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TREEHUGGER_EPK MARSHMALLOW LASER FEAST 14/03/17
North American Premiere: Tribeca Film Festival Storyscapes 2017
PRESS CONTACTS
Michael Jones Eleanor (Nell) Whitley Marshmallow Laser Feast Marshmallow Laser Feast +447702 401761 +447766 088169 [email protected] [email protected]
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TREEHUGGER_EPK MARSHMALLOW LASER FEAST 14/03/17
SYNOPSIS SHORT
Treehugger: Wawona, the latest virtual reality installation from Marshmallow Laser Feast,
reveals the secret life of the giant sequoia and never-before-seen inner workings of the
world’s largest tree. Treehugger uniquely illustrates the sequoia’s immense scale and
questions our relationship with the natural world at a time of crisis and change.
SYNOPSIS MEDIUM
THE GIANT SEQUOIAS of northern California exist on a scale the human mind struggles
to comprehend. They are the world’s largest single trees, and one of the largest of all
living things. They can grow taller than a ten-storey building and live more than three
thousand years. The more we know about them, the more we wonder. How does
something get this big? How does it feed and breathe? How does a three thousand year-
old tree experience time?
The secret life of the sequoia is one of a multitude of hidden stories unfolding in the
natural world around us, stories beyond the spectrum of experience human senses allow.
Treehugger: Wawona, one in a series of immersive virtual reality (VR) installations from
Marshmallow Laser Feast (MLF), sheds light on this world beyond, rendering the invisible
visible at last. If you have ever looked at a tree and dreamed of climbing to the heights of
its canopy, glimpsing its inner workings or dialing into its particular rhythms (what we
might label as “tree time”) – such dreams are no longer beyond the limits of our
experience.
Treehugger seeks to convey the immense scale of these trees and to question our
relationship with the natural world at a time of crisis and change. MLF follows the principle
that a person must relate to a subject to be moved or inspired by it. Nowhere is this more
true than the field of conservation: to wish to save something, you must first fall in love
with it.
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TREEHUGGER_EPK MARSHMALLOW LASER FEAST 14/03/17
SYNOPSIS LONG
THE GIANT SEQUOIAS of northern California exist on a scale the human mind struggles
to comprehend. They are the world’s largest single trees, and one of the largest of all
living things by volume. They can grow taller than a ten-storey building and live more than
three thousand years. The more we know about them, the more we wonder. How does
something get this big? How does it feed and breathe? How does a three thousand year-
old tree experience time?
The secret life of the sequoia is one of a multitude of hidden stories unfolding in the
natural world around us, stories beyond the spectrum of experience human senses allow.
Treehugger: Wawona, one in a series of immersive virtual reality (VR) installations from
Marshmallow Laser Feast (MLF), sheds light on this world beyond, rendering the invisible
visible at last. If you have ever looked at a tree and dreamed of climbing to the heights of
its canopy, glimpsing its inner workings or dialing into its particular rhythms (what we
might think of as a “tree time”) – such dreams are no longer beyond the limits of our
experience.
Treehugger has no prescribed goal. What participants take from it is up to them. It seeks
only to convey the immense scale of these trees and to question our relationship with the
natural world at a time of crisis and change. MLF follows the principle that a person must
be moved or inspired by a subject if they are to relate to it. Nowhere is this more true than
the field of conservation: to wish to save something, you must first fall in love with it.
Historically, advances in technology have taken us further away from the nature. Today
most of us can identify more corporate logos than species of tree. Yet, paradoxical as it
may sound, technology has reached a point where it can start to close the gap between us
and the natural world. Using a combination of LIDAR, white light and CT scanning, and the
latest developments in VR, it is possible to connect anew with the ancient, elemental
systems we have left behind.
These dynamic tensions between the synthetic and the organic, between knowledge and
experience, are at the heart of MLF’s work. Positioned at the intersection of art, science
and technology, the London-based creative studio transforms the empirical data and
abstract concepts of science into forms that can be absorbed and experienced by all. A
textbook can tell us that trees take in CO2 and expel oxygen, and that our bodies perform
an equal and opposite action. But if we could see this process of breath circulation, if we
could visualise it and on some level experience it, there is the potential for greater
understanding and empathy. Then we do not just know the tree breathes; we have lived it.
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TREEHUGGER_EPK MARSHMALLOW LASER FEAST 14/03/17
EXPERIENCE BACKGROUND INFORMATION
Treehugger: Wawona, a collaboration with researchers at London’s Natural History
Museum and Salford University, takes as its subject a giant sequoia from the Sequoia
National Park in California, USA. ‘Wawona’ is the local Native American word for ‘hoot of
an owl’, mimicking the sound of the Northern Spotted Owl believed to be the tree’s
spiritual guardian. Sonic artist Mileece I ’Anson used her custom-built hardware and
software to capture and sonify bio-signals within the tree, forming a soundscape which
represents the tree’s vascular system. She created an external, binaural soundscape was
built by layering audio recordings of birds, insects, amphibians, wind and rain.
To begin ‘seeing’ from a tree’s perspective, you must first put on a VR headset and a
Subpac, a haptic vest which heightens the tactile dimension of the experience. You are in a
forest, standing in front of the biggest tree you have ever seen. Rain starts to fall. The
water soaks into the soil – if you put your head close to the ground you can see the water
getting pulled into the root system. At this stage the droplets have a bluer hue. As they
stay in the tree they redden, taking on the hues of the tree. An interactive scent score by
Sensable’s Invisible Media & Entertainment evokes the smells of rain on the forest floor,
the upsurge of minerals as nutrients are sucked into the roots, the tree’s bark as it
responds to your touch and pulls you into its dank woody interior.
Transpiration begins, the process by which water is carried from root to leaf. You flow with
the movement of the water, getting sucked up in the sapwood, towards the canopy. Time
accelerates. Day turns to night. The tree’s inner systems slow down, then speed up as day
breaks again. Around you flow thousands of brightly-coloured splines, channeling the
water into the great web of branches stretching out around you. You keep heading up, into
the pine needles of the canopy where you are released into the atmosphere, airborne. You
see your breath as CO2. You exhale redder, warmer particles, while the oxygen from the
tree is a cooler blue.
This is the just the beginning. MLF plans to create a virtual forest of rare and endangered
trees from across the world. This archive of digital fossils is intended to act both as an
ecosystem where people will be able to connect with the natural world, and as a tool to
assist conservation. And as the technology develops, so will the Treehugger experience. It
will be possible to analyse brain function, to simulate touch and smell. As senses are
hacked, the horizons of our world extend accordingly, bringing us ever closer, revealing
ever more, of a world previously unknowable.
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TREEHUGGER_EPK MARSHMALLOW LASER FEAST 14/03/17
THE MAKERS
About Marshmallow Laser Feast (MLF): Treehugger is the brainchild of Marshmallow
Laser Feast, a London based experiential studio working at the intersection of technology,
art and science. Always looking to create experiences that immerse and amaze in
unexpected ways - they employ a wealth of creative disciplines, from photo-real virtual
reality to robotic performance and realtime mapping to push boundaries, redefine
expectations and excite audiences worldwide.
About Natan Sinigaglia: Natan Sinigaglia is a sound and visual artist based in Varese, Italy.
With a strong background in music, dance and realtime graphics, he creates canvases
where these languages loose their boundaries and share forms and meanings. Sinigaglia’s
work has been exhibited and performed at Cite’ de la Musique, Paris; Roundhouse,
London; Arsenal, Metz; Le Centquatre, Paris; LeCube, Paris; Nemo, Paris; Auditorium,
Bordeaux; Nova, Rio de Janeiro & Sao Paulo; Elektra, Montreal; Freemote, Utrecht; Node,
Frankfurt; MIGZ, Moscow; Milan Design Week, Milano; Celeste Prize, New York City; Ars
Electronica, Lintz; VIA, Pittsburgh; Screenplay, Berlin; Troyka Multispace, Moscow; UCS,
Los Angeles; Node, Frankfurt; OFFFmx2015, Mexico City; NoPlace2, Fombio.
About Mileece I’Anson: Mileece is a multi-disciplinary sonic artist, environment designer,
and renewable energy ambassador. Her recorded music has heralded international critical
acclaim and her custom coded-immersive sound installations ‘promoting ecology through
technology and the arts’ have toured an array of prestigious museums, festivals, and
venues across the globe, reaching over 10 million people through prime time features. She
sits on the board of Cygnus Atratus Group for fuel cell innovation and recently founded
Children of Wild, a collaborative effort of cutting edge technology partners and
conservation groups to forge innovative connections between urban and wilderness
environments.
About Sensable Technologies / Invisible Media & Entertainment: Sensable is a California
company developing disruptive fragrance delivery technologies, including the world's first
wearable, rapid switching and high capacity scent microtechnology for virtual or
augmented reality. Invisible, its creative division, expands the possibilities of storytelling
using scent in productions as wide ranging as videogames, films, documentaries, live
events, promotions and fashion. Sensable/Invisible is headed up by Stewart Matthew, the
creator, writer and director of the world's first ScentOpera held at the Guggenheim
Museums in New York and Bilbao. In addition to Matthew, Sensable's co-founders are
Professor Sungho Jin and Dr Calvin Gardner. Invisible's Head of Scent Design is Raymond
Matts, noted for his work in the creation of fine fragrances such as Clinique Happy,
Elizabeth Taylor's White Diamonds and Brioni Cologne, among others.
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TREEHUGGER_EPK MARSHMALLOW LASER FEAST 14/03/17
Treehugger was commissioned by the Cinekid Foundation, STRP, Southbank Centre and
Migrations. After the Southbank Centre Winter Festival, Treehugger can be found at the
STRP Biennial in Eindhoven from the 20 to 27 March 2017; Tribeca from the 20 to 29 April
and at Migrations in Wales from April through to June 2017.
CREATORS COMMENTS
Barney Steel, MFL’s co-founder & creative director, says: “What if we could shift our
perception of the world, accelerate time, see microscopic detail or even see through solid
objects? Well, now we can. VR makes this possible by making the invisible visible whilst
distorting time and space to transform our perception of the world around us.”
Ersinhan Ersin, MLF’s Creative Director, comments: “The giant sequoia is naturally
seductive and the experience of standing beneath one is deeply moving. Because we tend
to protect what we fall in love with the ultimate hope with this project is that undergoing
such a deep VR experience will nudge people away from consumerism towards
conservation.”
Robin McNicholas, MLF’s Co-founder and Creative Director, adds: “The natural world is a
feature central to our practice. We hope that the act of engaging with incredible
organisms such as the sequoia helps keep the environment at the forefront of our
collective conscious.”
Mileece I’Anson, Soundscape Designer/Sonic Artist comments: “We cannot replace the
awesome experience of being in the presence of this living giant Sequoia, however by
applying the cutting edge visualization and sonification technology used in this project, we
can experience these trees in a profound and entirely new way. Treehugger: Wawona lets
us hear and see the hidden systems that serve to reveal how similar these giants are to us;
breathing, consuming and creating energy, transpiring and even communicating, all to an
internal rhythm we can easily recognize as kin to our own heartbeat. I can only hope I have
served the honor of bridging some gap between ourselves and these great companions of
the Earth through the sounds presented here, albeit generated or recorded through
machines.
Stewart Matthew, Head of Sensable/Invisible comments: “Our sense of smell informs
everything we perceive and feel about our world, our technologies and approach to
scenting will further imprint Treehugger, so that the audience's memory of it will remain
as strong and vivid as originally experienced.”
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TREEHUGGER_EPK MARSHMALLOW LASER FEAST 14/03/17
CREDITS:
Concept by: Marshmallow Laser Feast
Direction: Barney Steel, Ersin Han Ersin, Robin McNicholas
Collaborating Artist: Natan Sinigaglia
Executive Producer: Eleanor (Nell) Whitley
Senior Producer: Mike Jones
Senior Producer (US): Armand Weeresinghe
Production Manager: Mark Geary
Production Support: Cordelia MacDonald
Binaural Sound Designer / Sonic Artist / Audio Capture: Mileece I’Anson
Custom Binaural Audio Engine Designer: Antoine Bertin
Scent Technology and Production: Sensable Technologies LLC
Director, Scent Production: Stewart Matthew
Technical Director, Scent Production: Calvin Gardner
Scent Score and Scent Design/Creation: Stewart Matthew and Raymond Matts (Invisible
Media & Entertainment)
Scent Creation: a collaboration between Invisible Media & Entertainment and Symrise
Scent Production Sponsor: Symrise, a global leader in fine fragrance innovation/creation
3D Designer: Harvard Tveito
VVVV Developers: Chris Plant, Tebjan Halm
Junior Developer: Laine Kočãne
Photogrammetry & VFX Supervisor: Scott Metzger
LIDAR Scanning & Photogrammetry: Mimic
Root System Modelling: Ironklad
Installation Technologist: Hayden Anyasi
Tree Fabrication: Octant Objects / Other Fabrications / ML Fabcuts
Seamstress: Natalie Wilkins
With thanks to:
Symrise
PNY
Natural History Museum
Salford University
3Dception
The Macaulay Library at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, New York
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TREEHUGGER_EPK MARSHMALLOW LASER FEAST 14/03/17
Treehugger is commissioned by Cinekid Foundation, STRP, Southbank Centre and
Migrations.
LINKS
www.marshmallowlaserfeast.com
www.cinekid.nl
www.strp.nl
www.southbankcentre.co.uk
www.migrations.uk
www.sensabletec.com
www.invisiblemedia-ent.com
www.symrise.com
SOCIAL MEDIA LINKS
www.treehuggervr.com
instagram.com/marshmallowlaserfeast
#treehuggervr
@marshmallowlf
IMAGES FOR DOWNLOAD
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/qzrvktsk09ab9jx/AABDD5hXj2Vi0I2p-G9lwwfxa?dl=0
TRAILER
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/yzlyz6pqhl2n0sq/AADa_AtZxV9k4CsxF-8ywfyNa?dl=0
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