Vivid Frequencies: Using AR to Materialise New Affective Assemblages in More-Than-Human Ecologies

This chapter discusses the artwork 'Vivid Frequencies' to explore how augmented reality (AR) can re-present plants as dynamic and performative agents in an evolving ecology. 'Vivid Frequencies' transforms a smartphone camera into a moving image artwork responsive to participants’ proximity to specific plant species at Mount Annan Botanic Gardens. Using this work as a case study, this chapter will highlight three ways in which AR can contribute to environmental
aesthetics.

First, through embodiment and reinterpretation of data. I will discuss my use of the Royal Botanic Gardens’ ‘Restore and Renew’ resource that maps selected plant species according to genetic analysis and climate modelling. While aiming to express how the growth-maps for a selection of native plant species will change over time, creative use of this data also revealed gaps in current herbaria collections. Second, I will unpack the audio-visual code that defines the aesthetics of 'Vivid Frequencies' that responds to both participant and plant locations. Assigning visual post-processing effects and custom-made audio compositions to different species’ GPS locations informed a dismantling and re-layering of image and sound based on spatial and temporal qualities of the environment. I will highlight how this combinatory system is symbolic of a complex ecology.

Finally, I will consider how this work, and AR more broadly, can expand plant aesthetics from the screen into lived experience. I will suggest that mixed-reality technology can connect scientific research of herbaria collections into living ecosystems and provide new ways to accentuate how plants affect our experience of the world.