Meditative Cohabitation is an audio-visual experience investigating multi-species communication in future cities. It is based on the city of Brussels and makes use of game engines and AI tools. Grounded in bioacoustics recordings and scans of the biotope of Marais Wiels, which is a rewilded area located in the heart of the urban landscape of Brussels, this immersive multi-screen installation invites the audience to meditate between local multispecies sounds and a responsive digital landscape.
The starting point for the artwork is the question: “What if we re-designed screen devices to serve more than human lifeforms, moving away from a pure human-centric focus?”
The research and development included building a custom audio sensor, experimenting with machine learning sound classification tools, bioacoustics impacting the virtual landscape, 3D scans and 3D objects of local plant species of the regional landscape and real time renderings of reactive 3D objects using Unreal Engines and TouchDesigner.
The artists collaborated with the local ecological sound designer Yau Fan on the exploration and manifestation of bioacoustics within the biotope of Marais Wiels.
The project aims to inspire more engagement with interspecies realities, declaring the need for interspecies acknowledgement within our design process and datasets in order to build more empathy and purpose for advanced technologies, finding ways to serve more than human lifeforms.
Concept & Production: Studio Above&Below (Daria Jelonek, Perry-James Sugden)
Collaborators: Yau Fan, iMAL – Art Center for digital cultures & technology
Technology used: Custom audio sensor, Audio Classification Machine Learning Model, TouchDesigner, Unreal Engine
Meditative Cohabitation was realised within the framework from the European Media Art Platform residency program at iMAL – Art Center for digital cultures & technology with support of the Creative Europe Culture Programme of the European Union.
