The Interactive Forest is an immersive digital art project that creates a responsive, multisensory environment through the combination of interactive animation, projected imagery and multi-channel sound. It draws on filmed and photographed forest landscapes, reworking them into an experiential digital space. Instead of presenting the forest literally, the project constructs a hybrid representation in which memory, mediation, and perception shape the viewer’s encounter with the landscape. The forest becomes both a specific environment and an abstracted symbol, evoking cultural ideas of woodland spaces while maintaining a connection to real geographical sites.
A key aspect of the project is its interactive design, which allows participants to influence the audiovisual sequences through their physical presence and movement. Large-scale projections respond to silhouettes, gestures, or shifts in position, altering the visual rhythm and dynamically transforming the forest imagery. Multi-channel audio enhances this sense of immersion by using spatialised sound to evoke temporal changes, atmospheric qualities, and the subtle shifts associated with seasonal landscapes. This interplay of sound, image, and bodily interaction renders the installation a participatory experience rather than a passive one.
The project also explores ideas of embodied media and phenomenological engagement. By inviting visitors to navigate projected spaces—sometimes arranged as partial video “cubes” or surface-mapped environments—it recreates the sensation of moving within a digital forest that is simultaneously constructed and perceptually convincing. This spatial involvement blurs distinctions between observer and environment, highlighting how mediated landscapes can influence feelings of place and presence.
The installation of the work took a range of forms and developed over the duration of its tour, with the development of the single-screen Forest film into a triptych:
Overall, The Interactive Forest examines the relationship between technology, nature and perception. It reflects on how digital tools can recreate or reinterpret natural environments and how audiences experience these mediated versions. Through its layered visual forms, responsive systems, and atmospheric sound, the project encourages contemplation of the boundaries between the real and the virtual and how technological mediation shapes our understanding of natural spaces.
A PDF of the Exhibition Catalogue is available here.
Link to project website is here.
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