Latvian media artists Rasa Smite and Raitis Smits, founders of the historic RIXC media center in Riga, will be screening and discussing their environmental sensing multimedia VR project, “Atmospheric Forest” as well as other works on Friday, November 17th, 2023 from 12:00-2:00pm in the CFA 278 Production Studio (located in the Department of Media Study).

In addition, they will run in parallel the single-channel video, full length (17 min), and a few other short videos including “Deep Sensing” and interviews with the scientists.

 Atmospheric Forest is a large-scale VR point-cloud installation that visualizes and sonifies the relations between the forest and climate. It reveals the interaction patterns between the pine-tree emissions in Pfynwald, an ancient Swiss Alpine forest, and weather conditions in this valley, effected by drought. The trees do not only produce oxygen, but they are living bodies who breath too. I.e., they emit part of carbon dioxide, sometimes even up to 20 perc. from what they have consumed. When trees die, they release all the carbon they have collected during their lives back into the atmosphere. Atmospheric Forest explores the effects of drought on local forest ecosystems, and how such stress situations influence production of resin and volatile emissions (such as usual pine-tree scent).

Rasa Smite and Raitis Smits are the founders of RIXC media center in Riga, Latvia. Through workshops, exhibitions, and festivals, RIXC has been instrumental in promoting media art throughout the Baltic region for over 25 years.

More of their work: http://smitesmits.com/index.html

This event is in conjunction with their public talk on Monday night, November 20^th from 6:30-8:00 as part of the Department of Art Visiting Artist Speaker Series.

This event is co-sponsored by the Department of Art and the Humanities Institute Technoculture Research Workshop. Thank you to the Department of Media Study for use of the event space and to Dom Licata in the Department of Art for technical support.