Fading Forest
Experience & Interaction Models
- Integrating the sound of animals and insects to provide a more immersive and realistic feel to the forest space. Beginning with a serene and lively atmosphere, it aims to display deforestation through a repeated cycle of calmness to despair.
- Visitors will be subjected to spontaneous sounds of chainsaws that would output through the surround sound speakers in ACW 103.
- Essentially, the users, have no idea when the acts of deforestation will occur within the space. This would further provide the users with an element of surprise and the feeling of not being in control of what is happening initially. A wake up call to reality!
- Once the sounds of chainsaws are activated, two servos will cause the acrylic rod on the top of the ground trees, to bend. The flower neopixel (at the bottom of the rod) and the neopixel strips (inside the tube) will shut off, signifying the destruction of the tree. This would further symbolize despair and the probable element of extinction of the wildlife.
- When a tree is being “cut” down, the trees on the ceiling with the neopixel strips would mirror all the light actions of the ground trees, thereby, they will also turn off.
- This installation will also allow the users the opportunity to “replant” the “tree” through the use of an RFID tag, sewn on a glove (Reforestation).
- This will trigger the servos/stepper motors which will allow the bent “tree” to return to its original position.The visitors will be "thanked" through a display of multicolored lights as well as the tree returning to its original upright position. This is symbolic to the physical regrowth process of reforestation. In the sound representation of regrowth, the sound starts at a slow tempo, then gradually elevates to a faster tempo.
- The multi coloured neopixels would eventually change to green again, emphasizing the end of the growth process and a new tree has filled the space.
- Visitors can extinguish the fires through a simple flash of any light source eg. their phones, on a photoresistor.
The Global Forest Watch Experience
http://www.globalforestwatch.org/
What if we had each of the 12 trees represent for example 3 million trees (36 million trees in total), 5 trees can be cut down (15 million) and all 12 trees can be set on fire (36 million). According to the Global Forest Watch statistics of the whole Canada, over 36 million trees have been lost between 2001 to 2016. We can use the Global Forest Watch data to emulate a similar result to how many trees have been lost due to acts of deforestation as well as how many have been recovered due to reforestation. For example, to arrive at approximately 36 million in loss, 12 trees need to be lost, which would be in the first cycle of the chopping and forest fire modes. Once they are lost, we can have an output from the speakers saying “36 million trees have been destroyed, Canada has a tree cover loss from their boreal forest of 36,012,930 between 2001 to 2016.”
In this case, if 3 trees were replanted, the output would be, “you have replanted 9 million trees, Canada had a tree cover regain of 9,107,212 between 2001 to 2016." This process can be done for as many countries as we would like. An appropriate scaled number will be chosen based on the data gathered from the countries we would like to include. There will be a continuum number of trees destroyed and replanted, which are increased after every cycle of activation.