Timothy Wood
Environment
2nd floor, room 2809
Terrarium is an interactive installation where viewers become immersed in a living virtual ecosystem. The ecosystem is a simulated environment consisting of growing trees, shifting earth, flowing wind fields, swarming insects, and other small creatures. Viewers can interact using their bodies where they may become a part of the landscape, as a tree, a rain cloud, the wind, or a swarm of bees.
The ecosystem evolves over time. Everything is connected through resources like water, carbon, oxygen, and nitrogen. Plants and animals are born, grow, die, and go through different stages of development and expression both visually and sonically. Time progresses through various seasons, temperature begins to shape the life and the weather. In the absence of water and other resources, life may become sparse and the landscape may begin to resemble a desert biome. In the case of abundant resources, the landscape will become lush with abundant plant and animal life.
As visitors enter into the space of the world, their bodies are reflected as figures in the virtual world. Where they put their attention and how they move through space begins to affect the environment by shaping plants and animals through movement, or by generating resources to feed creatures in the world, or by becoming forces of nature like wind or weather systems that also shape the behavior of creatures. By being present with the world you change it.