I almost was a rainforest tree for a few minutes today, in a sophisticated virtual Reality experience. Developed by the Rainforest Alliance and shown at Sundance, Davos and now in the exhibition space at the Olympic Tower, "Tree" incorporates not only visual but other senses, with sounds, smells, heat, vibrations. On entering I was given a kapok seed and asked to plant it in a pot of soil. Then I was equipped with a special small pack (which fit in the small of my back), VR goggles (which fit over my glasses), headphones and, eventually, two handheld sensors with which, I was told, I could move my branches. Here's how I recalled it in the subway a little later. So I was a tree
First a seed, my backpack throbbing, loamy smell, water beneath me, and dripping down
Pushed against the soil around me, full of roots
Broke through to the surface, a different soundscape - less agitation from my back - and fresher smell
Carpenter ants marching in a line with cut leaves!
Looking down I see a shoot beneath me
At one point spindly twigs, my branches!
As I grew up they thickened, saw their shadow - not the top
A huge parrot perched for a moment on left arm
Washed them about, though default was holding them over my head, when swinging then brushing sounds against others
And now breaking through the top just as night is falling
Milky way and, I later notice, a full moon
Mist below
A booming and sounds of humans far below
Wind
Suddenly a flight of flying birds, fleeing something, there are patches of light below
Fires
They come closer
Looking down, I am on fire
I waved my branches in pointless panic
I can't move
As I'm expecting the flames to climb, blackout
Back again, takes a while to noticed I'm rising, still, now above the canopy, patchy fires in all directions, moon and stars implacable
I notice my tree, me, beside me: I can still wave lower branches, the fire not yet beyond the base
But I'm aloft.
A seed again...
Not a tree in all the ways I'm coming to understand them - what about my growth downward and outward, its constitutive entanglement with fungi and other trees beneath the ground, and many other symbioses above ground too? - but still an interesting experience. What will stay with me won't be the smells and sights but the sense of powerlessness before fire, and the lightning shift from tree back to seed, flying.
