The Wood Wide Web is a hybrid interactive installation, bringing ancient endangered trees from India and the UK to life through the use of skeletal tracking and AI. The sacred forests get personified and tell their stories, evoking empathy in humans across the globe to inspire more care for the planet.
Wood Wide Web Trailer
Using sounds of endangered and extinct animals, this work combines the fractured soundscapes of Indian sacred groves and British forests to highlight the loss of each's rich aural diversity as a consequence of climate change.
Throughout the interaction, which sees participants mirrored by the central figure, trees will drop by and tell stories of the forests, created via datasets of folklore from both countries. Reframed from the trees perspective, each ancient tree has a unique voice synthesised via text-to-speech models, as well as convolution from within the shell of once thriving, now destitute trees.
After premiering at the FutureFantastic Festival in Bangalore, Wood Wide Web has gone on to be installed at the Indian High Commission as part of the Indian Global Forum, as well as the Ars Electronica in Linz.
With support from
