Digital Forest

Digital Forest is a multi-sensory immersive installation that uses projection, sculpture, tactile encounters and 50 channel sound. The work is informed by attention research – specifically, the theory that ‘soft fascination’ provided by natural environments restores people’s mental resources and helps focus attention. It asks the question: Can an immersive installation elicit similar responses.

The installation is part of an ongoing interdisciplinary collaboration with cognitive scientist Prof. Polly Dalton, together we have researched what factors might produce the restorative effects of a forest, including: form, light, movement, scale, touch, depth of field, dispersed sounds, level of complexity, mystery and underlying geometry. These have been incorporated into an abstracted performative and immersive experience, embodying the sublime theatricality of a real forest. The audience traverse a dark space where sound and complex projected films, and constructions ‘perform’, vistas unexpectedly open up and surfaces provide haptic adventures. Projections are choreographed in time and space to allow an evolving experience to visitors moving through the space. A bespoke 50 channel sound system provides a sonic complement to the imagery, mimicking the movement of the wind in the leaves, birds in the trees and rain drops falling all around the listener. Digital Forest is a large walk-through immersive installation with three zones: The Rain Area, The glade and The Canopy.

Exhibited at: Microwave New Media Arts Festival, Hong Kong (2025)

Royal Holloway University Exhibition Space, Egham, UK (2018)

Video documentation of Digital Forest