Emerging media as techniques of futuring

Unity Charitable Fund, Unity for Humanity Program, and Co-Creation Studio at MIT Open Documentary Lab

2023

Unity through the Unity Charitable Fund, the Unity for humanity Program, and the Co-Creation Studio at MIT Open Documentary Lab

A research and development initiative exploring climate futures at the intersection of documentary, land-use planning, speculative design, and game-engine technologies, bringing together teams with virtual world projects in development.

WORLDING is a research and development initiative that explores climate futures at the intersection of documentary, land-use planning, speculative design, and game-engine technologies. The 2023 workshop brings together teams with virtual world projects in development for an intensive knowledge-sharing program. Each team includes land-use planners, place-makers, community advocates, scholars, and artists/creator technologists using game engines and real-time 3D technology to imagine, communicate, and build more sustainable and resilient worlds. The initiative aims to map out the emergence of a new field that harnesses 3D game engines for community-based, cross-disciplinary approaches to climate futures.

WORLDING is explicitly framed as a futures initiative: "teams are using game engines and realtime 3D technology to imagine, communicate, and build more sustainable and resilient worlds." The project aims to explore "both imaginative and tangible climate futures" through "community-based, cross-disciplinary approaches."

"To learn from each other, and to map out the emergence of a new field: one that harnesses 3D game engines for community-based, cross-disciplinary approaches to both imaginative and tangible climate futures."

Co-creation, collaborative development

MIT Docubase

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.futures.2022.102922

Not explicitly stated in source material

United States

Collaborative co-design platform for local land-use futures.

Realtime 3D engine; gamified planning tools.

Imagines future governance through speculative world-building.

Sandbox dramaturgy; no narrative arc, exploratory design.

Marina Zurkow, James Schmitz

2022

bitforms gallery

An exhibition featuring digital prints and generative software works that visualize global climate interconnections through the metaphor of wind. The project incorporates AI-generated imagery based on the prompt "World War II agitprop map of pollution and climate change."

World Wind features artworks by Marina Zurkow and collaborative generative pieces by Zurkow and James Schmitz. The exhibition title draws inspiration from a mural made by Zurkow in collaboration with Midjourney, an AI platform, using the prompt "World War II agitprop map of pollution and climate change." The work incorporates AI's perception of climate change with the artist's guidance, editing, and direction, positioning ecological transformation imagery within a style reminiscent of lithography and propaganda. Bordered by bold red and thick lettering, the work suggests both a reference to the past and a nod towards an inevitable future. Wind acts as a unifying force in the exhibition, summoned through open source data and artificial intelligence, representing global entanglement and change. The audio and visuals are drawn from organic source material gathered during embedded research, then transformed through digital processes.

Explicitly references future climate conditions through provocative visual language that combines historical propaganda aesthetics with contemporary climate data. The work is described as having elements that suggest "both a reference to the past and a nod towards an inevitable future."

Generative Art, Data Storytelling

Not explicitly stated in source material

Passive viewing of digital prints and generative software works in gallery context.

Artist website

Not explicitly stated in source material

bitforms gallery, New York

Not explicitly stated in source material

Users as explorers; open-source platform encourages community contributions.

Virtual globe software; satellite imagery; geospatial data.

Frames Earth observation as a tool for understanding planetary futures.

Interactive navigation; data visualization; educational presentations.

Joost Vervoort and the All Rise team

2024

Dutch government's fund for creative industry (starting funds)

A narrative-driven game about taking corporations responsible for environmental destruction to court, combining deck-building mechanics with courtroom drama and world exploration to inspire climate action while funding real environmental court cases.

All Will Rise is a game about taking corporations and others responsible for destroying the planet to court. It combines the court focus and absurdity of Phoenix Wright with the worldbuilding and narrative exploration of Disco Elysium or Citizen Sleeper, using deckbuilding mechanics similar to Slay the Spire. Players go out in the world to find clues, evidence, gossip, and conversation tactics for court battles. The game's first chapter, "The Murdered River," is set in a speculative version of Kerala, India, where players control Kuyili, a lawyer fighting for environmental justice after a polluted river catches fire. The game involves managing a team of activists, gathering cards through missions, engaging in card-based conversations with key characters, and culminating in courtroom battles. When people buy the game, they fund real environmental court cases, connecting virtual gameplay to real-world impact.

The game explicitly engages with futures thinking through its design as a "sideways speculation" that presents an alternative version of our world: "It is like our world in many ways, but some things are just a bit different, which gives us the chance to show how many paths to the future are possible." The game aims to "infuse wild joy, curiosity and playfulness" into addressing climate change while taking "the maddening political realities of environmental inaction head on."

Interactive Narrative

"To inspire laughter alongside a sense of possibility and empowerment in players while taking the maddening political realities of environmental inaction head on. We hope to inspire people to look at what can be done through curious, creative eyes... when people buy the game, they know they're funding real environmental court cases."

Interactive engagement through gameplay with real-world impact

Journal

Not explicitly stated in source material

Not explicitly stated in source material

Netherlands

Positions players as environmental justice agents; encourages strategic collaboration to “defeat” corporate polluters.

Immersive game world; rules-based system; playable prototype.

Uses narrative tropes of resistance and legal action to frame climate futures as systemic struggle.

Game-based progression with escalating stakes; emotional tension through moral decision-making.

Marshmallow Laser Feast

2021

Not explicitly stated in source material

A large-scale video installation adapted from a multi-sensory immersive installation revealing the invisible connection between plants and humans through breath. The work visualizes how tree cardiovascular systems interact with natural networks, placing human breathing in a larger reciprocal system.

The installation reveals the interconnectedness of plant and human life through visualization of breath and circulatory systems. It explores how trees take CO2, water, and sunlight to produce organic matter through photosynthesis, releasing oxygen as a waste product. Animals (including humans) consume plants and use oxygen for respiration, releasing CO2. The installation highlights our dependence on trees for oxygen and contextualizes this relationship within climate change discussions, emphasizing our responsibility to other organisms.

The work engages with environmental futures by highlighting the relationship between oxygen-carbon dioxide balance and climate change: "In an age where excess carbon dioxide is fuelling climate change, the simple act of breathing can engage us with this cycle in an intimate way, and in doing so help us reflect on our dependence and responsibility to the organisms we share the planet with."

To create awareness of human-plant interdependence and our responsibility toward other organisms on the planet in the context of climate change.

Passive viewing with contemplative engagement

Artist website

Not explicitly stated in source material

2023/2024 Works of Nature, ACMI, Melbourne, Australia; 2022 Plásmata: Bodies, Dreams, and Data, Onnasis Foundation, Athens, Greece; 2021 Observations on Being, Coventry, UK

Not explicitly stated in source material

Users interact via breath sensors, emphasizing invisible interdependence.

VR with haptics and biofeedback; multi-sensory design.

Breath and mycorrhizal networks as metaphors for symbiosis.

Immersive aesthetic; contemplative, poetic performance of life’s interconnectedness.

Tamiko Thiel (USA/Germany) in collaboration with /p (Pete Jiadong Qiang)

2018

Whitney Museum of American Art (NYC) for Programmed: Rules, Codes, and Choreographies in Art exhibition hyperallergic.com.

An AR installation that submerges the Whitney Museum s terrace in a virtual coral reef grown from plastic debris hyperallergic.com hyperallergic.com. Through provided iPads or a smartphone app, visitors on the 6th-floor outdoor terrace see an underwater scene: colorful coral-like structures clinging to the museum s facade and sculptures. At first these corals are vividly hued and alive, but a closer look reveals they are composed entirely of everyday plastic trash (bottles, flip-flops, rubber ducks) hyperallergic.com. Over the course of each day s exhibition, the AR reef slowly bleaches to ghostly white, responding to the notion of daily visitor touch or time cycle. This piece draws a direct parallel between climate change-induced coral bleaching and our plastic pollution, suggesting a future where marine life is inseparable from plastic.

Description: Unexpected Growth is experienced via AR viewers fixed on the terrace or personal devices. The digital coral reef is accurately scaled to the terrace architecture; for instance, a virtual coral encrusts a real ventilation grate, and another wraps around a structural column. The reef is dynamic: it has a morning state (healthy, multi-colored), and by evening it turns bone white, resetting to color by next morning simulating a rapid bleach/regrowth cycle to underscore ongoing stress hyperallergic.com. The AR imagery was modeled to appear slightly fantastical (some corals have shapes reminiscent of detergent bottles), highlighting the synthetic nature. An ocean soundscape plays through speakers: gentle water burbles and distant marine life sounds, creating an immersive atmosphere hyperallergic.com. The piece also included indoor kiosks where one could explore static 3D models of the corals up close, identifying the types of plastic embedded. This work uses no text in AR, letting the visuals speak: vibrant yet toxic growths, beautiful yet made of waste. It stands as a poignant commentary on how human waste could form the basis of future ecosystems.

Portrays an apocalyptic ecological future where oceans have drowned our cities (Whitney underwater) and new ecologies form from our trash. It s speculative but grounded in two real trends: coral reef collapse and pervasive plastic pollution. By conflating them, it suggests a future hybrid nature not one we desire, but one that might occur if we don t change. It s both a warning future (urban spaces underwater) and a strange hope (life adapts, but with our waste). Importantly, it compresses time (bleaching in a day) to drive home urgency.

AR app on iPads (provided by museum) hyperallergic.com; outdoor/indoor mixed setting; digital 3D assets anchored to real coordinates; ambient audio.

Interactive via AR viewing. Users actively scan the terrace with a device to reveal the hidden reef. This creates a sense of discovery. There s no direct manipulation of the AR elements by users, but the temporal change (color to white) can engage repeat visitors or those who stay awhile (they witness the transformation). It s fundamentally an augmented viewing experience adding a layer to what the audience sees in reality.

Speculative environmental art. It approaches the future by overlaying it on the present (literal augmentation). It s critical in that it comments on human impact, but also somewhat allegorical using the reef as both subject and symbol (the museum is underwater in a metaphorical sense). Technically, it follows new media art approaches (interactive code-based art) while thematically aligning with eco-criticism.

Artist website

Whitney Museum, New York (Oct 2018 Spring 2019) hyperallergic.com; later adapted as part of Unveiling the Invisible at MIT (2020) arts.mit.edu. (Also sold as an NFT in 2021, extending its display to digital art collections.)

USA/Germany.

It connects the viewer, the artwork, and the physical site (museum) in a triad: you see your familiar cultural space invaded by nature+trash. It turns the museum (a human cultural refuge) into part of nature s realm subverting the usual separation. This relational inversion can provoke a sense of responsibility or loss. On a social level, people would often show each other what they see on the AR device, creating a moment of shared witnessing ( Do you see the coral on that wall ! ), thereby building a communal understanding of the message.

The work itself is virtual, but it cleverly ties to physical plastic objects. By visualizing plastics in the virtual corals, it reminds viewers of the tangible waste we produce. The bleaching effect ties to a material process (loss of algae in real corals). The absence of actual water or coral in reality only present in AR leaves an uncanny sense of material instability: what s solid (museum) could be submerged, what s ephemeral (digital coral) represents something solid that s been lost (real coral). The audio adds a sensorial material layer (sound vibrations) that make the virtual presence feel more real.

The installation uses visual allegory rather than text: coral = nature, plastic coral = altered nature due to humans. It fits into the discourse of the Anthropocene how human artifacts become part of the geologic record (here becoming reef structure). It frames the future by blending it into the present environment, implicitly telling a story of cause and effect (present pollution -> future ocean state). The piece s title Unexpected Growth is itself a commentary growth usually positive, here unexpected because it s made of waste, encapsulating the paradox. The narrative is communicated through the cycle of colors: vibrant to bleached, which is a known story of coral health; thus it uses the scientific narrative of coral bleaching as a language within the art.

The experience unfolds slowly and subtly. Early in the day, visitors might be enchanted by the bright, whimsical coral city growing on the museum it s almost magical realism. As time wears on (or if one toggles the app to see later state), the emotional tone shifts to one of loss (the white corals evoke death). This daily dramaturgical cycle is like a mini tragedy repeated, perhaps leaving frequent museum staff with a Sisyphean sense. The staging on the Whitney terrace open air with real city skyline provides a dramatic contrast: reality of NYC vs. the AR underwater NYC. It s performative in that the reef performs its death each day. The audience s emotional journey can mirror the corals: initial delight, then dawning realization and sadness. In a sense, the art performs climate change in compressed time, delivering an emotional simulation of decades of change in minutes or hours.

Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun, Paisley Smith

Not explicitly stated in source material

Made with Support by: The Sundance Institute and the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation

A provocative VR experience created from indigenous artist Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun's iconic work, engaging viewers in an interactive landscape that addresses colonialism, climate change, and indigenous civil rights through bold, surrealist artistic style.

Unceded Territories is a VR experience that translates Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun's bold, surrealist artistic style into an interactive environment dominated by the ovoid form, which Yuxweluptun uses as an expression of his artistic freedom through his theory of "Ovoidism." The experience forces participants to question their role in environmental destruction by embodying the "greedy, Super Predator" character. The work makes visible the "toxic realities of forest fires, poisoned waters, dead fish, spilled oil" while incorporating powerful music by A Tribe Called Red. This project builds on Yuxweluptun's pioneering 1992 VR work "Inherent Rights, Vision Rights" but moves beyond the spiritual into political and environmental confrontation.

The project directly engages with futures thinking by inviting "audiences to recognize their role in the destruction of the environment" and questioning whether "we [are] that different than the pipeline executives sacrificing mother earth for their own wealth?" It presents a "not so subtle political and environmental confrontation" that serves as "an anthem for change" addressing colonial and environmental futures.

"To force audiences to recognize their role in the destruction of the environment by having them embody the greedy, Super Predator... We want you to think about these things, to feel our anger, and to fight for change."

Interactive engagement through embodied VR experience

Virtual Arcade (Tribeca)

Not explicitly stated in source material

Sundance Institute

Canada

Interactive protest space designed by Indigenous artist; users embody resistance.

VR headset; dense symbolic world.

Settler colonialism and climate intertwined; narrative of reclamation.

Visually rich confrontation; defiant tone; powerful symbolism.

Marshmallow Laser Feast (Robin McNicholas, Ersin Han Ersin, Barney Steel)

2016

Cinekid Foundation, STRP, Southbank Centre, Migrations Festival

A multisensory mixed-reality installation centered on a tactile sculpture of a giant sequoia tree that reveals its inner systems through VR, allowing participants to visualize water circulation while experiencing altered time perception to match the tree's 3,000-year lifespan.

Treehugger: Wawona is a multisensory mixed-reality installation featuring a large tactile sculpture of a giant sequoia tree. Participants don VR headsets and place their heads into a knot in the tree sculpture, which transports them into the tree's inner world. The experience reveals the circulation of water from the sequoia's deep roots through its trunk to its leaves, immersing viewers in hypnotic water and energy flows while altering their perception of time to match the temporality of a 3,000-year-old tree. The project used data from London's Natural History Museum and University of Salford researchers, employing LIDAR scanning and white light scanning to create high-resolution visualizations. The soundscape extends scientific data by acoustically reproducing the tree's vascular system, with bioacoustics representing the sounds of Sequoia National Park. The 20-minute installation won the Tribeca Film Festival Storyscapes Award in 2017 and the VR Arles Festival Best VR Film award in 2018, and has been exhibited internationally at venues including Tribeca Film Festival, Southbank Centre, Phi Centre, and various festivals across Europe, North America, and Asia.

The project explicitly questions "our relationship with the natural world at a time of crisis and change" while offering "tree time" as an alternative temporal perspective that extends beyond human timescales, implicitly suggesting different future relationships with ancient organisms.

To reveal "the secret life of the giant sequoia and questions our relationship with the natural world at a time of crisis and change"

Interactive embodied experience through physical interaction with tree sculpture and VR

Artist website

Not explicitly stated in source material

Cinekids Festival (Netherlands), Southbank Centre (UK), STRP (Netherlands), Tribeca Film Festival (USA), Migrations Festival (UK), Future of Storytelling (USA), Us By Night (Belgium), Phi Centre (Montreal), VR Arles (France), OMM (Turkey), KFF (Taiwan), CCCB (Spain), New Now Festival (Germany), Frankfurter Kunstverein (Germany), Tai Kwun (Hong Kong)

United Kingdom

Participant embraces a redwood; haptics enable tree embodiment.

VR + full-body feedback; touch as core input.

Emotional metaphor of “becoming tree”; anthropomorphic fusion.

Slow growth cycle mirrors forest time; climax as eco-sublime.

New Reality Company (Winslow Porter)

2017

New Reality Company

An immersive VR experience where participants embody a kapok tree growing in the Amazon rainforest, experiencing its development from seedling to maturity and ultimately facing deforestation, creating an emotional journey that connects viewers to environmental issues.

In Tree, participants take on the body of a growing kapok tree in the Amazon rainforest, experiencing its life from seedling to maturity. The VR experience combines visual effects with multisensory elements including wind, heat, touch, a feeling of movement, and custom scents (soil, jungle, and smoke) to create a fully immersive experience. As the tree grows and its branches flourish, participants experience the impact of climate change, culminating in the distressing experience of forest fires and deforestation. The project required collaboration between multiple video effects studios using tools like Houdini and Maya for creating blend shapes that simulate tree growth, with teams working across New York, London, and Hollywood. The experience aims to make the impacts of deforestation tangible and emotional for participants, connecting them more deeply to rainforest conservation issues.

The experience engages with environmental futures by making "the impacts of deforestation tangible" and helping participants "empathize with the tree." It aims to help people "feel deforestation happening" and experience "the impact of global climate change all around them" to create awareness about future environmental challenges.

"To make the ocean's plight more relatable" and "encourage the planting of seeds around the globe" in conjunction with the Rainforest Alliance

Immersive embodied experience

Sundance Institute History

Not explicitly stated in source material

Sundance New Frontier festival 2017

United States

Participants become a tree; haptics and visuals simulate growth, destruction.

VR + haptic vest; growth animation and sound design.

Tree metaphor frames climate urgency and vulnerability; empathy through embodiment.

Linear temporal arc from birth to death; designed for emotional catharsis.

Superflux

2022

Museum of the Future, Dubai Future Foundation

A vast interactive library containing 2,400 crystal specimen jars of existing and extinct lifeforms, set in the year 2071 when ecosystems have suffered irreparable damage. Visitors scan specimens to learn about their interconnections and complete challenges to design new lifeforms that can repair damaged ecosystems.

The Vault of Life presents a future (2071) where many ecosystems have suffered irreparable damage. The installation consists of 2,400 crystal specimen jars suspended in a 375 sq.m space, each etched with a unique existing or extinct lifeform. The specimens are arranged according to the Tree of Life taxonomy, with visitors entering among higher mammals and evolved plants, then moving back in time to earlier evolutionary groups. Visitors use handheld scanning devices to learn about specimens, their connections to past and present ecologies, and can undertake challenges to design new lifeforms that can repair damaged ecosystems. The installation aims to show the deeply interconnected nature of all life on earth and inspire visitors to become active agents of ecological restoration. The project required intensive design and prototyping, including custom crystal etching technology, taxonomic research, and narrative development of interactive challenges based on emerging biotechnology and restorative technology.

The work is explicitly set in the year 2071 and invites "visitors to time travel to this Future Earth to learn how humanity collectively worked together to repair, restore and renew our planetary ecology -- imagining an alternative hopeful future for all species on the planet." The installation aims to inspire visitors to "become active agents of change today."

"This captivating, immersive experience aims to inspire visitors to become active agents of change today" to protect ecosystems

Interactive exploration with challenges and educational components

Artist Website

Not explicitly stated in source material

Museum of the Future, Dubai

UK

Participants explore genetic futures through an interactive archive.

Data interface + immersive room; specimen drawers.

Futures imagined through loss and preservation of species.

Spatial and archival dramaturgy; curiosity and caution interwoven.

Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg (UK)

2019

Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum & Cube Design Museum daisyginsberg.com (for Nature Triennial 2019). Production support: Google Arts & Culture, MILK studios (animation).

A life-size digital simulation of the last male northern white rhino, resurrected through AI and projection after the species extinction. In this video installation, an artificial rhino appears in a minimalist virtual space, initially low-poly and glitchy but gradually becoming hyper-real as it learns its environment daisyginsberg.com daisyginsberg.com. The work probes the paradox of our obsession with creating new artificial life forms while we neglect and eradicate real animals daisyginsberg.com. It confronts viewers with a question: if we can digitally or biotechnologically recreate an extinct animal, is that a acceptable substitute for preserving the real thing

Context: Sudan, the last male northern white rhino, died in 2018 daisyginsberg.com, prompting efforts to bio-engineer the species back. Ginsberg s installation uses DeepMind AI research to animate a plausible rhino behavior as an autonomous agent daisyginsberg.com. The projection (5m wide) shows the rhino roaming and gradually refining its movements and form starting as pixelated blocks and ending in photorealistic detail once it habituates to the virtual space daisyginsberg.com. The rhino occasionally charges at the walls, its thundering sound filling the room, but ultimately remains trapped in its digital confines. A second screen displays the underlying AI grid-cell data, revealing the machine learning process. By drawing on actual field recordings of the last rhinos for its audio and behaviors daisyginsberg.com, the piece blurs boundaries between the synthetic and the authentic. It asks viewers to consider what is lost when an animal only exists as data and whether technology offers salvation or just an illusion of life.

Critically engages with a synthetic future where extinct species live on as digital or genetic facsimiles. It forces reflection on a normative question: Do we want a future that needs such substitutes It highlights that without action, the future of biodiversity might be museum-like recreations rather than living animals. In this sense it s a cautionary tale about a technologically mediated natural future.

Stereoscopic 3D projection (or high-res screen) in dark space; generative animation running in real-time (or pre-rendered with AI input); audio playback of rhino sounds.

Passive viewing. The audience watches the rhino s apparition; no direct interactivity. The rhino s behavior is autonomous (or appears so), sometimes responding to audience presence with a charge. Viewers engage intellectually and emotionally rather than physically.

Critical/speculative. Presents a scientifically plausible scenario (AI + de-extinction) as an art installation to raise ethical questions. It s not storytelling but rather an exploratory provocation a scenario that the viewer must contemplate.

Artist website

Nature: Cooper Hewitt Design Triennial (NYC 2019) daisyginsberg.com; Cube Design Museum, NL (2019); FACT Liverpool And Say the Animal Responded (2020) daisyginsberg.com; Onassis Stegi, Athens (2021) daisyginsberg.com; Natural History Museum, London The Lost Rhino (2022) daisyginsberg.com; Biennale of Sydney (2022) biennaleofsydney.art.

United Kingdom.

Places the viewer face-to-face with an almost-ghost: the dynamic is one of witness and apparition. This one-sided relationship (we can observe the rhino, but it s unaware or uncomprehending of us) underscores the disconnect between humans and the lives we extinguish. It also implicates the viewer, who stands in the space where a real rhino should be, but only a virtual one remains.

Entirely digital presence in a physical gallery a holographic stand-in for a lost animal. There s a stark physical emptiness (just projections in a dark room) which is part of the point: the absence of the real rhino is palpable. The piece leverages high-resolution visuals and enveloping sound to create a sensory realism, yet the audience can never touch the rhino highlighting the intangibility of what s been lost.

The work operates as a visual essay or thought experiment rather than narrative. It employs the metaphor of a substitute (stand-in) to frame discussions on authenticity: e.g., what is real nature The emptiness of the scene and the title prompt a conversation about how language (calling this artificial construct a rhino) can mask reality (the rhino is gone). It invites metaphorical interpretation: the rhino becoming clear = our desire to make the problem disappear via tech, etc.

Staged minimalistically just the rhino and empty space focusing attention on the creature s increasing vividness, which creates both wonder and melancholy. Emotions range from initial curiosity to a growing sadness or unease when one realizes this vivid rhino is only a lonely ghost. The performative charge at the viewer startles, possibly evoking guilt or longing. Overall the piece elicits a reflective emotional tone, rather than dramatic catharsis, leaving viewers with a contemplative silence (much like an extinct species itself).

Stanford University researchers

2016

Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation and the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment

An educational VR experience allowing users to observe firsthand the projected effects of ocean acidification on rocky reefs by the end of the century, visualizing underwater ecosystem changes based on marine science research.

The Stanford Ocean Acidification Experience (SOAE) is an educational VR program that allows users to observe the projected effects of ocean acidification on rocky reefs by the end of the century if carbon emissions remain unchecked. The experience makes the invisible visible by showing users how the ocean absorbs CO2 molecules, causing rocky reefs to degrade and marine life to disappear. Each step in the journey is based on marine science research. The experience has been presented to decision and policy makers around the world, including the U.S. Senate and the Palauan National Congress, and has been downloaded in over 100 countries and territories. It has been translated into French, Italian, and Portuguese, and is being used in museums, schools, and other institutions worldwide as part of a large-scale VR study.

The experience explicitly engages with futures by presenting "what rocky reefs are expected to look like by the end of the century if we do not curb our CO2 emissions" and showing the progressive degradation of marine ecosystems over time as carbon pollution continues.

To educate people about ocean acidification and its impacts, and to "call attention to the peril our oceans face and what we must do to protect them" (U.S. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse)

Immersive educational experience

Stanford University

Steam, Viveport, Oculus

U.S. Senate, Palauan National Congress, museums, schools worldwide

United States

Users become ocean organisms; empathy via embodiment.

VR, audio narration, ecosystem simulation.

Ocean acidification as immersive metaphor for systems breakdown.

Rising tension and visual disintegration mirror emotional urgency.

Superflux

2023

King's Culture

An installation of digital screens and printed artworks that imagine a journey of deep transformation, inviting viewers to consider how rewilding ourselves might change the world around us, specifically in a transformed London where people have rejected the economic status quo.

The Quiet Enchanting presents an installation that invites viewers into a mythic time of ecological abundance, where mass disillusionment with the status quo has led to a rewilding of both human souls and the city of London. The project draws inspiration from The Great Resignation of 2022, interpreting this moment as marking a transformation from disillusionment to rewilding. In this speculative future, people have rejected the "illusory clock time of capital" to attune themselves to cyclical seasonal time, celestial bodies, and tides, finding new purpose that nourishes mental and ecological health. The installation takes the form of a mythological frieze wrapping around windows at Bush House, referencing pre-modern poetics, pagan folklore, and animist societies. The cityscape shows familiar London landmarks that have harmoniously adapted for humans and nature to collaboratively thrive.

The work explicitly presents a speculative future where "recognising their latent power to change the systems, the protagonists listened to the groans of the earth and responded with care and gratitude." The project is described as "seeding narrative visions that ignite a sense of hope and possibility" for climate-positive futures.

"To collectively imagine climate positive futures" and provide "narrative visions that ignite a sense of hope and possibility"

Passive viewing with interactive question panels and survey

Artist Website

Not explicitly stated in source material

London (Bush House, King's College London)

UK

Public interacts with poetic provocations in urban space.

Screens and print interventions in public zones.

Climate quietude; re-enchanting everyday life with speculative wonder.

Fragmentary encounters; ambient dramaturgy using surprise and stillness.

Skawennati

2017

Not explicitly stated in source material

A futuristic saga set in 3025 rooted in the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) confederation story, about Earth becoming a confederation where peace is not just absence of war but eradication of injustice. Young Mohawk woman Iotetsh\'e8n:'en travels through space with four diplomats for a momentous rendezvous.

The work imagines a time when Earth has become a confederation of countries who truly recognize that we share one planet; where differences in religion, language, sexuality, and skin color need not interfere with one another; and where peace means eradication of injustice. The protagonist, a young Mohawk woman named Iotetsh\'e8n:'en, travels through space with four other diplomats to a significant meeting. The narrative references the ancestral Iroquois confederation story about the Peacemaker who brought peace, unity and respect to five warring nations\'97the Mohawk, the Onondaga, the Oneida, the Cayuga, and the Seneca. The work imagines how ancestral Iroquois knowledge of peacemaking can be applied to all humans and potentially to other-worldly beings.

Explicitly connects Indigenous Haudenosaunee history and knowledge systems to future space exploration and interspecies diplomacy. The work projects ancestral peacemaking practices into the future (year 3025) to explore how they might be applied universally.

Virtual Reality

The work aims to demonstrate how ancestral Iroquois knowledge of peacemaking can be applied to all humans today and potentially to other-worldly beings in the future.

Not explicitly stated in source material

Artist website

https://skawennati.com/projects/the-peacemaker-returns/

Not explicitly stated in source material

Not explicitly stated in source material

Interactive narrative; audience influences storyline; explores conflict resolution.

Digital game platform; branching narratives; user input.

Frames peacebuilding as a dynamic and participatory process; uses metaphor of journey.

Interactive gameplay; narrative choices; emotional engagement through character development.

Jordyn Barber, Colleen McGregor, Ariella Gaughan

Not explicitly stated in source material

Not explicitly stated in source material

A real-world data city simulator game connecting people in designing sustainable communities, starting in Georgetown, SC where players and residents contribute to virtual reclamation of plantations and building new ways of life.

The Greenprint is a real-world data city simulator game that connects people in designing sustainable communities. Beginning in Georgetown, SC, players and residents of the local community contribute to virtual reclamations of plantations and to building a new way of life.

The project explicitly focuses on futures design through its aim to engage community members in "building a new way of life" and creating "virtual reclamations of plantations."

To engage communities in designing sustainable futures and reclaiming plantation spaces

Participatory game design with community involvement

MIT Worlding

Not explicitly stated in source material

Not explicitly stated in source material

USA

Community co-designed game for ecological urban futures; inclusive gameplay.

City simulation; 2D interface.

Urban planning as a collective act; ecopolitical imagination.

Collaborative strategy; gamified logic supports civic empowerment.

Bernie Krause (USA, soundscape ecologist) & United Visual Artists (UK, art studio)

2016

Fondation Cartier pour l Art Contemporain (Paris) fondationcartier.com. Co-produced with Krause s Wild Sanctuary archive.

An immersive audio-visual installation that transforms decades of wildlife sound recordings into a symphonic spectacle of biodiversity. In a dark gallery, audiences are enveloped by a 7-channel surround sound orchestra of animal calls from different biomes (savannah, rainforest, ocean, etc.), while a massive panoramic screen displays abstract animations derived from the sounds frequencies fondationcartier.com. As you enter, you hear a rich chorus: whales booming, birds trilling, insects humming each ecosystem presented as a movement in a concert. Visually, colorful waveforms and spectrogram patterns dance across the screen in sync with the sounds, allowing viewers to see the texture and rhythm of the animal calls. The piece celebrates the collective music of the natural world, but also carries an implicit elegy: these soundscapes are endangered or already silenced by human activity.

Description: The installation typically spans a large room. Krause curated 7 bi soundscapes from his archive of over 5,000 hours of recordings. These include, for example: a sunrise in the Zambian savannah (with elephants, cicadas, distant lions), a North American spring wetland (frogs, birds, insects), and an underwater coral reef ambience (shrimp clicks, whale song). Each soundscape is played in full spatial arrangement speakers positioned around evoke the original environment s acoustics (e.g., birds chirp above, frogs from near the floor). UVA created a visual counterpart: a horizontal line across the screen represents the frequency spectrum, and as each creature vocalizes, unique shapes and colors pulse on the screen location corresponding to that sound s frequency and time fondationcartier.com. It s as if one is looking at a living musical score of the ecosystem. The visualizations are minimalist but mesmerizing, like moving paintings that react to the sounds in real time. Importantly, there are moments of both cacophony (many species calling at once in lush habitat) and quiet (punctuating the loss of diversity). In some versions, the final movement shows a soundscape recorded years later in the same location, now drastically diminished, making the loss visible/audible as fewer traces on the screen. Visitors typically sit or lie down on a central platform to absorb the 10-15 minute cycle. No interactive component it s more of a contemplative concert experience.

Relation to Futures: The work itself focuses on present and past soundscapes, but it strongly implies a future dimension: if we don t change, these great orchestras could turn into silence. Krause has spoken of biophony (the collective sound of life) and how climate change and habitat destruction are muting Earth s music. By showcasing the beauty of intact ecosystems, it projects a desired future where such richness continues. Conversely, in some presentations, they explicitly mention habitats now lost or drastically changed, which is a warning for the future. Therefore, it engages environmental futures by instilling appreciation and urgency to preserve these living symphonies for the future.

360¯ surround sound (custom speaker array); Single large projection (~20m long) or multiple synced screens; darkened room with minimal lighting to focus senses on sound.

Passive immersion. Visitors typically sit quietly; the piece is akin to attending a symphony performance by non-human musicians. No direct interaction an intentional choice to focus on deep listening. However, the audience s movement can affect their auditory perspective (walking around changes which speaker s sounds dominate), so one can explore minor spatial variation.

Documentary art with emotive framing. It s grounded in real recordings (scientific authenticity) but presented artistically. The approach is celebratory and elegiac rather than overtly didactic trusting that the emotional resonance will lead to reflection. It bridges art and science, aligning with approaches seen in data visualization but elevated to sublime experience. It also revives an older form (orchestra, classical concert) in a novel way, which is a conceptual approach linking culture and nature.

Artist website

Fondation Cartier, Paris (Mar Sep 2016) premiere fondationcartier.com; Triennale di Milano, Broken Nature (2019) fondationcartier.com; Biennale of Sydney (2020) biennaleofsydney.art; Peabody Essex Museum, USA (2017 2019 tour) pem.org; Other tours in Shanghai (Power Station of Art 2019) and London (2016).

USA (sound) & UK (visuals).

It creates a human animal relational experience where the animals are performers and the humans are audience, flipping the usual zoo dynamic (where animals are unaware exhibits and humans noisy). Here, humans must become quiet, respectful listeners, almost as if attending a sacred ceremony by wildlife. This fosters a sense of humility and reverence. The collaboration between Krause and UVA also exemplifies human relational dynamics cross-disciplinary synergy (ecologist + artists) to amplify a message, something crucial in future environmental storytelling.

The primary material is sound, which is intangible yet deeply affective. By visualizing it, they give it a quasi-material presence (you see the structure of a soundscape). The dark space removes other material distractions, but the enveloping screen and speakers create a physical sense of presence (low-frequency rumbles can be felt). The piece also indirectly references material loss: the absence of certain sounds is noticeable as visual gaps making silence itself a material in the composition.

The title Orchestra frames nature in cultural terms, inviting people to value animal sounds as music, not noise a discursive shift. It tells a story of abundance to silence without words: each ecosystem soundscape has a narrative arc (dawn chorus builds, then quiets, etc.), and collectively the installation can be read as a narrative of what the world s soundtrack is and could become. In wall text or program notes, they usually mention which habitats and the impact of human action, connecting it to discourse on extinction. The practice of turning sound data into visual art also advances discourse on how to communicate climate impact beyond graphs here it s done through art that speaks to the soul.

It s structured in movements, like a symphony. Emotional beats include wonder (initial immersion in rich sound), tension (predator calls or intense insects buzzing), calm (moments of near quiet like a lull in nature), and eventually perhaps sadness (if an empty soundscape is presented or when the realization hits that these are fading). The staging is theatrical in a minimal way: the huge screen and surround sound conjure an environment that envelops the audience essentially placing them in the wild through sensory substitution. There is a contemplative pacing; viewers often report feeling meditative or even tearful. Without any literal stage action, the drama comes from within the sound: e.g., a sudden howler monkey roar can startle, a crescendo of frogs can amuse. In essence, it s mother nature s drama, curated by the artists to ensure a compelling flow. The ending usually leaves a reverberating final note (like a lone whale moan) followed by darkness and silence a powerful emotional end that often leads to quiet reflection before applause (yes, audiences have applauded the animals).

Jakob Kudsk Steensen

2024

Hamburger Kunsthalle

A multimedia installation featuring a live simulation, generative sound, and interactive glass sculptures that explores temporary water bodies in arid landscapes. The work continuously transforms between environmental and mental worlds through real-time simulation.

The Ephemeral Lake is described as a "living instrument" where life emerges and vanishes within a real-time simulated world and generative musical composition. Born from Steensen's ecological fieldwork in California's Mojave Desert, the work explores temporary bodies of water that appear only under unique climatic conditions in arid landscapes. The installation includes multiple screens offering different views into the simulated environment, seven physical light sculptures that respond to the musical composition, and concept sketches. The virtual world features contrasting realms: above ground shows crystalline water reflections and arid conditions, while beneath reveals limestone caves and water reservoirs. The installation's elements are interconnected, creating what the artist calls a "polyphonic instrument" or "semi-sentient environment of sound, screens and glass objects." The work's virtual choreography controls a generative musical composition by Okkyung Lee and Lugh O'Neil, which in turn influences the light patterns in the physical sculptures. The simulation is algorithmically sped up so audiences can experience natural phenomena through cycles of day/night, drought/flood, and life/death.

Explicitly engages with geological timescales and cycles that exceed human perception, using digital acceleration to make these temporalities visible: "algorithmically sped up so audiences can experience this natural phenomenon through night and day, drought and floodplain, life and death." The work presents ancient water systems that have largely disappeared but occasionally reappear, connecting past geological conditions with possible future ecological states.

Smart Environments, Live Media Performance, Data Storytelling, Interactive Installations

To create contemplation on "the unforeseen manifestations of our surroundings" and invite viewers to "rethink our own relationship to the transient and fragile ecosystems that envelop us."

Interactive - viewers experience a changing digital environment through multiple interfaces (screens and responsive physical objects) that create an immersive, multi-sensory experience.

Hamburger Kunsthalle

Not explicitly stated in source material

Hamburger Kunsthalle

Not explicitly stated in source material

Highlights transient ecological phenomena; encourages reflection on impermanence.

Time-lapse photography; digital projections; environmental data.

Uses ephemeral lakes as metaphors for climate variability and change.

Visual storytelling; immersive installations; contemplative spaces.

Superflux

2023

Policy Lab and Defra Futures

A speculative proposal for an autonomous inter-departmental government agency comprising an assemblage of localized AI models that advocate for ecological flourishing, bridging sectors and communicating our interdependence with the world.

The Ecological Intelligence Agency (EIA) is a speculative proposal that explores how AI might be used in future policy making for environmental health. Presented as an autonomous inter-departmental agency, the EIA comprises localized AI models advocating for ecological flourishing, co-developed with local stewards. Rather than offering untraceable answers in a singular voice, the EIA advocates for multiple perspectives including unheard communities and more-than-human companions. The installation uses LLMs to generate poetry spoken from the River Roding's perspective, lamenting forever chemicals while imagining harmonious futures. Through three scenarios - pollution in River Roding, sewage issues, and flooding risks - the EIA demonstrates how AI might help reveal interconnectedness and build understanding. The project was presented at a Policy Lab x Defra Futures forum, catalyzing discussions among policymakers, academics, NGOs, and regulators about technology's role in future policy-making.

The work explicitly positions itself as a "potential ecological intelligence that does not claim unlimited access to knowledge systems" and envisions a future model for policy-making that incorporates "a multitude of interconnected cosmologies and lived-experiences." It aims to "make river health sense-able and help situate policies within wider contextual ecosystems."

To explore "how technology, serious play and local communities could inform future policy-making, representing a 'radical departure' from current decision-making" and "highlight the complex interconnectedness" of environmental problems

Interactive experience facilitating dialogue around potential policy approaches

Artist Website

Not explicitly stated in source material

Policy Lab x Defra Futures forum

Not explicitly stated in source material

Users interact with AI in a policy simulation roleplay; institutional logic.

Multi-screen installation; AI-based interface.

Frames the future as regulatory and surveillant; technocratic imaginaries.

Performative bureaucracy; cold tone; ritualized decision-making.

Marina Zurkow, Ira Greenberg

2023

Feral File

A generative NFT art project where collectors purchase unique digital oysters that collectively form a virtual reef. The project connects digital collecting to real-world conservation efforts, with proceeds supporting oyster reef conservation groups.

The Dorises invites collectors to purchase unique NFT oysters in a digital ocean. While the outsides of the shells are similar, there are variations across 100 oysters generated through custom software in four categories based on oyster physiology, purpose, and lore: Oyster Engineer, Oyster Artist, Oyster Sex Symbol, and Oyster Kin. AI was used to generate elements and backgrounds, with fifteen unique surprises embedded across categories. Collectors receive passwords to access the OysterCraftReef website where their NFTs form a collective visual reef. Within 90 days of reef formation, collectors vote on distributing funds to three different groups supporting oyster reef conservation (identified as a priority by NOAA). The title references Doris, a Greek sea goddess representing ocean fertility, whose name connects "gift/abundance" and "pure/unmixed" water.

Connects digital art collection to real-world conservation futures. The project creates a mechanism for collectors to direct resources toward ecosystem preservation efforts identified as priorities by NOAA, effectively using blockchain as an environmental funding mechanism.

Blockchain Media, Generative Art

To direct funds generated through art collection toward oyster reef conservation efforts. The project creates a collective decision-making structure for environmental funding.

Collaborative - collectors view their NFTs forming a collective reef and vote on funding distribution to conservation groups.

Artist website

https://o-matic.com/work/the-dorises-oystercraft-from-silicon-to-saltwater/

Chain Reaction exhibition at Feral File

Not explicitly stated in source material

Collaborative project; merges digital fabrication with marine ecology; community workshops.

3D printing; marine materials; interactive installations.

Uses oysters as metaphors for resilience and adaptation in changing climates.

Hands-on workshops; performative making; sensory engagement with materials.

Jakob Kudsk Steensen

2019

Serpentine Galleries

An augmented reality experience for London parks that allows users to see and hear five local species (London plane trees, bats, parakeets, azure blue damselflies, reedbeds) through immersive visuals and sound transformations accessible via smartphone app.

The Deep Listener is an augmented reality experience that guides users on a journey through London's Kensington Gardens and Hyde Park to both see and hear five local species: London plane trees, bats, parakeets, azure blue damselflies, and reedbeds. Drawing on principles of deep listening (an attentive and embedded listening process), Steensen collaborated with field recordist Matt McCorkle to represent these species as sound. The project incorporates audio and visuals drawn directly from research within the parks, transformed through digital processes and re-embedded in the same context. As users move through the AR encounters, soundscapes can be sped up and slowed down according to proximity to ecological visualizations, revealing the complexity of non-verbal aural languages and shifting the relationship to time. The user's body becomes the mechanism to alter the virtual environment, creating communication between human and non-human actors. The London plane tree is central to the work, described as "an early form of bio-architecture" that was planted during the Industrial Revolution for its ability to withstand pollution. Its bark absorbs pollutants, becoming "an archive and historical document of particles and pollution that connects our bodies to the species that cohabit the park."

Focuses on revealing the temporal and spatial relationships between humans and other species that share urban environments. By allowing users to alter soundscapes through their movements and revealing invisible ecological processes, the work creates new awareness of non-human temporalities and communication systems.

Augmented Reality/Mixed Reality, Geolocative/Geo-Aware Experiences, Data Storytelling

To create "a better informed, more realistic, and more affectionate relationship to the more-than-human world" by revealing aspects of urban ecology that "might otherwise be ignored, intangible or simply invisible."

Interactive - users physically move through the park environment to trigger and modify AR experiences based on their location and movements.

Serpentine Gallery

Not explicitly stated in source material

Kensington Gardens and Hyde Park, London

UK

Audience as active participants; encourages exploration of urban biodiversity.

Augmented reality app; geolocation; soundscapes.

Personifies urban flora and fauna; uses storytelling to foster connection.

AR-guided walks; immersive audio experiences; performative engagement with environment.

Marina Zurkow, James Schmitz

Not explicitly stated in source material

Not explicitly stated in source material

An animated, custom software artwork that visualizes PM2.5 pollutants from wildfire and fossil fuel plant emissions. The generative composition demonstrates how particulate pollution travels globally on wind currents, utilizing real-time data from NASA, Global Energy Monitor, and NOAA.

The Breath Eaters 2.0 is an animated, custom software artwork visualizing PM2.5 pollutants from wildfire and fossil fuel plant emissions. Inspired by an open source AI image of a World War II propaganda map, the work is presented as a live, generative composition showing how particulate pollution travels globally on wind currents. It broadcasts real-time data from NASA's fire detection systems (FIRMS), Global Energy Monitor's global fossil fuel power plant database, and NOAA's global forecast system. The project questions why carbon is free to roam globally while living beings (human, plant, animal) are constrained by national boundaries. This second iteration made significant improvements to data visualization, using open source AI to generate limitless instances of unique energy plants and fires.

The project explicitly questions the contrast between the freedom of pollutants to cross borders versus the constraints on human and other species movement: "if carbon has been extracted and liberated to roam the globe on the winds, why is the world of beings (human, plant, animal) constrained by national boundaries, walled in and walled out?" It aims to foster empathy through visualizing pollution's transnationalism.

Generative Art, Data Storytelling

To visualize the transnational nature of air pollution and "give rise to empathy in viewers" by showing how "this map can look very different with planetary action."

Passive viewing of generative content that changes with real-time environmental data.

Artist website

https://o-matic.com/work/the-breath-eaters-v2-0/

Not explicitly stated in source material

Not explicitly stated in source material

Engages communities affected by air pollution; participatory data collection.

Sensor technology; digital visualizations; community-generated data.

Frames air quality as a shared concern; uses data as storytelling.

Data-driven performances; community exhibitions; interactive displays.

Adam Loften, David George Haskell, Emmanuel Vaughan-Lee

2019

Adam Loften, Emmanuel Vaughan-Lee, GoProjectFilms

A 10-minute virtual reality journey into the memories of a 400-year-old Japanese White Pine bonsai tree that survived the nuclear blast in Hiroshima.

The Atomic Tree explores the unbroken chain of living stories held within the tree's rings—from Japan's ancient cedar forests and Buddhist temples to the family home in Hiroshima where the pine was nurtured for five generations. The experience takes you through Japan's ancient cedar forests, a sacred Buddhist monastery, the Yamaki home in Hiroshima, and the botanical garden in D.C. Made with stereoscopic 360 videos collected at multiple locations, which are weaved together by animations.

The project connects past, present, and future through the perspective of a tree that witnessed historical trauma. It explores environmental resilience and survival, implying continuity between historical events and future possibilities.

Not specified

Passive viewing with immersive experience

MIT DOCUBASE

https://www.atomictree.org/

Beijing Independent Film Festival, Bio Bio Cine, Camden International Film Festival, Experience Brussels VR festival, Macon Film Festival, Melbourne International Film Festival, Nantucket Film Festival, Sandbox Immersive Film Festival, Shanghai Film Festival, Sheffield Doc/Fest, Strasbourg Festival, SXSW

United States

Passive VR journey through time; tree as narrator.

VR headset; spiritual/atomic landscapes.

Frames nuclear legacy as spiritual ecology; Buddhist metaphor.

Meditative, non-linear flow; serenity punctuated by catastrophe.

Amelia Winger-Bearskin

2022

Whitney Museum of American Art

A digital art project combining animations and poetic text connecting sunrise and sunset to Indigenous creation myths, particularly referencing the Haudenosaunee origin story of Sky Woman. The work explores the thin veil between sleep and death while evoking renewal.

This digital art project consists of two parts: Sky/World at sunrise and Death/World at sunset. Sky/World displays animations created with a game engine on a light pink background similar to daybreak colors. Death/World intersperses abstract animations with video of the artist on a dark brownish-red background evoking nightfall. The work references the Haudenosaunee origin story of Sky Woman who belonged to the sky people before the world's creation. After falling through a hole created by an uprooted tree, Sky Woman builds a new home with the help of animals. The project prompts viewers to consider questions like "Who benefits from your burnout?" and "What is made bright by the loss of your light?" Viewers can interact with the animations while poetic text appears on screen. The work is part of the Sunrise/Sunset series that activates across the Whitney Museum's website twice daily.

The project explicitly connects daily temporal cycles (sunrise/sunset) with Indigenous concepts of creation, life cycles, and digital ephemerality. The artist frames the cloud as "a spiritual place and a vehicle for the ephemeral way in which we choose to communicate with our kin over distance and time," connecting ancient sky-world concepts with contemporary digital preservation challenges.

Generative Art, Interactive Installations, Data Storytelling

To create connections between Indigenous mythology, digital preservation, and concepts of renewal. The work prompts reflection on ownership, sharing, and renewal of Earth and life.

Interactive - viewers can click on a switch to change the behavior of the animation while text populates the screen.

Whitney Museum of American Art

Not explicitly stated in source material

Whitney Museum of American Art website (whitney.org)

Not explicitly stated in source material

Engages participants in speculative scenarios; collaborative world-building.

Mixed reality environments; speculative design artifacts; digital interfaces.

Explores themes of mortality and transformation; uses speculative metaphors.

Immersive storytelling; participatory design sessions; performative installations.

Amelia Winger-Bearskin

2023

Not explicitly stated in source material

An NFT art project inspired by seeds and their caretakers, consisting of 100 variations of corn seed piles colored by the artist. The project connects Indigenous knowledge about corn (one of the "three sisters") with futures-oriented concepts like the "seven generations" principle and space exploration.

Seed Protocol involves collectors in an ongoing artwork about seeds and their caretakers. The NFT edition consists of images of identical corn seed piles colored in 100 variations, with hand-drawn patterns. The seed piles imagine what future seven generations of corn seeds might look like, suggesting textile/beading patterns or alien mutations. Each variation has a unique DLITE (Dynamical Lunar Indigenous Time) number, inspired by NASA's Terrestrial Dynamical Time used for celestial voyages. The project draws from Seneca-Cayuga celestial storytelling, NASA's Project Artemis, and plant molecular biology research on growing plants in space. Collectors receive a participation contract and website access, committing them to engage with local seed banks or heirloom seed societies and upload information to the Seed Bank Directory.

Explicitly connects past and future through the "seven generations" concept, which "reminds us that our current knowledge is built on that of the seven generations before us and that we must make good decisions for our descendants seven generations in the future." The project's DLITE numbering system references space exploration timing mechanisms, connecting Indigenous time concepts with future space travel.

Blockchain Media, Data Storytelling

To create an active network of seed preservation advocates through art collecting. The project encourages engagement with local seed banks and cataloging of heirloom seed sources.

Collaborative - collectors agree to contribute to the larger project by engaging with local seed organizations or with seed groups the artist is working with.

Artist website

https://seedprotocol.space

Feral File

Not explicitly stated in source material

Collaborative research; integrates indigenous knowledge systems; community involvement.

Digital platforms; time-based media; interactive timelines.

Uses lunar cycles as metaphors for indigenous temporalities and futures.

Interactive storytelling; temporal mapping; performative rituals.

Not explicitly stated in source material

Not explicitly stated in source material

United Nations DPPA (Department of Political and Peacebuilding Affairs)

A virtual reality experience that explores climate change impacts on Pacific island communities, highlighting their traditional ecological knowledge, current environmental challenges, and community-led adaptation efforts while calling for global climate action.

Sea of Islands is a VR documentary that transports viewers to Pacific island communities facing climate impacts. It features stories from multiple islands including Vandrala Village on Vitilever Island (Fiji), which was devastated by Cyclone Winston in 2016, Narikoso Village on Kandavo Island threatened by sea level rise, and Now Island where innovative adaptation strategies have been implemented. The experience showcases both the challenges (irregular seasons, violent storms, droughts, floods, rising tides) and community resilience through adaptation strategies like replanting mangroves, creating marine protected areas, and implementing sustainable resource management. The project connects local indigenous knowledge with global climate action needs, emphasizing that climate change threatens security, livelihoods and well-being of Pacific communities while calling for international support and accountability.

The project presents current adaptation strategies while explicitly addressing future climate challenges, calling for "more support to adapt to Future climate challenges and mitigate risk to secure our futures." It presents a vision of "a better known, a better Pacific, a better world for future generations" while urging immediate climate action to safeguard future survival.

To demonstrate Pacific communities' climate challenges and resilience, connect local impact to global responsibility, mobilize financial and policy support, advocate for climate accountability

Immersive viewing experience

Artist website

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=larFAY6oohM

Not explicitly stated in source material

Not explicitly stated in source material

Viewers explore Pacific futures via community narratives; non-interactive.

VR documentary; panoramic shots, voiceover.

Archipelagic metaphors of continuity, climate mobility, cultural endurance.

Oceanic rhythm; interwoven stories of vulnerability and adaptation.

Rachel Falcone, Michael Premo, Laura Gottesdiener

2013

Not explicitly stated in source material

A collaborative transmedia documentary project allowing individuals and communities affected by Hurricane Sandy to share their experiences through photographs and audio via the Cowbird storytelling platform, creating a community-generated narrative of the storm and its aftermath.

Sandy Storyline documents the experiences of millions affected by Hurricane Sandy across the Northeast, Mid-Atlantic, and Caribbean. The project uses the Cowbird storytelling platform to intertwine photographs and audio from individuals, building a community-generated narrative. The project aims to create a living archive that shows the potential for sharing stories on a human scale while inspiring a safer and more sustainable future through collaborative documentary storytelling and civic dialogue.

The project explicitly addresses futures through its goal of "inspiring a safe and more sustainable future" through collaborative storytelling and community-generated narratives about a climate disaster.

"Building a community-generated narrative of the storm that seeks to inspire a safe and more sustainable future"

Interactive engagement through story contribution: "Contribute your own Sandy stories in the Storyscapes space"

Tribeca Film Festival (Storyscapes)

Not explicitly stated in source material

Bombay Sapphire House of Imagination (April 18-21, 2013)

USA

Citizens co-created stories via phone/web; open storytelling model.

Web-based platform (Cowbird); media-upload by users.

Frames recovery as collective story; resilience as narrative power.

Mosaic dramaturgy; fragmented but intimate; builds layered empathy.

Feral File

Not explicitly stated in source material

Feral File

An anthology of multidimensional poems exploring how words and images intertwine through blockchain publication. The collection celebrates the potential for writers to transact their work, transcend the printed page, and collaborate in new ways.

FeralVerse is an anthology of multidimensional poems that embody theVERSEverse's mission to explore how words and images intertwine. Since 2021, the collective of poets, artists and technologists has explored the creative potential for composition and publication via blockchain, empowering writers to transact their work, transcend the printed page, and collaborate. The Feral File offering is presented as a seed for the "poetry journal of the future," where authorial imagination is unbounded, language and art exist in symbiosis, and contributors are vital forces in a literary ecosystem where connection leads to collection. The works are published as non-fungible Tezos tokens, each representing a collaborative performance between writers and artists at the avant-garde of web3 poetry.

Explicitly frames itself as "the poetry journal of the future" and positions blockchain technology as enabling new forms of literary creation and distribution that transcend traditional publishing constraints. The anthology is described as "a seed for the poetry journal of the future, in which authorial imagination is unbounded, language and art exist in symbiosis."

Blockchain Media, Transmedia Storytelling

To create new economic and creative possibilities for writers through blockchain technology, allowing them to "transact their work, transcend the printed page, and collaborate with each other."

Passive consumption with potential for collection/ownership.

Artist website

Not explicitly stated in source material

Feral File

Not explicitly stated in source material

Digital anthology; readers as collectors; limited interactivity.

Blockchain-based digital poems; NFT platform; visual and textual elements.

Explores future ecologies through poetic narratives; metaphorical language.

Static presentation; relies on reader interpretation; minimal performative elements.

Superflux

2021

Biennale Architettura, La Biennale di Venezia

A multispecies banquet installation featuring meticulously crafted place settings for 14 different species including a fox, rat, wasp, pigeon, cow, human adults and child, wild boar, snake, beaver, wolf, raven and mushroom, representing post-climate crisis coexistence.

Refuge for Resurgence presents a multispecies banquet set in a world that has survived Earth's abrupt shift to an era of precarious climate. The installation shows a gathering of humans, animals, birds, plants, moss, and fungi around a shared hope for a more-than-human future. The scene features a meticulously crafted table with place settings for 14 species, including a fox, rat, wasp, pigeon, cow, human adults and child, wild boar, snake, beaver, wolf, raven and mushroom. Each place setting is designed for the specific species' needs and characteristics. The installation explores a post-crisis world where diverse species must work together to forge enduring forms of sharing and survival, and to revive the land from the "smouldering remains of the old." The work aims to lay bare "a conversation between the paralysis of fear and the audacity of hope."

The work explicitly presents a post-climate crisis scenario where multiple species must coexist and collaborate. As Anab Jain states, "It is only when people, from within themselves, start to feel a sense of love, and connect with the species around them... that action oriented work will really take off." The installation presents "an alternative hopeful future for all species on the planet."

To nurture "public imagination" about potential futures where humans and nonhumans coexist more harmoniously

Passive viewing of physical installation

Artist Website

Not explicitly stated in source material

Biennale Architettura, La Biennale di Venezia 2021

UK

Viewers enter speculative post-human banquet; participatory only in spatial navigation.

Physical installation; multi-species symbolic table.

Metaphors of cohabitation and restitution; rich symbolic semiotics.

Staged ritual of multispecies diplomacy; installation as theater.

Jakob Kudsk Steensen

2018

Daata Editions

A 4K cinematic video about extinction, preservation, and emerging ecological realities, inspired by the reintroduction of the previously extinct Hawaiian Crow. The video journey moves from photoscanned forest floor to a new liquid reality where species, technologies, and cultural mythologies intertwine.

RE-WILDLING is a video about extinction, preservation, and emerging ecological realities inspired by the reintroduction of the previously extinct Hawaiian Crow (Corvus hawaiiensis, or Alal\uc0\u257 ) to the Big Island of Hawaii. The video begins on a moist forest floor created from photo-scanned organic material and progresses into another reality where trees grow feathers, roots become organic veins, and the crow exists as a fluorescent, sentient flying entity. The work evolved from a forest rooted in ecological past into a new liquid reality where species, technologies, and cultural mythologies intertwine. The Hawaiian Crow disappeared from the wild in 2002 and was declared extinct, but some survived in captivity and were reintroduced in 2017. Drawing on science journalist Britt Wray's concepts from "Rise of the Necrofauna," the project views de-extinction as transformation rather than restoration, acknowledging that reintroduced species create new ecological realities rather than returning to past conditions. The work is composed entirely of 3D scanned organic material and real audio recordings of extinct birds, focusing on one of the world's oldest ecosystems - Kauai's Alakai plateau, which has experienced massive bird extinctions since avian malaria was introduced in 1826.

Explicitly engages with concepts of de-extinction and ecological transformation, noting that "it is impossible to bring back worlds and ecological conditions from the past. Instead, the reintroduction of extinct species spawns a new reality in which time and ecological conditions are warped." The work explores emerging ecological realities where "The Hawaiian Crow and its habitat can never be the same, because the contexts surrounding them have been forever altered."

Interactive Media Components, Data Storytelling

To explore concepts of extinction and emerging ecological realities, challenging the notion that de-extinction can restore past conditions rather than create new ones.

Passive viewing of cinematic video content.

Artist website

Not explicitly stated in source material

NADA (New Art Dealers Alliance) Miami with Daata Editions (launched November 6, 2018)

Not explicitly stated in source material

Engages participants in ecological restoration; collaborative art-science approach.

Mixed media installations; ecological materials; interactive components.

Highlights rewilding as a metaphor for healing and future sustainability.

Participatory workshops; immersive environments; sensory experiences.

Andrew Merrie, Patrick Keys, Marc Metian, Henrik Österblom

Not explicitly stated in source material

The Swedish Research Council Formas

A science fiction prototyping project that blends art and science to create scientifically grounded narratives of potential future oceans, supported by visual artwork by Simon Stålenhag and musical interpretations by K. La Luna to stimulate imagination around ocean futures.

Radical Ocean Futures is an experimental futuring project for communicating complex ocean issues. The project consists of four scientifically grounded narratives about potential ocean futures, each supported by visual artwork by Simon Stålenhag and musical interpretations by K. La Luna. The narratives were developed using the Science-Fiction Prototyping method, based on technological frontiers, marine ecology, the global fishing industry, and marine governance. The project aims to help people think creatively about future oceans and how unexpected changes, along with human responses, may play out in a complex world. The project has been featured at the UN Ocean Conference, in WIRED, Nature, international art exhibitions, and science museums.

The project is explicitly framed as a futures exploration: "The purpose of this project is to explore tools that can help us to think creatively and imaginatively about our future oceans and assess how unexpected changes, along with human responses to those changes, may play out in a complex world that is, at its heart, surprising." The work uses "scenario development using science fiction prototyping" to create "four 'radical' and compelling narrative scenarios" that "account for complexity and non-linear change."

"To explore tools that can help us to think creatively and imaginatively about our future oceans and assess how unexpected changes, along with human responses to those changes, may play out in a complex world."

Passive engagement with multiple sensory elements (visual, audio)

Official artwork by the government of Sweden for the Inaugural UN Ocean Conference

Not explicitly stated in source material

UN Ocean Conference, Nordic Embassies in Berlin ('Ocean Dwellers: Art, Science and Science Fiction'), Helsinki Design Museum ('Critical Tide'), London Science Museum ('Science Fiction: Voyage to the Edge of Imagination')

Sweden

Participants explore narrative-driven scenarios from policy briefs; no active interaction.

Web platform with audio-visual design fictions.

Speculative ocean governance futures using allegory and satire.

Episodic structure; tonal shifts between hope, warning, irony.

Lui Avallos

2023

Rodrigo Moreira

A 25-minute immersive and interactive narrative where viewers witness a retired playwright's effort to reconstruct his cherished memories before they fade. Inspired by real-life stories of queer men over 60, the experience explores LGBTQIA+ rights and reimagines utopian futures.

In his living room, a retired playwright addresses the spectator in a nostalgic tone, revealing he is losing his memories and seeks companionship to reconstruct and preserve fragments of his remembrances. Based on real stories of queer men over 60, this immersive and interactive narrative invites audiences to witness intimate and contradictory memories before they fade. Through performative reconstruction of memory using theater language, the piece traverses spaces inhabited by ephemeral particle-formed bodies, weaving an intergenerational essay on LGBTQIA+ rights while reimagining a utopian vision of the future by delving into the past.

The creator explicitly states the work is about "speculating on all the other stories and lives that have been lost" due to AIDS and repressive regimes, and using this to "reimagine a utopian vision of the future." The work is described as exploring "how we can make the world a safer place" for LGBTQIA+ people.

"I believe combating oblivion is a powerful tool for preserving freedom." To preserve the memories of LGBTQIA+ elders and combat erasure of queer history

Interactive immersive narrative

Venice Biennale Immersive

Not explicitly stated in source material

Not explicitly stated in source material

Portugal, Brazil

Immersive narrative driven by queer memory; participant choice alters flow.

VR headset; branching storylines.

Future queer imaginaries rooted in past resistance; intimacy as speculative method.

Intimate dramaturgy; nonlinear narrative; performance of identity as future force.

Dustin Yellin

2021

Dustin Yellin in collaboration with the National Wildlife Federation, Droga5, Squint/Opera, Q Department, Mach1 and Vrai Pictures

An interactive augmented reality artwork that allows users to place a Dustin Yellin sculpture in their environment and walk around inside it, revealing hundreds of narratives within the piece set in a world where human-created climate change wreaks havoc.

Procession is an augmented reality (AR) app experience that combines animation, collage, and archival footage into an explorative interactive soundscape. It presents a near future of global unrest and environmental destruction marked by raging floodwaters and massive wildfires. The experience places humanity at a choice point: living in ignorance or uniting to preserve what's left of the planet. The project aims to democratize art and create a "living, breathing canvas that can be affected by every participant who touches it." Through accessible art, Procession seeks to unite people in taking action to preserve the natural environment, linking to the National Wildlife Federation's nonprofit climate initiatives.

Procession explicitly engages with futures by "presenting our near future, a period of global unrest and environmental destruction, spurred by raging flood waters and massive wildfires. Humanity is faced with a choice: living in ignorance or uniting to preserve what's left of our planet." The work presents a speculative environmental future as a catalyst for present-day action.

"Through the accessibility of its art, Procession unites people in taking action to preserve our natural environment. Through education, awareness and a directive that links to National Wildlife Federation's nonprofit climate initiatives, Procession joins the fight to preserve our delicate ecosystem before we lose it."

Interactive engagement through AR placement and exploration

Tribeca Festival

www.Procession.World

Tribeca Festival

United States

Viewers place AR figures in public spaces; co-located acts of remembrance.

Mobile-based AR; outdoor interaction.

Mourning and protest blend; uses choreography to future memory.

Poetic AR pacing; slow gestures and music evoke reverence.

Edith Jorisch, Maria (Miri) Chekhanovich

2022

Dpt. Lalibella productions, National Film Board of Canada

An interactive virtual reality experience that asks participants to explore a future where organic and plastic beings become one.

Plastisapiens invites users to take a break from eco-anxiety and jarring news headlines to enter a calming animated space. Users can travel back in time to witness the origins of organic and plastic life; explore their kinship with bacteria, viruses and fungi; and watch as their virtual hands transform into tentacles and mutant appendages—symbolizing an imagined future where skin and synthetics have co-evolved. Throughout the 15-minute interaction, users shift from observer to participant, and the experience is a journey from reactivity and fear to curiosity and hope. Also available as a multi-sensory installation where participants enter an enveloping cocoon and are offered edible bioplastic.

Explicitly explores near and far futures where human bodies and plastic have merged, creating hybrid entities as an evolutionary response to environmental change. Takes a speculative approach to pollution and adaptation.

To create a space for thoughtful conversation and meaningful action around the pressing global issue of petrochemical pollutions

Interactive - users interact with organisms around them and watch as their virtual bodies merge with plastic

MIT DOCUBASE

https://mediaspace.nfb.ca/epk/plastisapiens/

The Montreal Biosphere

Canada

Users embody post-human plastic hybrid; self becomes site of speculative play.

VR headset, body-responsive visuals; tactile plasticity.

Explores plastic futures through posthuman embodiment and eco-satire.

Playful yet uncanny; shifting tones from curiosity to disquiet.

Liam Young (Australia/UK) speculative architect and filmmaker

2020

National Gallery of Victoria (Australia) for NGV Triennial 2020 ngv.vic.gov.au planetcity.world. Co-produced by Artologic, with support from Universal Everything (VR) and SCI-Arc.

A speculative fiction film and VR that imagines a single hyper-dense metropolis housing all 10 billion people on Earth, leaving the rest of the planet to rewild planetcity.world. Planet City is portrayed as a sci-fi megacity where continuous carnivalesque parades traverse a towering urban landscape. The film is a visual tour of this imaginary city s vibrant cultures, sustainable infrastructures (like massive solar farms and recycling systems), and the colossal scale of daily life. Conceived as an extraordinary image of tomorrow and an urgent examination of our environmental dilemmas planetcity.world, it compresses humanity s footprint to ask: what if radical geoengineering of society could undo climate change

Description: This is a transmedia project comprising a short film (animated in vivid detail), a VR experience, and a book. The narrative is mostly visual, following a 365-day festival parade that winds through the city s districts, each day encountering a different community s celebration planetcity.world. We see imaginary scenes: e.g., rooftop farms atop kilometer-high skyscrapers, a giant world ship port where goods arrive, solar concentrators floating in the sky. Costumes designed by Ane Crabtree (of The Handmaid s Tale) adorn dancers from around the world, symbolizing the blending of global cultures in one place planetcity.world planetcity.world. The color palette shifts as the parade moves through various climate zones engineered within the city. There is no dialogue; instead an electronic score by Forest Swords with vocals by Tunisian singer Emel anchors the emotional arc planetcity.world planetcity.world. Data underpins the fiction: the design draws on research showing how a city for 10 billion could theoretically work (circular economies, vertical farming, 100% renewable energy). The project is presented as neither pure utopia nor dystopia, but a thought experiment in radical sustainability all humans retreating to allow the Earth to heal.

Boldly speculative and provocative it offers a radical future scenario in response to climate crisis. By envisioning total urban densification, it frees 99.9% of Earth for ecological restoration. This future is exploratory (pushing an idea to its extreme) and also critical, questioning the ideological and cultural shifts required planetcity.world planetcity.world. It serves as a tool to debate what sacrifices or transformations might be needed to achieve a sustainable future, highlighting that climate change is no longer a technological problem, but an ideological one planetcity.world.

15-min CGI film (4K); Immersive VR experience (Unreal Engine) for installations; Illustrated book (with essays and concept art). Often displayed on large screens or in VR headsets in gallery settings.

Passive (film) watch the richly rendered narrative; Active (VR) if experienced in VR, viewers can look freely, but still along a guided path. There is no decision-making; it s a guided tour style. Some exhibitions included interactive map stations or AR filters as supplements, but core is linear.

Speculative fiction meets design research. It is visionary and somewhat idealized (no crime, no conflict shown in the city), making it a conversation starter rather than a fully pragmatic plan. Approach is more conceptual and narrative than solutionist: it embraces fiction and spectacle ( sci-fi safari feel ted.com) to engage people emotionally and intellectually with a radical idea.

Artist website

NGV Triennial, Melbourne (Dec 2020 Apr 2021) premiere as large-scale film installation ngv.vic.gov.au; The World Around Summit 2021 (digital film screening); Barbican Centre, London (film screening 2021); Sundance 2021 (New Frontier program, VR); E-flux Views of Planet City group exhibition, 2021 e-flux.com.

Australia/UK (created across Los Angeles, London, Melbourne).

Imagines all humanity as one community literally living together. That erases nation-state divisions, suggesting a radical new social contract (though the film focuses on celebration, hinting at communal harmony). For the audience, it creates a relationship of observer to a hypothetical collective self. It essentially asks: Could you imagine giving up personal space and national identity for the planet The dynamic between human civilization and the rest of nature is central: humans withdraw (a form of penance) to allow a better relationship with Earth.

Being mostly digital (film/VR), its materiality lies in pixels and sound. However, in installation form, it often included physical elements e.g., huge panoramic screens, printed costumes on mannequins, or even immersive theatrical set pieces making the city feel tangible. The VR medium allows a sense of physical presence in an impossible city, bridging the gap between conceptual design and embodied experience.

Planet City operates as a grand metaphor and a discussion piece. It uses spectacle and irony (hyper-dense city as solution) to frame futures discourse. By compressing all cultures and climates into one city, it metaphorically holds a mirror to globalization s endpoint and to the idea of the global village. It s accompanied by essays and talks (the project includes a book with scholarly essays), situating it in architectural and environmental discourse. Thus, it blurs art and proposal, story and manifesto.

The film s narrative is rhythmic and cyclical (the never-ending parade), giving a feeling of eternal festival an almost utopian emotional tone, set against the knowledge that outside the city walls lies the regenerated wild. The emotional impact is awe (the scale), curiosity, and a strange comfort or melancholy (all of humanity is safe together, but also confined). The performative element is literally performance the city is depicted through performance art (dances, costumes). In exhibitions, Liam Young sometimes presented it with live narration or a guided tour, adding a performative lecture aspect that reinforces its role as a provocative thought experiment.

Smirna Kulenović, Félix de Rosen, Christina Chi Zhang

Not explicitly stated in source material

Not explicitly stated in source material

A participatory digital memorial situated as a medicinal plant garden within the abandoned war trenches surrounding Sarajevo, preserving memories of the siege and traditional plant medicines used during wartime.

Our Family Garden is a participatory digital memorial situated as a medicinal plant garden, imagined within the 32km line of abandoned war trenches surrounding Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina. The interactive audiovisual experience allows local users to preserve memories of the siege of Sarajevo and the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina (1992-1995), as well as traditional plant medicines used for healing during wartime when other medicines were scarce. The project simultaneously functions as a global community garden.

The project explicitly bridges past, present, and future through its preservation of war memories and traditional knowledge while creating a "global community garden" for ongoing participation.

To preserve memories of war and traditional healing knowledge while creating a communal digital space

Participatory contribution to a digital memorial

MIT Worlding

Not explicitly stated in source material

Not explicitly stated in source material

Bosnia and Herzegovina, USA, Austria

Viewers contribute personal memories to a digital memorial; collective authorship.

Interactive platform; garden visual responds to content.

Frames war memory and ecological healing as co-emergent futures.

Sentimental and symbolic; participatory planting as mourning ritual.

Emilia Sánchez Chiquetti

2023

Presencias (Emilia Sánchez Chiquetti), Doinmedia, Viartualmente Figitlab

A 25-minute interactive, poetic VR journey through the Amazon Rainforest, where users are guided by a mythological boa through memories, teachings, and stories of Shipibo origins while witnessing environmental changes to the territory.

Origen is a narrative, interactive, and poetic VR journey through the Amazon Rainforest. First-person interactions weave encounters and teachings with transcendence. Guided by a mythological boa, users experience memories, teachings, and Shipibo origin stories while witnessing environmental changes to the territory. Inspired by Mokán Rono's reflections, the journey explores connections between personal perception and coexistence with nature. It is the first chapter of a VR series co-created with narrators, uniting different territories and celebrating dialogue between diverse life forms and Mother Earth. The project has been recognized as of Cultural Interest by the Argentine Embassy in Colombia, received the Unity for Humanity Environment and Sustainability Grant, and participated in the Biennale College of La Biennale di Venezia.

The work is positioned as exploring "the dialogue between our bodies and nature, weaving a tapestry of memories, tales, reflections, and questions about our relationship with nature," which implicitly connects to environmental futures by examining human-nature relationships over time.

To explore "the dialogue between our bodies and nature" and show environmental changes to territory

Interactive narrative journey

Venice Biennale Immersive

https://www.origenxr.com/

Biennale College of La Biennale di Venezia

Brazil

Viewer steers narrative through poetic voiceovers; semi-interactive journey.

VR headset; symbolic natural settings.

Rooted in Andean cosmology; stories of origin as futures.

Mythic narrative rhythm; dreamy voice, visual metaphors build reflective mood.

Mike Brett, Steve Jamison, Pierre Zandrowicz, Arnaud Colinart

2022

Archer's Mark, ATLASV, Games for Change, Princeton University, BFI, VR for Good, ARTE, CNC

A 42-minute VR experience documenting the 2018 false missile alert in Hawaii, when 1.4 million people received an emergency SMS warning of an inbound ballistic missile. The work explores nuclear security through this historical event.

On January 2018, Hawaiian citizens received an SMS from the Hawaii Emergency Management Agency warning of an inbound ballistic missile threat. As communication networks collapsed and panic spread, 1.4 million people came to understand the urgent nature of nuclear threats. The VR experience captures this moment and uses it to humanize the existential issue of global nuclear security, making relevant to contemporary audiences a threat many considered a Cold War relic. The narrative structure is inspired by writer Jamaica Heolimeleikalani Osorio's spoken word poem, which provides a lyrical framework and places the missile alert into historical, social, and cultural context. The experience evolves from disbelief and anger to solidarity and determined optimism for change.

The work explicitly addresses nuclear security as an existential future threat, using the real-world missile alert incident to make tangible the potential futures connected to nuclear weapons. The narrative structure intentionally moves from crisis to "determined optimism for change."

To humanize the existential issue of global nuclear security and make it relevant to contemporary audiences while promoting solidarity and optimism for change

Immersive documentary experience

Venice Biennale Immersive

Not explicitly stated in source material

Not explicitly stated in source material

France, UK, USA

Viewers as intimate witnesses to lived trauma; minimal agency.

VR docufiction; haptic suit (in some installations).

Frames nuclear futures as emotional memories; speculative-real blend.

Sequential fear-to-hope arc; emotionally intense pacing.

Stephanie Dinkins

2022

Not explicitly stated in source material

A blockchain-based art project exploring okra as a metaphor for Black presence and resilience across time. The work uses the concept of okra as a "spaceship" that traverses time and space, persisting alongside the peoples it traveled with.

Okra Continuum is described by the artist as "a black imaginary" that explores okra as a spaceship traversing time and space, persisting alongside the peoples it traveled with. The project uses okra as a metaphor for Black presence and the ability to "claim and reclaim the space time continuum" to alter what it comes in contact with and to thrive even in hostile territories. The work is described as "unbound by the trappings of the past and desires to reach from the far-off future." The piece examines how blockchain technologies might shape social relationships and obligations, and considers possibilities for reparations alongside blockchain technologies. It aims to embed "a broader spectrum of stories deep within technologies that can hold and generate wealth."

The project explicitly frames okra as a time-traveling entity that connects past, present and future, serving as a metaphor for Black cultural resilience and continuity. The artist states: "Okra Continuum is a black imaginary... I've been thinking about okra as a spaceship that effortlessly traverses time and space and persists as do the peoples it traveled with."

Blockchain Media, Data Storytelling

To explore how blockchain technologies might shape social relationships and obligations, particularly regarding reparations. The artist aims to "embed a broader spectrum of stories deep within technologies that can hold and generate wealth."

Not explicitly stated in source material

MIT Docubase

Not explicitly stated in source material

Chain Reaction exhibition at Feral File

Not explicitly stated in source material

Community-centered; explores cultural heritage; invites dialogue.

Blockchain technology; data storytelling; digital interfaces.

Uses okra as a metaphor for resilience and cultural continuity; narrative-driven.

Combines digital storytelling with community engagement; performative discussions.

Kevin Mack

2022

Mack Art Productions

A 45-minute virtual reality experience of an ancient aquatic oasis from the distant future, designed to inspire awe, mystery and imagination. Users explore underwater worlds, rock formations, and encounter unique benevolent beings in a therapeutic environment.

Namuanki is a virtual ocean world with rocky isles, labyrinthine rock formations, bizarre lifeforms, and subterranean caves. Visitors explore islands and rock formations above and below water, encountering unique benevolent beings like Anu, a colossal air whale. Users can climb maze-like formations and splash into the ocean, experience mystical visions, explore the undersea Chasm of Ki and the Ice-Cave of Feth Fiada deep beneath the ocean floor. Other features include the Slope of Shanti and Jester's Garden, providing undersea discovery and mystical visions. The virtual retreat aims to promote well-being through spatial presence and generating a sense of awe.

The creator explicitly positions Namuanki as "an ancient aquatic oasis from the distant future," placing it in speculative future time while drawing on the therapeutic and restorative power of natural environments.

To inspire awe and imagination, promote well-being through spatial presence and therapeutic experiences

Interactive exploration of virtual environment

Venice Biennale Immersive

http://www.kevinmackart.com

Venice Biennale

USA

Participants explore freely but within predesigned virtual ecologies; limited co-creation.

Large-scale VR ocean environment; motion-sensitive.

Nonverbal, mythic ecology; anthropocenic world in flux.

Immersive awe; no plot, uses ambient transformation to prompt reflection.

Nancy Baker Cahill

2022

Nancy Baker Cahill Studio

A site-specific AR experience where viewers witness a mushroom cloud explode over water before transforming into a call to collective action against climate change, accompanied by an NFT video minted on the environmentally-friendly Algorand blockchain.

Mushroom Cloud NYC/RISE is a site-specific augmented reality public art project reimagined for the Hudson River. The work shows a mushroom cloud that explodes over water and then transforms against the sky into a call for collective action against climate change. The project includes an accompanying NFT video titled "RISE" minted on the environmentally-friendly Algorand blockchain, addressing environmental concerns specific to New York City. The project focuses on accountability, resource conservation, and strengthening networked systems through participation, communication, and advocacy. The mushroom cloud gradually transforms into a mycelial network, symbolizing the possibility of creating self-repairing structures based on interdependence and generosity.

The project directly engages with futures thinking by asking viewers to "perceive a multi-nodal, communal, often invisible cloud—one that might privilege interdependence and generosity. With reconceived accountabilities, perhaps we can prompt a productive balance of grief and hope, shattering and coalescing, and decomposition and rebirth. Together these prompts aim to inspire us to create a global, intentional, and conscientious network of mutual support and respect, which ultimately provides a strong platform from which collective problem-solving can occur."

To promote "accountability; one that values sharing and conserving resources, and strengthening networked systems through participation, communication, and advocacy."

Interactive engagement through AR viewing experience

Tribeca Festival

Not explicitly stated in source material

2022 Tribeca Festival's Immersive program at Pier 25

United States

Users co-locate AR experiences at climate-vulnerable sites; participatory placement.

Mobile-based AR installation; outdoor spatial interface.

Uses mushrooms as post-apocalyptic signifiers; critiques capitalist city-building.

Playful apocalyptic tone; performance happens through user’s embodied navigation.

Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (Dstl)

2020-2021

UK Ministry of Defence

Virtual reality environment showcasing future defence and security technologies, including speculative environments to promote cognitive flexibility and futures literacy

The Museum of the Future (MOTF) uses VR to create immersive, speculative environments (Future Threat, UN Greenkeepers, No More Borders) that challenge users' assumptions about the future. The project combines cognitive estrangement and immersive techniques to foster critical futures thinking.

Explicitly ties to futures literacy, cognitive estrangement, and speculative design. Aims to challenge "knowledge shields" and institutional futures paradigms.

To enhance cognitive flexibility and futures literacy in institutional settings.

Interactive engagement, Exploratory

Journal

Not provided

Virtual

UK

Public navigates thematic future “zones”; top-down visioning.

Immersive rooms, digital storytelling, VR/AR.

Centralizes innovation optimism; futures as tech-driven.

High-production staging; spectacle and utopian flair.

Santiago Calatrava (architect)

2015

Roberto Marinho Foundation

A science museum in Rio de Janeiro that explores potential futures through interactive exhibits addressing planetary change, sustainability, and human impact on Earth systems, structured around questions about humanity's origins, identity, location, and direction.

The Museum of Tomorrow is a science museum in Rio de Janeiro designed by Spanish neofuturistic architect Santiago Calatrava. The museum's main exhibition takes visitors through five areas (Cosmos, Earth, Anthropocene, Tomorrow, and Us) via experiments and experiences. Rather than focusing on objects from the past, the museum explores potential futures and presents a narrative about how humans might live and shape the next 50 years. It addresses how human activity has become a force of planetary scale, capable of intervening at molecular and continental levels, altering forests, influencing the atmosphere, and transforming the climate. The museum is guided by values of sustainability and coexistence, promoting innovation and communicating scientific advances.

The entire museum is framed around futures thinking: "O Museu do Amanhã oferece uma narrativa sobre como poderemos viver e moldar os próximos 50 anos." [The Museum of Tomorrow offers a narrative about how we can live and shape the next 50 years.] The museum is structured around future-oriented questions: "De onde viemos? Quem somos? Onde estamos? Para onde vamos? Como queremos ir?" [Where do we come from? Who are we? Where are we? Where are we going? How do we want to go?]

"A museum to broaden our knowledge and transform our way of thinking and acting... mixing science with an innovative design to focus on sustainable cities and an ecological world."

Interactive engagement through physical museum experience

Artist website

museudoamanha.org.br

Píer Mauá, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Brazil

Public as guided learners; interactive but predetermined experience.

Physical museum with digital exhibits.

Climate futures framed through scientific foresight and ethical responsibility.

Sequential zones build emotional and intellectual engagement.

Superflux (UK design/art studio: Anab Jain, Jon Ardern, et al.)

2017 (London version); 2019 (Singapore edition)

CCCB Barcelona mikhaeladietch.com (After the End of the World exhibition). Later supported by ArtScience Museum Singapore (2019).

An immersive design-fiction installation of a future urban apartment adapted for survival in a climate-ravaged world (circa 2050). The audience steps into a small London flat crammed with improvised technologies and food-growing systems that respond to scarcity and chaos artwork.earth. Dried kelp hangs from the ceiling, canned insects line the shelves, and makeshift hydroponics glow in the kitchen. Outside the window, a dystopic skyline of shanty add-ons and flood refugee shelters hints at societal collapse artwork.earth. This painstakingly detailed scenario invites visitors to experience quotidian life in a climate crisis future that might await us if today s mitigation efforts fail.

Implementation: Superflux built a full-size apartment interior, down to water-stained walls and a moldy ceiling for realism mikhaeladietch.com. Every prop is grounded in research on post-climate-breakdown survival: e.g., solar cookers made from scavenged materials, mealworm breeding trays for protein, seed libraries in repurposed books. The kitchen showcases future recipes like fox stew and insect burgers with printed recipe cards as if used by the inhabitant artwork.earth. DIY electronics like a computer jury-rigged to a bicycle generator indicate intermittent power. A weathered diary (that visitors can read) recounts adaptation challenges and emotional struggles, adding narrative depth. Two iterations exist: the original (London scenario) artwork.earth and a later one set in future Singapore (with localized food systems like indoor rice paddies). The installation is experienced intimately: only a few people enter at a time, free to open cupboards or flip through a field guide of edible weeds. By blending familiar domestic settings with unsettling modifications, it creates cognitive dissonance that collapses the distance between present and future.

A classic example of experiential futures it transports people into a possible future to viscerally confront the daily reality of living through climate collapse architectural-review.com. It s largely a cautionary, exploratory future: not an inevitable fate, but one potential outcome if we don t change course. This scenario serves to provoke dialogue on adaptation vs. mitigation, emphasizing that without drastic action now, ordinary people might be forced into these drastic lifestyles.

Physical room with real objects (tangible futurism); optional AR content (in some exhibits) overlaying data; accompanying fictional media (notes, videos) to enrich world.

Interactive engagement visitors are active explorers of the space (opening drawers, reading logs, touching artifacts). No guided tour or VR; it s a self-directed discovery within the fiction. This fosters a personal connection as each visitor might focus on different details that resonate with them (food, tech, etc.).

Speculative (design fiction) and cautionary. It s an explicitly scenario-based future: predictive if trends continue, but also reflective (holds a mirror to present behaviors). It doesn t present solutions so much as a provocation: a near-future anthropology of how humans might adapt.

Artist website

After the End of the World, CCCB Barcelona (Oct 2017 Apr 2018) artwork.earth; 2219: Futures Imagined, ArtScience Museum Singapore (2019 2020) as Mitigation of Shock (Singapore) mikhaeladietch.com; Vienna Biennale (2021) Climate Care ; Museum of Imagined Futures, Dubai (2022).

United Kingdom (scenario locales: UK & Singapore).

Highlights the absent presence of community the flat is for a small family, but one senses isolation and precarity. However, traces of communal knowledge-sharing exist (handwritten notes, shared gardens outside the window). It implicitly critiques individualist survivalism by showing its bleakness, thereby encouraging collective action in the now. The installation creates a relationship between present-day viewer and imagined future inhabitant: as you handle their possessions, you empathize with their plight, creating an emotional bridge across time.

Entirely physical and tactile a stage set you can inhabit. The material authenticity (real canned food, soil, water stains) is crucial to trick the senses. There s no high-tech gadget for the visitor; your body moving through the cramped, cluttered space is the key embodied experience, inducing a visceral understanding of constraint (e.g., ducking under hanging plants, feeling heat lamps).

Storytelling is environmental and object-based. Every artifact is a narrative device (e.g., cookbook pages for Pigeon Pie tell of changing diets). The metaphor of mitigation becomes literal: the occupant is mitigating shock by repurposing the debris of civilization. The framing of futures is through evidence and implication rather than explicit narration viewers piece together the story (a bit like archaeological futurism). It thereby engages them in sense-making, mirroring how future survivors might reconstruct knowledge.

The staging is immersive realism it feels like walking onto a movie set just after the scene of action. Emotions elicited include curiosity, anxiety, and a slow dread as one realizes the implications of each detail (e.g., They had to eat what ! ). There s no actor present; the performer is the space itself. The script is non-linear, discovered through exploration. It is quietly haunting the absence of actual people and the stillness of the flat after hardship evoke a sobering mood. The experience ends when the viewer exits the room, ideally carrying the emotional weight out with them.

Gayatri Parameswaran, Felix Gaedtke, Tsewang Namgail

Not explicitly stated in source material

Not explicitly stated in source material

A mixed reality documentary exploring the complex relationship between human inhabitants of the Himalayan mountain desert and endangered snow leopards.

Living with the Snow Leopards is a mixed reality documentary that explores the complex relationship between the human inhabitants of the Himalayan mountain desert and the endangered snow leopards. The project appears to examine human-wildlife conflict and coexistence in this delicate ecosystem.

Not explicitly stated in source material

Not explicitly stated in source material

Not explicitly stated in source material

MIT Worlding

Not explicitly stated in source material

Not explicitly stated in source material

India/Germany

Mixed reality narrative with expert voices; viewer acts as silent observer.

MR interface blending environmental footage and holograms.

Frames conservation as coexistence; uses species narrative to discuss coexistence futures.

Educational and emotive; story arc moves from fear to stewardship.

Jakob Kudsk Steensen

2021

Luma Arles

A multimedia project exploring the salt flats of Salin de Giraud in the Camargue wetlands through VR, video and physical installations. The work examines the temporal and spatial scales beyond human perception in these transitional ecological zones.

Liminal Lands explores the lesser-known spaces between sea and marsh in the Camargue wetlands and Salin de Giraud, focusing on a landscape formed 7,000 years ago and transformed through salt cultivation. The project examines temporal and spatial scales beyond human perception, revealing micro-scale events like plant roots forming networks, feathers dissolving into salt crystals, and bacterial lifeforms absorbing nutrients. Created after extensive field research from December 2019 to Summer 2020, the work combines VR technology, cinematic video, and physical installations including crystallized salt floors infused with living algae. The VR experience transports viewers through multiple perspectives: from salt flats to subterranean caverns to salt pillars, with light shifting between dawn and dusk. The installation includes floors made with local artisans using crystallized salt and algae from the Camargue wetlands, creating pathways through exhibition spaces. The project's virtual environment is described as a "transitional zone where fundamental energies of sun, wind, water and bacteria connect to participants' bodies."

Explicitly examines temporal scales that exceed human perception and connection, focusing on "hyper local rhythms of life" that operate on different timeframes than human experience. The work is described as revealing "life-shaping transformations, invisible to the naked eye" and connecting participants to fundamental energies that operate across vast timescales.

Virtual Reality, Smart Environments, Interactive Installations, Geolocative/Geo-Aware Experiences

To reveal "life-shaping transformations, invisible to the naked eye" and to create understanding of ecological processes that operate on scales beyond human perception.

Interactive multiplayer VR where "physical movements, spatial sounds and textures synchronize into a musical composition driven by immersed participants."

Artist website

Not explicitly stated in source material

Luma Arles (La M\'e9canique G\'e9n\'e9rale), France (June 26, 2021 - January 2022); Official Selection - SXSW Film Festival (2022); Official Selection - Geneva International Film Festival (2021); Official Selection - BFI London Film Festival (2021)

France

Interactive VR; participants as co-creators; emphasizes physical movement.

VR technology; smart environments; physical installations.

Frames salt ecosystems as dynamic entities; uses scientific and poetic language.

Immersive VR experience; sensory engagement; participatory exploration.

Nyasha Kadandara

2019

Caitlin Robinson, Electric South, Ingrid Kopp, Steven Markovitz

A VR documentary about Lake Chad that personifies the lake itself as narrator, exploring how climate change has depleted 90% of its water, disrupting livelihoods of millions and contributing to political instability and the rise of Boko Haram.

Le Lac is a VR documentary set in Lake Chad, once an oasis of the Sahel region now depleted to a tenth of its former size. The film is narrated from the perspective of the lake itself, creating a poetic meditation on environmental change and its human consequences. The documentary connects climate change to political upheaval, including the insurgence of Boko Haram in the central African region. The narrative follows Mahamat, a once-wealthy pastoralist, and Nassuri, a fisherman-turned-refugee, as they navigate the dramatically altered landscape. The project uses 360° video, drone footage, and animation techniques to create an immersive experience of the lake's transformation and its impacts on surrounding communities. By personifying the lake as narrator, the project creates emotional connection to what would otherwise be abstract environmental changes, connecting ecological transformation directly to human suffering and political instability.

The project presents current climate impacts while implicitly addressing future scenarios through showing the connection between environmental degradation and political instability, demonstrating a troubling trajectory if action isn't taken.

"To be used as an informative or educational tool to bring awareness to the crisis in Lake Chad"

Immersive viewing experience

MIT Docubase

https://www.nyashakadandara.com/le-lac

Sheffield Doc/Fest

Chad, Kenya, Zimbabwe

Participants are positioned as witnesses to ecological degradation and displacement; little interactivity.

VR documentary with immersive visuals and sound from Lake Chad.

Uses first-person testimony and immersive geography to evoke water crisis narratives.

Quietly escalating dread; uses environmental decay to generate urgency.

Nina Barbier, Hsin-Chien Huang

2022

Lucid Realities (Chloé Jarry), Musée National d'Histoire Naturelle, Paris

A 15-minute VR experience exploring starry grains of sand found on beaches across the East China Sea, blending science and mythology to trace the 400-million-year history of microscopic Foraminifera and highlight threats to marine ecosystems.

La plage de sable étoilé is a scientific fairy tale about starry sand grains (Baculogypsina sphaerulata, a Foraminifera species) found on East China Sea beaches. The experience combines a local legend about the North Star, Southern Cross, and a mythical sea serpent with scientific exploration. Divided into three parts - legend, underwater forest, and Earth's geological memory - it traces Foraminifera back 400 million years. Throughout the experience, users witness threats to marine and coral microorganisms, symbolized by a sea serpent representing ocean acidification. The journey moves vertically from sea to sky, starting in a small room, moving deep into the sea, and returning to the stars. In this changing game of scales, viewers find themselves equally small among stars and Foraminifera, using starry sand as a poetic vehicle from ocean depths to space.

The work explicitly connects past, present and future by tracing the 400-million-year evolution of marine organisms while highlighting current threats to marine ecosystems. The sea serpent symbolizes ocean acidification, connecting present environmental concerns to potential marine futures.

To connect scientific understanding with poetic mythology, matching "science and poetry, as the stars combine these two elements"

Immersive VR experience

Venice VR Expanded

Not explicitly stated in source material

Not explicitly stated in source material

France, Taipei

Viewer immersed in poetic marine landscape; minimal interactivity.

VR with dreamlike animation; surreal underwater scenes.

Mythic and surreal metaphors about ocean memory and time.

Meandering progression; performance of submersion and wonder.

Iona McEwan

2022

Alchemy Immersive (Lou Doye, Anthony Geffen), Meta Quest

A 15-minute three-part immersive VR series narrated by David Attenborough that reveals the perils and drama of the plant world. Viewers witness plant survival strategies up close, including predatory behaviors, symbiotic relationships, and battles for resources.

Kingdom of Plants immerses viewers in the otherwise hidden lives of plants at their scale and in their time. Narrated by David Attenborough, the series follows viewers deep into what is described as a "strange and dangerous world" to witness desperate battles, beauty, and survival strategies. The three-episode series reveals allies, enemies, and predators of the plant kingdom. Viewers can sit inside rare blooms, be beguiled by the bloodthirsty sundew, dive inside a microscope to see seeds in incredible detail, be consumed by fungi, witness the battle cry of a Pine tree, and become entrapped in the Venus Flytrap. The experience combines spectacular time-lapse footage with macro live-action and computer graphics to reveal the battles and dramas of plant life.

While not explicitly focused on human futures, the work provides insight into plant evolution and survival mechanisms, which have implications for environmental futures and biodiversity. Director McEwan notes that "The topic of plants and their cunning ability to survive is pertinent in the era of humans dominating the planet and changing our climate."

To show "the magic, the savagery, the diversity, and the beauty in this stunning Kingdom" and highlight "plants and their cunning ability to survive is pertinent in the era of humans dominating the planet and changing our climate."

Passive immersive viewing experience with narrator

Venice Biennale Immersive

Not explicitly stated in source material

Not explicitly stated in source material

UK, USA

Presenter-driven educational format; viewer as passive learner.

VR film; 180-degree footage; high-definition botanical visuals.

Plants framed as overlooked agents of change; futures implied through awe.

Documentary pacing; voice-of-God narration; emphasis on visual splendor.

Marshmallow Laser Feast (Barnaby Steel, Ersin Han Ersin, Robin McNicholas)

2015

Abandon Normal Devices, Forestry Commission England

A multisensory VR installation that allows participants to experience forest environments through the perspective of four woodland species—mosquito, dragonfly, frog, and owl—using LIDAR scans, binaural audio, and haptic feedback to recreate their unique sensory worlds.

In the Eyes of the Animal is a VR experience that explores the concept of umwelt—the unique perceptual world experienced by different species. The installation takes users through the sensory experiences of four forest creatures: a mosquito navigating through plumes of carbon dioxide, a dragonfly with ultra-sharp visual acuity processing 240 frames per second, a frog with exceptional night vision hunting insects, and an owl with focused distance vision but limited peripheral sight. Created using LIDAR scans, unmanned aerial vehicles (drones), bespoke 360° cameras, and real-time computing, the experience is set to a binaural soundscape using field recordings from Grizedale Forest in northern England. The installation includes haptic feedback through a vibrating backpack (Subpac) that simulates physical sensations like dragonfly wings and frog croaks. The project has been exhibited in both indoor and outdoor settings across multiple countries since 2015 and has won awards including the 2016 Wired Innovation in Storytelling Award.

The project reimagines human-animal relationships by offering direct experience of non-human perceptual worlds, implicitly suggesting a more biodiverse future that values and understands non-human perspectives.

To help participants "step away from our human-centric viewpoint" and experience the subjective nature of perception through the senses of different forest species

Immersive multisensory experience

Artist website

Not explicitly stated in source material

Abandon Normal Devices Festival (UK), Playgrounds (Netherlands), Sundance Film Festival (USA), Hammsterley Festival (UK), Sonar +D (Spain), Toronto Film Festival (Canada), Migrations (UK), Blue Dot Festival (UK), Roundhouse (UK), Jikji Golden Seed Festival (Korea), Nuit Blanche (Belgium), YCAM (Japan), Mutek Festival (Mexico), Clockenflap (Hong Kong), Design Museum (UK), Node Festival (Germany), Singapore Arts Festival, Phi Centre (Montreal), Pico (Bahrain), Coda Festival (UK), OMM (Turkey), New Visions of Reality (Poland), Discovery Park (S. Korea), BBK Abentura (Spain)

United Kingdom

Audience adopts the POV of forest animals; sensory shift invites ecological empathy.

VR headset + haptic feedback; 360 forest visuals.

Animal perception reframes environmental futures as multispecies cohabitation.

Dreamlike progression; ambient audio fosters disorientation and enchantment.

Peter & Paul (creative studio)

Not explicitly stated in source material

National Trust and British Council Sub-Saharan Africa

An augmented reality experience that inspires people to think more deeply about food and global supply chains by exploring hidden stories of food through artistic collaborations with indigenous people, bringing stories to life through illustration, animation, and narration.

Ground: Unearthing Hidden Stories is an augmented reality (AR) experience developed by Sheffield-based creative studio Peter & Paul. The project serves as a digital companion to Ground, a live immersive dining experience created by partners Trigger and commissioned by National Trust and British Council Sub-Saharan Africa. The AR experience enables audiences to explore hidden stories of food through artistic collaborations with indigenous people, bringing these stories to life through illustration, animation and narration in the space around the user. The project aims to inspire deeper thinking about food systems and global supply chains.

The project engages with futures thinking by encouraging users to "think more deeply about food and the global chain," prompting reflection on food systems and supply chains that shape our environmental and social futures.

"To inspire people to think more deeply about food and the global chain"

Interactive engagement through AR exploration

SWSW Festival

Not explicitly stated in source material

Not explicitly stated in source material

United Kingdom

Participants uncover histories via AR exploration; interaction centered on place.

Mobile AR; spatial triggers based on real locations.

Reclaims suppressed land stories through digital palimpsests; place-based futures.

Exploratory pacing; sense of detective work; layering of stories builds emotional connection.

Catherine Upin, Julia Cort, Nonny de la Peña, Raney Aronson-Rath

2017

Frontline and NOVA (Executive producers: Nonny de la Peña, Raney Aronson-Rath for Frontline, Julia Cort for NOVA, Paula Apsell for NOVA)

A 12-minute 360-degree VR documentary examining Greenland's rapidly melting glaciers. The experience follows NASA scientists as they collect data and measurements to understand why Greenland's ice is melting faster than predicted and what implications this has globally.

The project documents NASA's investigation into Greenland's accelerated glacial melting, which has increased dramatically over the past 15 years compared to the previous 70 years. Viewers travel alongside scientists on ships and aircraft as they collect measurements and observe the vast ice sheets. The experience reveals how warmer sea currents are eroding ice from below. The production employs 3D data visualization, photogrammetry, and videogrammetry to create an immersive 360-degree environment that conveys the scale of glacial retreat since 1900, allowing viewers to viscerally experience the physical reality behind climate data and statistics.

The work explicitly connects present scientific observations to future climate implications, as indicated by the statement "what does it mean for the rest of the world?" The visualization of historical glacier size (from 1900) compared to present creates a temporal framework that implicitly projects future trajectories of ice loss.

To help viewers "experience the reality behind all the facts and statistics about melting ice caps" and to convey the scale of glacial retreat over time

Immersive viewing (the viewer can look around in 360 degrees but appears to be primarily observational rather than interactive)

IDFA 2017 (International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam)

Referenced as: https://www.idfa.nl/en/film/0c93980b-a15b-40fd-857a-958a4ebb04a6/greenland-melting/

IDFA 2017 (Dutch Premiere)

United States

Viewers as witnesses to climate science; passive.

VR documentary; stereoscopic footage.

Glacial collapse framed as planetary crisis; narrative from NASA scientists.

Stark visuals and voiceovers build scientific drama and moral weight.

Tony Patrick

2021-ongoing

Guggenheim

Artist website

Guggenheim

USA

Data missing; unable to assess fully.

[N/A]

[N/A]

[N/A]

Ben Joseph Andrews

2022

Emma Roberts

A 24-hour durational immersive simulation powered by climate data that allows audiences to experience the Daintree Rainforest's possible futures, with the environment degrading over time based on climate projections, but becoming more resilient with increased participation.

Gondwana is an immersive simulation of the Daintree Rainforest, the world's oldest tropical rainforest, which was declared under climate emergency in May 2019. The experience runs for 24 hours and allows participants to freely explore the living, breathing forest environment, discovering hidden areas from caves to mangrove forests and encountering wildlife from butterflies to crocodiles. Other participants appear as luminous fireflies in the shared environment. Every 14 minutes, the simulation jumps forward one year in time, with the forest visibly degrading based on climate data projections. However, the project incorporates a social component where increased participation makes the forest more dynamic and resilient, suggesting collective action as a response to environmental threats. The work was presented at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival in the New Frontier Projects section as a VR experience with English and Kuku Yalanji language elements.

The project explicitly models multiple possible futures for the Daintree based on climate projections, with degradation as the default trajectory but increased resilience as a possibility through collective action, directly connecting present participation to future outcomes.

To demonstrate climate change impacts on the Daintree Rainforest while showing how collective participation can create resilience

Interactive multi-user exploration with collective impact on environment resilience

Sundance Institute History

Not explicitly stated in source material

2022 Sundance Film Festival (New Frontier Projects)

Australia

Users explore a virtual rainforest collaboratively; ecosystem degrades over time.

Multi-user VR experience; dynamic ecological feedback.

Frames extinction and loss through simulation of collapse; hope through interactivity.

Countdown-based temporal structure; users affect ecosystem health; urgency and fragility.

Tamiko Thiel (US/Germany)

2016

Seattle Art Museum for Olympic Sculpture Park tamikothiel.com (part of SAM Remix public art program).

A site-specific Augmented Reality installation envisioning a near-future Seattle where native plants have mutated into surreal hybrids to survive dramatic climate changes tamikothiel.com. Using a mobile app, visitors walking through the Olympic Sculpture Park could see virtual fantastical plants superimposed on the real landscape ferns growing as tall as trees, kelp floating in mid-air and entangling streetlamps, and mossy vines creeping up sculptures. These AR flora are based on actual Pacific Northwest species that are drought-tolerant or warm-water tolerant, but exaggerated into sci-fi forms (e.g., bull kelp that flies and feeds on electromagnetic signals) tamikothiel.com tamikothiel.com. The piece immerses viewers in a post-natural garden, prompting reflection on how flora might adapt (or distort) in the Anthropocene.

Implementation: Users accessed the AR via a smartphone or tablet (through an app like Layar). As they roam the park, GPS triggers different 3D plant models at specific locations. The models were designed from scientific data about climate resilience for example, Lupinus nootkatensis (a lupine) appears enlarged and changing color, suggesting genetic mutation due to erratic seasons. The artwork takes artistic license beyond science: one scenario shows flowers that have developed the ability to move and attach onto buildings (breaking boundaries between flora and fauna tamikothiel.com). Tamiko Thiel mapped these mutant plants to plausible future habitats within the park (e.g., saltwater tolerant ones along the shoreline, drought mutants on the sunny knolls). The AR visualization was accessible via the viewer s device screen no physical markers, just geolocated AR, which made the virtual plants seem to grow out of the ground as one approached. A background narrative (accessible on SAM s site) explained that by mid-21st century, Seattle s climate resembles present-day California, and these mutations are humanity s unintended garden. The project also had a secondary installation at Stanford University campus in 2017 (placing the same mutant species in that locale, reinforcing the idea that this could happen broadly) tamikothiel.com.

Illustrates a speculative ecological future in a visually arresting way. It s essentially climate projection meets science fiction: taking expected climate shifts and imagining evolutionary trajectories from them. This future is both dystopian and resilient dystopian in that the normal ecosystem is disrupted into weird forms, but also shows life finding ways to persist. It encourages viewers to contemplate the long-term impacts of climate swings on familiar environments, essentially a visual climate scenario that is neither pure fantasy nor exact prediction, but an artistic what-if.

Mobile AR app (GPS + compass based); 3D digital plant models; outdoor public space (no physical setup, just digital overlay).

Interactive mobile experience users physically move through space to discover AR organisms. It s exploratory and self-paced; one can hunt for all the species or just encounter a few. In that sense it s participatory, as the viewer s movement and choice determine what they see. However, it s not multi-user synchronized (each device shows the plants individually).

Speculative design/art with scientific grounding. The approach is imaginative yet plausible starting from actual climate data and plant traits and then artistically exaggerating. It s meant to be provocative and engaging rather than predictive: an artistic scenario that raises questions (it was part of a public art program, aiming to invoke thought rather than propose policy).

Artist website

Olympic Sculpture Park, Seattle (June Oct 2016) seattleartmuseum.org; Re-shown at Stanford University campus (2017) tamikothiel.com; listed in ADA Archive of Digital Art (2016) digitalartarchive.at.

USA (artist is US-based, project in Seattle).

It creates a triangle relationship: viewer environment future. Viewers see their real environment altered, which can spark a personal emotional relation ( this is my city, changed ). It also pits native nature vs. human influence: these plants mutate because of us, a relationship of cause and effect laid bare. The use of AR (personal device) means each viewer has a slightly different experience, creating an individual relationship to the speculative world, which can then be shared socially as people discuss Did you see the flying kelp over there .

Entirely virtual augmentation over physical reality thus intentionally highlighting what is absent materially (the plants aren t really there). This ephemeral materiality is part of the message: it s a potential future haunting the present landscape. The embodied experience involves walking outdoors, feeling the actual weather while seeing virtual climate-changed flora, which can create a strong embodied juxtaposition (a hot day might make the drought plants feel more plausible, etc.).

The project uses science fiction narrative (mutant plants) as a discourse on climate adaptation. It s metaphorical: each imaginary plant trait (e.g. feeding on WiFi signals) is a commentary on human impact (electrosmog, etc.) tamikothiel.com. It frames the future as a continuum of the present not a sudden apocalypse, but an evolutionary narrative. By giving Latin names to the fake species (volans = flying kelp), it mimics scientific discourse to make the scenario more concrete. The work extends dialogue beyond the app through an info page ( Project Background ) explaining the choices, so it educates as well.

The experience has an element of wonder and eeriness. There s no set beginning or end it depends on how the user moves. One might stumble upon a giant flower unexpectedly (a moment of surprise/delight or disquiet), or actively pursue rumored locations (curiosity, anticipation). It s like a silent open-world theater, where the setting is the familiar park with these silent alien actors (the plants) appearing. Emotions range from amusement (the sight of, say, Bullwhip kelp drones is whimsical) to unease (plants breaching natural boundaries hints at ecological upheaval). The overall mood is subtly dystopic bright colors but underlying warning. There s no human performer; the performance is the AR plants dancing on the stage of the real world, and the user becomes both audience and participant traversing this stage.

Matthew Shaw, William Trossell

2022

ScanLAB Projects (Anetta Jones, Matthew Shaw, William Trossell)

A 20-minute immersive installation that uses thousands of daily 3D time-lapse scans to document landscapes in flux, revealing alterations caused by human industry and natural forces. The work observes environmental change at a scale impossible to see with traditional cameras.

Framerate: Pulse of the Earth bears witness to landscapes changing through human-centered industry and natural forces, including destruction, extraction, construction, harvests, growth, and erosion. The installation displays hypnotic imagery across multiple screens with shifting audio. The work compresses time to show rapid changes: seasons changing in seconds, pumpkins growing, steel being crushed, sand ebbing, cliffs retreating. Created from thousands of 3D time-lapse scans of British landscapes, the project doubles as scientific research containing empirical, measurable facts. The installation invites viewers to observe in another way, contemplating change at geological, seasonal, and tidal timescales.

The project explicitly invites viewers "to think and feel in another time scale: geological time, seasonal time, tidal time. To contemplate change, and the pace of change." It provides a glimpse of "a future perpetually documented by the eyes of a billion autonomous vehicles and personal devices, creating high fidelity spatial records of the earth."

"This is a space where your perspective might shift" - suggesting the goal is to change viewers' perspective on environmental change and time scales.

Passive viewing of immersive installation

Venice Biennale Immersive

https://www.labiennale.org/en/cinema/2022/venice-immersive/framerate-pulse-earth

Venice International Film Festival, COP 26, SXSW, BFI London Film Festival, Centre PHI in Montreal, TCCF Taiwan

UK

Viewers engage as observers of massive temporal change; no interaction.

Multi-screen 3D time-lapse data installation.

Land transformation framed as slow violence; human-nature entanglement.

Epic scale; slow visual rhythm to suggest geological temporality.

Winslow Porter, Elie Zananiri

2022

Forager VR LLC (Winslow Porter, Casta Jiahui Zhu), Accenture Song, Sustainability Studio (Karen Short, Justin Durazzo), Smallhold (Adam DeMartino, Andrew Carter), On the Edge, Q Department (Jacqueline Bosnjak)

An 8-minute immersive experience exploring the life-cycle of fungi using sight, sound, touch and scent. Viewers witness the complete cycle of mushroom growth from spores to mycelium, fruiting body, and decay, revealing nature's underground network.

Forager reveals that a mushroom is a door in the floor, opening to nature's greatest revelation: an endless underground network secretly feeding life to the world above. Noting that we know more about the moon's surface than about mushrooms, the experience uses multiple senses (sight, sound, touch, scent) to reveal the complete life-cycle of fungi. The creators developed a groundbreaking timelapse photogrammetry pipeline to authentically capture mushroom growth with minimal digital interference. The project evolved from the creators' pandemic mushroom cultivation and deepening fascination with mycology, leading to a profound recognition of fungi's pivotal role in ecological balance. The experience invites audiences to explore the unseen world where time, growth, and mycology converge.

The work implicitly connects to futures thinking by highlighting fungi's ecological importance and revealing "a deeper connection with our environment." The creators explicitly reference their changing understanding of fungi's "pivotal role in sustaining our planet's ecological balance," connecting the work to environmental futures.

To inspire "a deeper connection with our environment" and showcase "the captivating beauty of the unseen world"

Immersive multi-sensory experience

Venice Biennale Immersive

https://www.forager.earth/#immerseyourself

Venice Biennale

USA

Viewer as sensor; no interaction, but physicality of mushrooms mirrored in human motion.

VR experience with audio-reactive mushroom forms.

Mushrooms as metaphors for kinship and networked futures; eco-mysticism.

Fluid, immersive movement mimics fungal lifeways; aesthetic induces altered perception.

Traci Kwaai, Kyle Marais, Amy Louise Wilson

Not explicitly stated in source material

Not explicitly stated in source material

A multimedia project building on ancestral-archival work of sixth-generation fisher child Traci Kwaai, visualizing in 3D the precarity of coastal lives in a South African fishing village during climate chaos.

Fisher Child is a multimedia project which builds on the ancestral-archival work of sixth-generation fisher child Traci Kwaai. The project creates a repository of Indigenous marine knowledge from a small South African fishing village, visualizing in 3D the precarity of coastal lives in a time of climate chaos.

The project explicitly addresses climate futures through its focus on "the precarity of coastal lives in a time of climate chaos."

To preserve Indigenous marine knowledge and illustrate climate impacts on coastal communities

Not explicitly stated in source material

MIT Worlding

Not explicitly stated in source material

Not explicitly stated in source material

South Africa

Intergenerational narrative; engages emotional memory and cultural transmission.

3D visualization; hybrid oral history format.

Reframes water ecologies through ancestral knowledge and speculative survival.

Poetic, mythic register; narrative rhythm rooted in Indigenous oral structure.

Superflux

2017

International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies

A series of speculative design provocations and technological interventions exploring how humanitarian organizations might prepare for future challenges, including AI deployment, alternative finance, predictive genetics, and climate change.

EVIDENCING HUMANITARIAN FUTURES presents a series of speculative design provocations and technological artifacts created for the International Federation of Red Cross (IFRC) conference "The Future is Now." The project aimed to help IFRC anticipate technological, social, and economic challenges for the humanitarian sector. Four key provocations were developed: 1) "RC VoluntAIr" - a predictive AI organization deploying volunteers in disaster areas, 2) "DONAID" - a cryptocurrency donation platform converting computer processing power into currency, 3) "Genetic disease scanner" - a tool tracking diseases likely to spread in the future, and 4) "Air pollution inhaler" allowing people to experience 2030's air quality if polluting behaviors continue. The project aimed to help IF

Artist website

Curated foresight scenarios; expert-led discourse; low direct public interaction.

Video/audio installation; speculative design artifacts.

Humanitarianism positioned as future-ready infrastructure; emphasizes systemic uncertainty.

Gallery staging with minimalist tone; exhibits designed to provoke strategic reflection.

Marina Zurkow, Una Chaudhuri, Fritz Ertl, Oliver Kellhammer

2012

Not explicitly stated in source material

An ongoing creative-research project that uses instructional signage aesthetics and meditation techniques to foster a better informed, realistic, and affectionate relationship with the more-than-human world, including geo-physical forces and other species.

DEAR CLIMATE is an ongoing creative-research project founded in 2012 that has many incarnations: posters, guided meditations, installations, and workshops. The project "hacks the aesthetics of instructional signage and the techniques of meditation" to lead viewers and listeners toward a better informed, realistic, and more affectionate relationship to the more-than-human world, including geo-physical forces and other species. One significant installation, "General Assembly" at Storm King Arts Center, featured a circle of flags with rhetorical structure - black flags posited current problems to which sections of white flags responded. The white flags were divided into plant-based, animal-based, climate-based, and grief-and-acceptance-based groups. The organizers describe the project's evolution from initially focusing on changing individual feelings about the non-human world ("Retool your inner climate") to becoming more sociological and political, challenging the nature-culture divide.

The project explicitly critiques standard approaches to climate futures, moving from individualistic "survival" framing to questions about human integration with non-human systems: "Can you give up some of your separateness? Can you give up some of your objectness? Can you merge with other forms and other beings? Can you have less distinct edges?" The "General Assembly" installation specifically creates "a public space that signals\'97and celebrates\'97a future world of multi-species collaboration."

Social Art Practice, Interactive Installations

To create "a better informed, more realistic, and more affectionate relationship to the more-than-human world." The project aims to challenge the nature-culture divide and encourage human recognition of being "earthlings, one species among many."

Interactive - visitors engage with installations, participate in workshops, and practice guided meditations.

Artist website

Not explicitly stated in source material

Storm King Arts Center (General Assembly installation, May 19 - November 11, 2018)

Not explicitly stated in source material

Collaborative project; invites public participation through posters and guided meditations.

Physical posters; audio meditations; interactive installations.

Uses humor and direct address; reframes climate narratives through accessible metaphors.

Engages emotions through humor and reflection; performative workshops.

Annie Saunders with Andrew Schneider, Jackie! Zhou, One Thousand Birds, OpenEndedGroup and Octopus Theatricals

2021

Annie Saunders, Octopus Theatricals

A site-specific audio installation guiding participants on a walk through Lower Manhattan using binaural sound and environmental recordings to explore themes of water, time, construction, destruction, synchronicity, and resilience in the urban environment.

CURRENT is an audio installation that guides participants through Lower Manhattan via their mobile devices and headphones. The experience uses binaural sound and site-specific environmental recordings to create an immersive narrative around themes of water, time, change, and resilience. The project employs Ambisonic microphone technology with four microphones recording 360-degree sound to create accurate sonic landscapes. The audio is time-specific, playing at particular times of day chosen for the theatrical quality of light in Lower Manhattan, and is geographically restricted to begin only at the designated start point. Once activated, participants have no control over the audio, which guides them through a walk with narration and spatialized sound design recorded on location. The web-based platform was custom-built by OpenEndedGroup, creating an experience that feels live despite being pre-recorded.

The project connects themes of water, time, and urban resilience, implicitly addressing climate futures through its focus on water and environmental change in the urban context.

Sensory Media, Geolocative/Geo-Aware Experiences, Networked Media

"To bring audiences back to themselves in the city" through an outdoor audio project that feels live despite using personal technology

Guided audio walk with participant movement through physical space

MIT Docubase

https://www.brookfieldproperties.com/en/our-approach/events/annie-saunders-current-23.html

Lower Manhattan (One Liberty Plaza and One New York Plaza)

United States

Participants follow geolocated audio through urban landscapes; public becomes mobile sensorium.

Smartphone and headphones; ambient sound layers change based on location.

Water and infrastructure framed as latent ecological agents; poetic micro-narratives.

Kinetic experience; walking as performative act; minimal intervention fosters reflection.

Chaos Theory Games

Not explicitly stated in source material

Not explicitly stated in source material

An atmospheric underwater strategy game where players nurture a family of Crablings, build coral reefs, and defend an egg that will hatch into the next ocean caretaker, with gameplay actions translating into real-world conservation efforts through dots.eco.

Crab God is an underwater strategy game where players act as a guardian of the abyss, nurturing a quirky family of Crablings and breathing life into an underwater domain. Players must defend the egg of the next crab god, cultivate food to sustain it, and migrate to deeper waters where it will hatch and become the new ocean caretaker. The colony of Crablings builds coral reefs, protects against threats, and collects food. The game includes features like growing a unique crab colony, cultivating vibrant underwater ecosystems, and making real-world environmental impact by converting in-game actions into tree planting, ocean cleaning, and reef restoration through dots.eco partnerships.

The game engages with futures through its themes of nurturing the "next crab god" that will become the "new ocean caretaker" and the concept of cultivating ecosystems for future sustainability. The game connects virtual actions to real-world conservation impact, linking present gameplay with future environmental outcomes.

Interactive Narrative, Data Storytelling

"While caring for their own reef, players will be aiding real life conservation efforts via dots.eco. Working alongside a variety of environmental charities, Crab God allows players to feel a real sense of joy and accomplishment as they progress, converting in-game actions into tree planting, ocean cleaning, restoration of reefs and more."

Interactive engagement through gameplay with real-world impact

Artist website

Not explicitly stated in source material

Not explicitly stated in source material

Not explicitly stated in source material

Players act as caretakers of an underwater ecosystem; collaborative environmental responsibility.

Underwater-themed strategy game; stylized visuals; feedback loops.

Future stewardship framed through nonhuman needs; eco-ethics via gameplay.

Mission-based progression; strategic emotional investment in marine survival.

Andy Opel

2019

University of Bergen

A collaborative documentary project that uses various media forms including 360° videos and VR to document first-person accounts of climate change impacts, particularly in arctic and sub-arctic Scandinavia, focusing on testimonies from outdoor professionals and scientists.

The Climate Witness Project employs the power of storytelling, immersive media, and first-person observation to document climate change impacts. Led by professor Andy Opel at the University of Bergen, the initiative equips students with communication tools to create stories across various media forms including traditional documentary video, 360° videos, virtual reality, and touchscreen projects. The project primarily features testimonies from people in outdoor professions such as farmers, fishermen, glacier tour guides, and train line workers, as well as scientists and everyday citizens. Stories range from the disappearance of Arctic Char fish due to warming waters to changing birch moth migration patterns affecting northern Norwegian forests. The project focuses on the arctic and sub-arctic regions of Scandinavia, which are experiencing approximately 20-degree Celsius temperature increases. Built on the philosophy of the human rights organization Witness (witness.org), the project provides tools for students to document what it frames as "humanity's crimes against the climate."

The project implicitly addresses climate futures by documenting current changes that indicate future trajectories, creating an archive of climate impacts that can inform anticipatory action.

To document "eyewitness testimonies of changes in the natural world" and combine them with "hard data that confirms the larger pattern of how our climate is changing"

Student-led content creation with subject participation through interviews and testimonials

MIT Docubase

https://www.climatewitnessproject.org/

Not explicitly stated in source material

Norway

Public contributes real-life testimonials; participatory storytelling.

Mixed formats: VR, 360 video, in-person workshops.

Focus on lived experience and local adaptation; climate as personal.

Documentary tone; often emotionally raw; localized narrative arcs.

Johannes Stripple, Alexandra Nikoleris, Roger Hildingsson et al.

2019

Lund University

Immersive museum exhibition set in 2053, showcasing artifacts from the fossil fuel era to engage visitors in imagining post-fossil futures

Carbon Ruins uses immersive storytelling and participatory workshops to engage visitors in co-creating narratives about the transition to a post-fossil society. The exhibition includes guided tours, interactive objects, and fictional storycrafting to explore alternative futures.

Explicitly links to speculative futures, participatory world-building, and critical utopianism. Focuses on "future presents" rather than extrapolative scenarios.

To inspire hope and active engagement with post-fossil transitions.

Co-creation, Interactive engagement

Journal

www.climaginaries.org/carbon-ruins

Lund University, Lund Town Hall, Lund Cathedral Visitors’ Centre, Public Library, National Museums of World Culture (Stockholm)

Sweden

Participants explore “museum” of fossil capitalism in post-carbon future.

Mobile physical exhibit; fictional objects.

Satirical hindsight; fossil fuels framed as moral failure.

Museum dramaturgy; ironic gravitas and faux-curatorial style.

Marshmallow Laser Feast (Barnaby Steel, Ersin Han Ersin, Robin McNicholas)

2023

Emergence Magazine

A three-channel immersive video installation that reveals the reciprocity of the ecosystem surrounding a capinuri tree in the Colombian Amazon, synchronizing viewers' breath with forest rhythms to illuminate the interconnections between humans and the more-than-human world.

Breathing with the Forest is a 4-minute-long, 3-channel video installation with 20.2-channel audio that immerses visitors in the environment of a capinuri tree (Maquira coriacea) in the Colombian Amazon (4°2'39.15″S -70°5'2.45″W). The installation serves as an "open-eyed meditation" where audiences move freely through the space, observing the intricate flow of carbon, water, and oxygen from soil to canopy. The project reveals hidden ecological relationships including carbon sequestration, water cycles, nitrogen fixation, and mycorrhizal networks. As visitors synchronize their breath with the forest's rhythms, the experience fosters a sense of connection with the more-than-human world. The project emphasizes the threats facing rainforests, including climate change that is forcing trees to migrate to higher elevations, disrupting established ecosystems. The installation uses data collected in 2020 through ecological surveys, LIDAR scanning, photogrammetry, and ambisonic field recordings as part of an ongoing digital preservation process for endangered ecosystems. The work is projected on three 4.8m-wide screens and was exhibited at the Shifting Landscapes Exhibition in London in December 2023.

The project explicitly addresses climate futures through documenting forest migration patterns, noting that "forests are on the move" due to climate change, creating "observable changes in forest composition" with "unavoidable disruptions in long-established ecosystems."

Data Storytelling, Visual Media Production, Interactive Installations, Sensory Media

To reveal "the vibrancy of life that courses through and beyond the forest" and create "a place where we collectively step out of our separateness, to embody something much larger, much stranger, and much more than human"

Immersive viewing experience with guided breathing synchronization

Artist website

Not explicitly stated in source material

Shifting Landscapes Exhibition (London, December 2023)

Not explicitly stated in source material

Audience positioned as meditative observers; guided breathwork encourages individual attunement to more-than-human worlds.

3-channel video + immersive soundscape; projection envelops body and senses.

Breath used metaphorically to frame symbiotic futures; links human body to forest ecology.

Slow, cyclical pacing; contemplative tone creates a ritual-like encounter with the forest.

Diego Galafassi

2020

Coline Delbaere, Jess Engel, Julie Tremblay, Phi-Centre, Crimes of Curiosity

A mixed-reality experience using Magic Leap technology that allows participants to visualize their breath, emphasizing how breathing connects humans to the atmosphere and larger living world, challenging the notion of separation between humans and nature.

Breathe is a 20-minute multi-sensory interactive installation that uses body movement, gesture, and a custom-made breathing sensor to immerse 4-6 participants at a time in "the story of air." The experience visualizes participants' breathing in color and movement, making visible how each inhalation incorporates part of the atmosphere into the body while exhalation connects the body back to the atmosphere. The physical environment includes textiles, concrete, living sculptures and video screens. Due to its generative design, each run-through differs based on participants' breathing patterns. The project was developed through residencies at Phi Centre (Montreal) and Johns Hopkins University as part of the Sundance Future of Culture Initiative. The experience uses Magic Leap technology, is narrated by actress Zazie Beetz, and aims to transform participants' understanding of their relationship to the natural world through direct sensory experience.

The project challenges the fundamental conceptual division between humans and environment that underlies much environmental damage, positioning breathing as a model for reconceptualizing human-nature relationships that could inform future ways of relating to the natural world.

Data Storytelling, Interactive Installations, Interactive Media Components, Smart Environments

To reconnect people to the natural world, recasting breathing as a direct link to the living world, challenging the notion of separation between humans and nature

Interactive multi-sensory engagement with breathing as primary interaction mode

MIT Docubase, Sundance Institute History

https://www.diegogalafassi.live/#/breathe-project/

Sundance Film Festival 2020 (New Frontier program)

Sweden/Canada/U.S.A.

Emphasizes the relationship between the individual and the collective: your breath vs. the world s air. It creates an almost intimate relationship with unseen others you may start to breathe in sync with the visualized collective, fostering empathy and a sense of joining. In development, it was noted that the process co-creates with the audience immerse.news, highlighting a new dynamic where the artwork isn t complete without the participant s bodily contribution. It s relational in a spiritual sense too: aligning human and environment as one system.

Involves the participant s physical respiration as a primary material input. The design of the space (curtains, darkness) reduces external material distractions, focusing you on your bodily sensations (air going in/out) and the virtual materialization of air. Air itself becomes almost a tactile material in the imagination. The slight pressure of the sensor on one s chest and the act of breathing serve as embodied grounding, while the AR visuals lack tangibility this contrast can heighten the awareness of one s own body (material) versus air (ethereal yet made visible).

Uses embodied metaphor: breath particles = one s life force and connection. It avoids direct didactic commentary on climate or pollution; instead it frames the narrative in almost spiritual terms (a portal into another way of knowing akin to indigenous perspectives of air as shared spirit). In doing so, it sidesteps political discourse and engages a discourse of unity and mindfulness. It s framed by the creators as a collaboration between art and science, and indeed discursively it tries to marry scientific knowledge (air cycles) with poetic expression, which could shift how futures conversations incorporate somatic experience.

Very gentle and reflective. There is a guide (could be voice or just the system s response) taking the participant through a calm arc: from isolation (your breath alone) to connection (seeing breaths together) to expansion (global perspective). This builds from personal to planetary in a way that often elicits calm awe or even a sense of the sublime in slowness. The emotional tone is positive and contemplative more inspirational than frightening. Performatively, the participant s breathing becomes the performance; some users might naturally slow and deepen their breathing to extend the beautiful visuals, almost like performing a piece of music. The lack of external stimuli (just breathing and seeing) creates a meditative space rarely found in tech-driven art. Thus, when it concludes, many feel a sense of calm insight a marked contrast to adrenaline or anxiety, showing an alternative emotional script for climate-oriented experiences.

Lisa Jackson

2018

Dana Dansereau, Jason Legge, National Film Board of Canada, Rob McLaughlin

An interactive VR experience that explores how Indigenous languages can provide a framework for understanding our place in a reconciled version of Canada's largest urban environment.

Biidaaban: First Light is a work of Indigenous futurism that takes place in future Toronto, once known as Tkaronto, that has been reclaimed by nature. The town square has flooded, buildings and subways have merged with local flora, and Indigenous languages and knowledge are thriving in a radically different Tkaronto. Users engage with written text of the Wendat (Huron), Kanien'kehá (Mohawk) and Anishinaabe (Ojibway) through gaze-based interactions and gain insight into the complex thought systems of this land's First Peoples.

Directly engages with Indigenous futurism, presenting an alternative future where Indigenous languages and knowledge systems thrive, offering new frameworks for understanding human-environment relationships.

Sensory Media, Co-Creation, Applied Media, Virtual Reality

To illuminate how Indigenous languages can provide a framework for understanding our place in a reconciled version of Canada's largest urban environment

Interactive - users engage with Indigenous language text through gaze-based interactions

MIT DOCUBASE

http://lisajackson.ca/Biidaaban-First-Light-VR

American Indian Film Institute, Banff World Media Festival, Camden International Film Festival, imagineNATIVE Film & Media Arts Festival, LA Film Festival, Melbourne International Film Festival, New Orleans Film Festival, RIDM - Montreal International Documentary Film Festival, Tacoma Film Festival, Tribeca, Webbys

Canada

The experience invites users to explore a future Toronto reclaimed by nature, emphasizing Indigenous perspectives. Interaction is primarily through gaze-based navigation, allowing users to engage with the environment and Indigenous languages. This design fosters a contemplative relationship between the user and the virtual space, encouraging reflection on humanity's connection to nature and Indigenous knowledge systems.

Utilizing room-scale VR technology, the project immerses users in a detailed, post-human urban landscape. The environment features realistic depictions of a flooded Toronto, overgrown with vegetation, and incorporates ambient soundscapes. This multisensory approach enhances the embodied experience, making the virtual space feel tangible and alive.

The narrative is conveyed through Indigenous languages—Wendat, Mohawk, and Ojibwe—presented both audibly and as on-screen text. This choice centers Indigenous worldviews and emphasizes the importance of language in shaping our understanding of the world. The storytelling challenges colonial narratives by presenting a future where Indigenous knowledge and languages are integral to urban life.

The experience unfolds through a series of scenes that transition from a submerged subway station to a cityscape overtaken by nature. The pacing is deliberate, encouraging users to linger and absorb the environment. Symbolic elements, such as the "digging woman" and the presence of a turtle with thirteen segments, add layers of meaning and invite personal interpretation.

Jakob Kudsk Steensen

2021

Light Art Space (LAS)

A living simulation of a virtual pulsating swamp that pays tribute to wetlands as the origin of most urban centers. The project connects Berlin's wetland history with contemporary ecological concerns through immersive digital environments and sound.

Berl-Berl is a living simulation of a virtual pulsating swamp created through collaboration between Jakob Kudsk Steensen, The Natural History Museum in Berlin, and singer ARCA. The project focuses on wetlands as the forgotten foundation of most major cities, especially Berlin-Brandenburg. Developed through months of fieldwork researching remaining local wetlands, the findings were recreated in 3D using Unreal Engine. The installation incorporates specimens from the Museum f\'fcr Naturkunde Berlin and features sound artist Matt McCorkle and singer Arca, whose voice morphs with environmental sounds including local amphibians. The work aims to build connections between contemporary viewers and wetland ecosystems, highlighting how they were largely drained in the 1700s, contributing to current climate issues. Berl-Berl has been exhibited in multiple venues with different configurations, including a "whispering staircase" with narrative poetry, an "invisible river" soundscape, and immersive digital simulations. The project has evolved to include live performances by artists like Pan Daijing.

Explicitly connects historical wetland ecologies with contemporary climate challenges: "the wetlands that surround Berlin, their destiny is unfortunately tied to the same fate as the majority of swamps in the Western world that were drained in the 1700s, heavily contributing to our ever-accelerating climate emergency." The work aims to build "a bridge between us and the history beneath our feet" with "an eye towards how we might experience nature, mediated through technology, in the future."

Virtual Reality, Live Media Performance, Smart Environments, Social Art Practice

"To spark a newfound appreciation for the swamp and perhaps even a way to reimagine our role within this ecosystem that sustains us." The project aims to reveal "perspectives that would otherwise be impossible to see or experience."

Multiple modes depending on installation: immersive viewing, online exploration, and participation in live performances.

Light Art Space (LAS) commission

https://berlberl.world

Halle am Berghain, Berlin (July 10 - September 26, 2021); ARoS Museum of Art (June 4 - October 23, 2022)

Germany

Creator-led immersive simulation; audience as explorers; limited co-creation.

Real-time 3D environments; VR installations; Unreal Engine; multisensory.

Metaphors of wetlands and time; poetic framing of ecological futures.

Emotive VR journey; atmospheric soundscape; contemplative pacing.

Miguel Ángel Sánchez, Meztli Cambray, Omar R. Godínez Ortega

Not explicitly stated in source material

Not explicitly stated in source material

An interactive and immersive documentary transporting viewers on a journey aboard a chinampa in the ancient Lake Texcoco during pre-Hispanic Mexico, helping understand Mexico City's transition from a lake-based city to one facing severe water crises.

ATL is an interactive and immersive documentary that transports viewers on a journey aboard a chinampa in the ancient Lake Texcoco during the pre-Hispanic era in Mexico. ATL (meaning 'water' in Aztec) offers a unique experience to understand Mexico City, a city once built on a lake and now facing a severe water crisis. The documentary advocates action and sustainable practices, using technology and narrative to raise awareness.

The project explicitly connects past water management systems to present crises and implicitly advocates for future sustainable water practices.

Interactive Narrative, Speculative Design, Geolocative/Geo-Aware Experiences

To advocate "action and sustainable practices" and raise awareness about water issues

Interactive documentary experience

MIT Worlding

Not explicitly stated in source material

Not explicitly stated in source material

Mexico/Sweden

Collaborative exploration of water futures in Mexico City; invites local memory and agency.

Immersive documentary interface; real-world interviews and archival video.

Frames water infrastructure as political, historical, and cultural; uses storytelling to reveal layers of futurity.

Pacing combines poetic voiceover with lived testimony; emotional affect builds from everyday to systemic scale.

Ylva, Boo Aguilar, Paulo Gibbs

Not explicitly stated in source material

United Nations, Facebook/Oculus, SIDA, FlAGCX

A virtual reality experience that allows users to embody Earth and connect with climate change impacts, particularly focusing on Amazon deforestation and fires. The experience blends scientific data with emotional storytelling to foster responsibility for environmental health.

BE EARTH is a VR experience that leverages hand tracking technology to enhance user presence as they embody Earth in different forms. Users journey through the Amazon rainforest, beginning with hands made of wood and moss, then transforming into water, fire, and finally ashes. The experience showcases the interconnectedness of ecosystems while presenting scientific data from NASA about Amazon deforestation caused by agricultural expansion. The project premiered at the World Economic Forum, targeting political and scientific leaders with both emotional impact and factual information about how human activities are harming the Amazon through man-made fires for agricultural purposes.

The project presents a current crisis scenario of Amazon destruction, highlighting the urgency of present action to prevent worse futures. It explicitly shows the consequences of continued deforestation in a "we're burning the Amazon forest at an unprecedented rate" framing, positioning current actions as determining future outcomes.

Virtual Reality, Gestural Interfaces, Data Storytelling, Bio-Responsive Media

To create emotional connections to environmental damage, bridge data with emotional experience, make leaders feel responsible for ecosystem health

Interactive embodied experience with user agency through hand movements

YouTube video presentation/documentary

https://www.youtube.com/watch/CxlzCSvuBzE

World Economic Forum

Not explicitly stated in source material

Targets policy actors and global leaders; invites ethical reflection rather than interaction.

VR experience with hand tracking; immersive visual metaphors.

Breath as planetary connection; message of unity and responsibility framed through interdependence.

Meditative sequence; bodily control of breath creates emotional resonance with planetary systems.

Bianca Kennedy, The Swan Collective

2019

Not specified

A short VR animated film that speculates a future in which insects become humanity's main source of food.

ANIMALIA SUM (Latin for "I am animals, I eat animals") is a short VR animated film that takes viewers through an imaginative world of insects while highlighting their medicinal and nutritional value for human consumption. With a British narrator imitating classic nature documentaries, the film uses a playful yet bittersweet tone. It features painted watercolor animations and handcrafted miniatures depicting grotesque and surreal images like gaping human mouths and overcrowded bug farms. The film approaches the sensitive but pressing topic of the future of human food supply after natural disasters and resource scarcity compromise current food options.

Directly engages with speculative futures focused on food scarcity and alternative protein sources, exploring practical adaptations to environmental challenges.

Visual Media Production, Physical Media Components

To prompt viewers to consider alternative food sources in a resource-constrained future

Passive viewing with immersive perspective - places viewers "in the head of the insects"

MIT DOCUBASE/SUNDANCE NEW FRONTIER

https://www.biancakennedy.com/animalia-sum

Munich Science & Fiction Festival, Munich Virtual Worlds, One World, Sundance, Toronto New Wave

Germany

Passive audience experience; participants witness rather than control events.

360 video environment; cinematic visuals; linear narrative.

Similar themes to VR version; invites reflection on multispecies entanglement.

Emotive narrative arc; viewer “rides along” with animals; staged to evoke quiet moral discomfort.

Mélanie Courtinat

2022

Mélanie Courtinat

A 10-minute VR experience taking viewers through a melancholic journey through a ghost town of concrete and fog, based on testimony of a woman who refused to evacuate her hometown after a disaster. The true nature of the disaster is only revealed at the end.

"All Unsaved Progress Will Be Lost" is a sensorial VR journey questioning our fears and ability to resist catastrophe through the testimony of a survivor who refused to evacuate her home. The environment consists of concrete and fog, representing a land where no return to sources is possible. By withholding the nature of the disaster until the end, the unnamed threat creates tension and allows viewers to project their own fears of future catastrophes. The experience premiered at Venice Biennale as part of the Immersive official selection and has been shown at over twenty venues worldwide. The creator developed this as her first documentary-dimension VR work, believing virtual reality was the right medium to facilitate empathy.

The work directly engages with future fears and catastrophes, allowing "the viewer to project their own personal fears of a possible future catastrophe." The title itself suggests data/progress loss, a common anxiety in digital culture.

Virtual Reality, Interactive Installations, Interactive Narrative

To create empathy and allow viewers to project their own fears, providing "a new perspective" on disaster events

Immersive VR experience with passive narrative

MIT Docubase

https://melaniecourtinat.com/All-Unsaved-Progress-Will-Be-Lost

Venice Biennale (premiere), "over twenty venues - exhibitions, festivals - around the world"

France

Reflects on digital impermanence; audience as observers of technological decay.

Digital installations; obsolete technologies; interactive components.

Uses the metaphor of unsaved progress to comment on digital ephemerality.

Immersive environments; performative decay; contemplative user experiences.

Justin Brice Guariglia (USA)

2017

Produced by: Artist with studios Strange Flavour & secondverse (app developers); data from NASA and Climate Central medium.com climatecentral.org.

An Augmented Reality mobile app that uses a phone camera to show future sea-level rise in the users real surroundings. A user standing in, say, lower Manhattan can view their street through the app and see it virtually flooded to the level projected if polar ice melts significantly. Using geolocation and scientific data, After Ice places the viewer underwater in situ for example, looking through the screen one might see waves lapping at second-story windows and virtual fish swimming by. This AR visualization personalizes climate change by making the abstract prediction of X meters of sea rise tangible in one s immediate environment.

The app (released free for iPhone) starts with an animation of collapsing ice, then activates the camera view with an overlay of rising ocean water relative to the device s GPS elevation. It leverages Climate Central s localized sea-level projections for 2100, calibrated with the phone's sensors, to realistically render floodwater up to the appropriate height . Users can pan around 360¯ and see buildings, cars, and infrastructure gradually submerging. The AR graphics include floating debris and sometimes text markers indicating future high-tide lines. A mode allows taking AR selfies showing the user waist-deep in water a feature aimed at social media sharing to spread awareness. The interface also provides context: a timestamp like Year 2100 and a prompt that this scenario reflects continued high emissions. The experience is solitary (on personal phones) but meant to be widely accessible and shareable. Guariglia, a climate artist who had flown on NASA science missions, conceived After Ice to bridge scientific data and public engagement. The app accompanied his 2017 museum exhibitions, effectively bringing an exhibit to anyone s neighborhood via AR.

Offers a concrete predictive visualization of a likely future (if warming continues). It s a form of experiential forecast: not a fictional scenario but a direct extrapolation of scientific projections. By doing so, it engages in anticipatory activism helping people imagine the future impacts now, hoping to galvanize action to prevent the worst. It collapses the distance between present and future by overlaying tomorrow's flood on today's reality.

iOS app using ARKit; smartphone camera and screen; geolocation and NASA datasets; no special hardware beyond a phone.

Highly interactive (self-guided). Users engage actively by moving their device around to survey the virtual flood. It s an individual AR experience, but inherently encourages sharing screenshots or showing friends ( Look, this is what this park will look like underwater ). The app also allows switching locations or viewing multiple scenarios, so users can explore various futures.

Predictive and advocacy-oriented. There s little ambiguity it aligns with scientific consensus and is didactic in intent (communicating a warning). As a design approach, it s leveraging immersive journalism style tactics (show the future like it s news) combined with gamified exploration. No narrative, but a clear message.

Artist website

App launch at Storm King Art Center (2017) as part of Indicators: Artists on Climate exhibition; also featured in New York Times Climate Week coverage. As a distributed experience, specific venues less crucial, but it s often cited in conferences (AR in climate comm) and was part of the artist s shows like Guariglia s Earth Works (2018, Orlando Science Center).

USA.

By bringing the future scene to the user s own locale, it creates a personal relationship to climate data. The dynamic becomes person-to-place: a conversation between the user and their environment across time. It empowers individuals to witness and share; a community dynamic emerges when people show each other their AR flood photos, fostering collective concern. Also notable: partnership between artist and scientists (NASA/ClimateCentral) reflects a interdisciplinary relational model behind the scenes.

Uses the physical world as canvas the material is the user s surroundings, digitally altered. The virtual water is obviously not material, but through AR it gains a pseudo-material presence against real reference points (buildings etc.), enhancing realism. The smartphone is the mediator a small, ubiquitous material object unlocking a view of an immaterial future.

Very straightforward messaging it s essentially a visual data-driven prophecy. There isn t a story or character; the narrative is This place will be underwater by 2100 if we do nothing. It employs a metaphor of drowning for cities, and the selfie function metaphorically puts the viewer into the future story (you see yourself in the flooded world). The framing is urgent and factual, using the authority of data to shape the discourse (with references to specific sea level rise predictions to ground it).

Instead of a staged scene, it s an in-situ drama: the moment someone sees their cherished location submerged can be emotionally dramatic. The app s intro (ice collapse animation and sound) sets a catastrophic tone. The rest is in the user s control, so the drama unfolds as they reveal one sight after another underwater. This dynamic can induce shock, concern, maybe despair which the project hopes will catalyze action rather than apathy. Ultimately, the user s realization is the climax. The experience doesn t resolve it leaves one with an image (often literally a screenshot) that lingers as a call to action.

Maarten A. Hajer, Peter Pelzer

2016

Dutch Ministry for Economic Affairs

Multimedia installation visualizing large-scale exploitation of the North Sea for offshore wind energy in 2050

A multimedia installation visualizing a post-carbon future, as an example of ToF. The project involved workshops, stakeholder consultations, and immersive stagings to create a shared vision.

Explicitly discusses "Techniques of Futuring," shifting from "expected futures" to "desirable futures," and the role of strategic narratives in climate politics.

To create shared perspectives on renewable energy futures and break fossil fuel lock-ins.

Co-creation (workshops), Interactive engagement (stagings)

Energy Research & Social Science

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.erss.2018.01.013

International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam, Dutch EU Presidency events

Netherlands

Stakeholders engaged via co-produced visuals and scenarios.

Dome installation + film; spatialized audio.

Offshore energy as speculative infrastructure; uses narrative realism.

Visual spectacle; large scale rhythm evokes awe and power.