Cathedral of Nature

Immersive art collective and creative studio Marshmallow Laser Feast provide an exclusive clip of their latest project, Cathedral of Nature—a video installation rending of their VR project, Treehugger.

“We are intimately connected with the trees,” says Barnaby Steel, creative director of Marshmallow Laser Feast. “We share breath with these ancient beings, in some ways they can be seen as an extension of our lungs, what we breathe out the trees breathe in; the oxygen the trees exhale flows into our tree-like lungs, flowing from our heart center outward, through fractal branching arteries to feed every cell in our body.”

Cathedral of Nature looks at the giant sequoia tree with a virtual reality lens that cuts into a tree’s inner workings. Aided by an atmospheric, rumbling soundscape, the film reveals a transparent tree and the rhythmical pulsing of water and nutrients ebbing and flowing with the rising and setting of the sun. Steel wants audiences to see them as “a living breathing being, not dissimilar to your branching self, hidden just beneath the skin.”

“Where does our body end and the tree begin?” he continues. “This project is part of an exploration that reveals the connections between plants and animals and honours trees as ancient, breathing beings that sustain life on earth.”

Cathedral of Nature was presented at chi K11 art museum for NOWNESS Experiments: The Mesh, a moving-image exhibition produced in collaboration with NOWNESS. Running from November 8 – December 13, 2019