Vivid Frequencies: A site specific augmented reality artwork for accentuating shared presence with plants

Vivid Frequencies is an augmented-reality (AR) artwork that accentuates co-presence with plants. Experiencing this work through a web application on a mobile device, viewers moving around selected locations of Mount Annan Botanic Gardens, Brisbane City Botanic Gardens, and the Australian National University Acton campus, can watch or listen to the app digitally recomposing the camera view and sonic landscape of the surrounding physical world.

The first iteration of the work responded to research by the Royal Botanic Gardens (RBG) Sydney that predicts environmental conditions in 2070 and models future growth maps for a selection of native Australia species. For Brisbane City Botanic Gardens and ANU, the work draws on the species’ geographic origin to integrate past time as well as future.

The audio-visual alterations in Vivid Frequencies are activated in response to the participant’s proximity to these species on site, turning the scientific information of herbaria collections into living ecosystems. Translating data into a visual language and auditory soundscape, Vivid Frequencies dismantles and reforms the image of a plant in relation to the predicted growth, loss, or movement of the species over time. The audio composition indicates the average age of the species, with deeper, slower sounds signalling the viewer is close to an ancient being, and lighter, faster tempos suggesting shorter lifespans. Through this audio-visual code, the mobile device acts as a portal by which we can tune into divergent, non-human scales of time and space that are interwoven with ours.

Vivid Frequencies was originally commissioned for The Tellus Art Project, an Australian Research Council Linkage Project led by the University of New South Wales Art and Design, the Royal Botanic Gardens and Domain Trust, Bundanon Trust and Open Humanities Press. It has been redeveloped for additional locations of Brisbane City Botanic Gardens and the ANU for the International Symposium of Electronic Arts (ISEA) 2024 and the exhibition ‘As Above, So Below’ at Queensland University of Technology Art Museum.