Marshmallow Laser Feast

Sensing Wonder

Distortions in Spacetime

Location London

Website

marshmallowlaserfeast.com

Illuminating the hidden natural forces that surround us, Marshmallow Laser Feast invite participants to navigate with a sensory perception beyond their daily experience. In these spaces, the known physical world is removed to reveal networks, processes and systems that are at once sublime, underpinned by research, and fundamental to life on Earth.

Their work has been exhibited internationally, including The Saatchi Gallery, London, Lisbon Triennial, Istanbul Design Biennial, New Frontiers at the Sundance Film Festival, Storyscapes at Tribeca Film Festival, The V&A and The Design Museum London.

Here Creative Director of the London based experiential collective, Barney Steel, talks us through the their adventures working at the intersection of science, art and technology.

Many of us have lost our sense of deep belonging to the earth; at some point, the earth became something that we are on, rather than in. Our artistic practice uses science and technology to immerse audiences in experiences that dissolve the illusion of separation and reveal the truth of connectedness. As Dr Stephen Harding put it ‘We are deeply immersed in the body of the earth, just as our gut Microbes are to us, so are we to the earth.’

Our adventures in virtual reality and immersive experiences started about five years ago when we were approached by the wonderful ‘Abandon Normal Devices’ festival in partnership with the Forestry Commission, to create an artwork for Grizedale Forest in the Lake District. We created ‘In the Eyes of the Animal’ which used virtual reality and haptics (the ability to

feel the virtual environment via the sense of touch, in addition to visual and aural perception) to allow participants to inhabit the perceptual systems of other expressions of life. Looking at the world from another species point of view is a great way to loosen that feeling of human superiority and open us to the wonder and diversity of other expressions of life.

Whilst exploring the forest ecosystem we began to think about our intimate connection to trees. We share breath with these ancient beings, in some ways they can be seen as an extension of our lungs. What we breathe out the trees breath in, the oxygen the trees exhale flows into our tree-like lungs, flowing from our heart outward, through fractal branching arteries to feed every cell in our body. Where does our body end and the tree begin? ‘We Live in an Ocean of Air’ explores these themes by making visible the flow of breath between participants and an ancient Sequoia forest.

We collaborate with many amazing scientists, one of which is Merlin Sheldrake (an expert in all things fungi). He very neatly explains that we are not individuals, no living thing is, every organism is a symbiosis. Seeing your own body as an ecosystem or a forest as a superorganism is a wonderful lens on the vast tissue of existence of which we are a part. (Recently Merlin planted this knowledge down for all to read in his new book: Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds and Shape Our Futures).

As ‘We Live in an Ocean of Air’ explores ‘outbreath’ feeding the forest, our new installation ‘The Tides Within Us’ follows the flow of ‘in-breath’. By peering under our skin we explore the tidal rhythms of oxygen flowing through the branching ecosystem of the human body. By following breath it becomes clear that you are completely reliant on the trees for the air that you breathe, and the trees wouldn’t photosynthesis without the sun. It’s by making visible these connections that remind us we are not separate from nature.

Our longterm focus is on virtual world-building and new hardware, whether VR headsets, the latest XR smartphones or glasses that can be considered as doorways or windows into those worlds. We get excited about combining our leading-edge scientific understanding of a forest ecosystem as a virtual

“Many of us have lost our sense of deep belonging to the earth; at some point, the earth became something that we are on, rather than in.

overlay in a real forest. To see snaking rivers of air “ connecting you to the plants, or to peer beneath the soil into the buzzing network of the wood wide web.

Chatting with a friend Beau Lotto, he asked the question ‘what happens when you remove the headset?’. Do these immersive experiences detach you from reality, an escape, or can they reconnect you to the world around you, offering perspective shifts that change the way you feel about yourself in relationship to nature?

Some of the problems we face are the result of our consumer habits affecting ecosystems we will never visit. Can we use technology to create an intimate, deep connection with these distant places? We think that the experiments we are doing now might scale to have a big impact in a future where immersive technology is in the hands of billions of people. Looking to future trends it’s easy to see how physical and digital objects will co-exist simultaneously. You can look at 3D rendered visual effects to understand what is around the corner for realtime systems. Already realtime tracking systems allow quick and easy face swops on mobile devices and the trajectory of this will allow for a realistic embodiment of trees or mycelium (the vegetative part of a fungus or fungus-like bacterial colony) in virtual or mixed reality worlds.

I was once asked ‘What does an apple taste like?’ Its tangy, fruity, crisp… no words can get close to the richness of the taste of an apple! Potentially as technology gets better at hacking our senses we will be able to simulate something close to the richness of the full spectrum of our senses. It is interesting to consider immersive storytelling that goes beyond the limits of language.

MLF is a network of specialists branching out through freelancers and collaborators worldwide. Being based in the UK we benefit from funding opportunities that allow us to experiment. This space to play encourages happy accidents, the seeds that later flower into globally touring exhibitions.

In an article about David Hinton’s book ‘Existence’, writer Peter Reason writes: ‘Hinton’s book suggests that the job of the artist is to reinvigorate a sense of wonder. He challenges us to experience our art as existence-tissue describing, understanding, celebrating itself through us as it emerges into presence and retreats into absence. Surely this is central to any art practice that wishes to be relevant to these times of astonishing beauty and loss?’ This sentiment resonates and is essential for artists to have the space to explore. We should be nurturing open minds, creative thinking and collaboration to deal with the coming challenges ahead.

Designing from the Inside Out

Brand Experience in Education

Can universities learn from exporting the independent school experience?

Consider, for a moment, how universities are designed: a building appropriate to the scale of the site, a sleek façade, windows, a roof, the campus as a whole. Next, designers look inwards: corridors, spaces, materials and furniture. Lastly, educators are presented with the tools and the space to teach.

David Judge, Group Creative Director at Space Zero, believes this order could be reversed, having applied the strategy, alongside a team of 60 specialist designers, strategists, technicians and managers, to the design of independent schools. “We look at how spaces interconnect with each other in terms of community, culture, proximity, size and brand,” Judge says.

“Once this is agreed, the building can be formed around this fundamental structure and arranged into the campus. We call this design from the inside out.”

As education becomes increasingly international and the number of campuses abroad grows (in 2018, Britain’s 136 universities had 39 international branch campuses abroad) brand experience is key to strengthening the identity of an institution and reassuring students that their experience is equivalent to that of the ‘home’ campus.

Recognised broadly as sensations, feelings, and behavioural responses to brand-related stimuli, it’s this notion of brand experience that guides Space Zero’s approach when designing international schools, most recently delivering a high quality, British independent school brand experience in China for Wellington College.

“We have been consulting and collaborating with leading academics, and consultants from retail brand experience design over the last 18 months and have developed a unique approach,” Judge says.

“At the heart of this strategy is an analytical tool called relevant differentiation. The main question for any commercial organisation to consider when approaching the market is: How are you relevant to your customers but different from your competition?”

Wellington College China is, in essence, relevant differentiation in action; a marriage of traditional values and progressive education which is unique to the institution.

Space Zero are applying this process to the design of learning environments for the first time in history, but while such an approach has been revolutionary in designing international public schools, can it be interpreted for universities?

The idea of a school as a brand experience as much as an educational experience has been central to Space Zero flipping the order of priorities within spatial organisation, and it could have interesting results within a university environment too, particularly when guided by experiential retail design methodologies.

Good brand experience articulates and reinforces what an institution stands for, allowing students to experience its values as they interact with the space; whether walking the corridors, enjoying the social spaces or sitting in a lecture theatre.

Universities already recognise themselves as brands; we can see it in their visual identities across websites, prospectuses and social media. But Space Zero’s fresh approach to brand experience design ensures the essence of the brand transfers and is brought to life in full when expanding into international markets. Placing student experience at the core of design could well offer an opportunity for engaging a new generation of students with new priorities, particularly as prospective students are increasingly making decisions based upon a university’s campus. In fact, research by EAB’s Enrolment Services found that campus environment is more influential than both academic reputation and cost in attracting students.

Just as inside out design has been fundamental in exporting educational brand experiences to overseas campuses for independent schools, it could well be the key to a new era in university campus design.

Words: Sophie Benson

For more information visit spacezero.co.uk Twitter @space_zer0