- shaped screen.
Fig.2. A picture consist of small green balls, snake-like life-forms and particle of sun.
It is just like a mirror, a mirror presents a horizontal world which contain human and creatures. Although all are not live in the same space, they affected each other.
Here is a video shows how the presence of human affects the corresponding world:
click here → How they work
When a man stands in front of the screen, he is providing eaten resource and will attract protists come to absorb the energy as their food. Then, the bigger marine animals come to eat the protists. But the provided energy is depends on how many people are there, the more people present, the more sources for the creature. (fig.3)
For the meaning of this art work, it is about natural theory, which is interesting and meaningful.
First of all, it represents the jungle law which is the weak are the prey of the strong. During the process, whenever the snake-like life-forms pass through, the number of protist is decreased in those areas. That means the bigger size you have, the bigger right you have. Although it looks harsh, however this is what we call JUNGLE RULE in reality.
Besides, I think the art work talk about the relationship between nature, technology and art which is the main purpose why the two creators make this art work out. Since they think that these elements could be combined, as well as is artists’ responsibility to combine these elements together through different art formats, citizens can live with nature without leave the city and reduce their time spend on transportation. Therefore audiences can work with the evolving in a few minutes and in the city.
On the other hands, it means that audiences can make a great effort on evolution of organisms. In this art work, after the organisms have eaten food from the humans, speed of growing is increased rapidly. The protists will have four legs, that is why it looks like frog somehow. Back to the world we are living, what have humans done also make a great impact on organisms. For examples, hunters kill animals to extract their blood, fur and organ, which diminish the amount of extinct species; and countries destroy rainforest to gain land and wooden for selling, this action ruin species’ habitat. The most obvious evidence is the global warming. Not only human affected by the climate changes, but also species. With the impact, they can do nothing but adapt the changes of environment. Is their responsibility to bear the impact? NO. At least they know how to respect the nature and well use of resources.
So, is it high time we have to reflect ourselves and the relationship between nature and human? Time of Doubles: Flux might give us some hints.