Contemplative Forest Art Walks + Virtual Reality

Contemplative Forest Art Walks + Virtual Reality

Virtual Reality is now picking ​up where the Contemplative Forest Art Walk, a real forest trail dotted with meditation stations, left off when de-installed in September of 2020. 10 foot tall color-field paintings installed within the forest canopy of the Ford Forest Research Center marked the meditation stations, which also included benches; mindfulness information; and links to audio guided meditations. 

The hand painted banners were the most visible human-made elements of the walks, at first glance.
 
The design of trails such as the Contemplative Forest Art Walk appear to support present-moment attention and awareness among forest visitors due to specific aesthetics and design. During the design process, I drew upon evidence-based research exploring the benefits of mindfulness to our well-being, and in particular our use of our eyes and the practices of walking and listening. I considered balances among the visual elements of the walks. For example, how do the banners’ movements reflect patterns of wind and sunlight? How do factors of banner translucency and opacity effect visitors' experiences? Also important are considerations of space, such as scale, openness, or enclosed-ness.
 
Trail visitors I interviewed expressed feelings of calm, surprise, gratitude, and greater attention, and/or awareness, of the forest. 
 
Currently I am working with Ben Kreimer, emerging media technologist, and sound engineer Tom Stiles, to construct a virtual reality (VR) environment using video of the actual contemplative forest art walk. VR environments planned for the future will include nature spaces such as Lake Superior.

It is my intention for the in-progress VR environment to offer a safe, highly accessible contemplative experience in a nature space. VR and art may be particularly attractive to those who employ vigilance to remain safe, or who suffer from anxiety and/or PTSD. The VR meditation environments invite viewer-participants to engage in imaginative visual play with ambiguous figure/ground relationships; shape shifting rectangles; and synchronous “breath-like” movements of the painted banners suspended in the trees.  
 
My hypothesis is the VR environment will provide viewer-participants opportunities to integrate top-down cognitive processes (construction of images based upon memory and learning) and bottom-up processes (automatic and unconscious reactions to visual stimuli) in ways some artists, neuroscientists, and film theorists believe may be linked to attentional flexibility; openness to ambiguity; and moments of rest and wonder. 
 
In addition, I have observed in my own experience and the experiences of my students, that mindfulness practices, including contemplative seeing and walking, can provide on-ramps to experiences of “flow”.  This may be through an increase of tonic awareness, and/or restoration of attention. I’m interested in digging deeper to understand these potential links, as flow experiences offer important moments of refuge and peak experiences.