Mónica Mendes

Hug a tree in Africa

A healthy and sustainable relationship between humans and the built and surrounding natural environment requires a deep rethinking of concepts and models. In this context the exploration of new forms of expression enabled by emerging technologies plays an important role. Through the Hug a Tree in Africa installation we are addressing artistic, scientific and technological aspects of the challenge of connecting people and places. This will promote a healthier and more sustainable relationship between humans and the natural environment. In this installation an instrumented tree detects and records videos of participants hugging a tree. These hugs are displayed locally as a video collage and are shared with other Hug@tree installations around the world, creating a global shared embrace of nature.

Hug@ree: An ARTiVIS Experience for Sustainability

Hug@ree is an interactive installation that provides a bond between urban beings and the forest. It is an ARTiVIS (Arts, Real-Time Video and Interactivity for Sustainability) experience that provides interaction with trees and videos of trees in real-time, raising awareness of the natural environment and how individual action can collectively become so relevant. In this paper, the authors present an overview of the Hug@ree concept, related work, implementation, user experience evaluation and future work.

Digital art, HCI and environmental awareness evaluating play with fire

Play with Fire (PWF) is an interactive installation challenging its participants to ignite generative fires over live streaming video of forests. The installation is designed to raise awareness towards sustainability issues such as climate change and forest fires. PWF initially presents its audience with a mashup of forest fire news, followed by playful interaction with fire and forests through a gestural interface. Finally, it connects to its audience mobile phones granting access to a user specific web application depicting the forest they burnt, regenerating in real-time. The forest will take from some months to years to revolve to its original state, depending on the users performance. In this paper we address the problem of evaluating whether environmental awareness can be achieved through such a controversial installation, and approach the challenges and benefits of using HCI techniques in Digital Arts. Furthermore, we describe the evaluation of PWF in four different contexts and present preliminary results.

Hug@ree: a RTiVISS experience

Hug@ree is an interactive installation that provides a bond between urban beings and the forest. Participants hug a real tree, triggering their registration in the virtual world for further interaction.

Appropriating Video Surveillance for Art and Environmental Awareness: Experiences from ARTiVIS

Arts, Real-Time Video and Interactivity for Sustainability (ARTiVIS) is an ongoing collaborative research project investigating how real-time video, DIY surveillance technologies and sensor data can be used as a tool for environmental awareness, activism and artistic explorations. The project consists of a series of digital contexts for aesthetic contemplation of nature and civic engagement, aiming to foster awareness and empowerment of local populations through DIY surveillance. At the core of the ARTIVIS efforts are a series of interactive installations (namely B-Wind!, Hug@tree and Play with Fire), that make use of surveillance technologies and real-time video as raw material to promote environmental awareness through the emotion generated by real-time connections with nature. Throughout the project development, the surveillance concept has been shifting from the use of surveillance technology in a centralized platform, to the idea of veillance with distributed peer-to-peer networks that can be used for science and environmental monitoring. In this paper we present the history of the ARTiVIS project, related and inspiring work, describe ongoing research work and explore the present and future challenges of appropriating surveillance technology for artistic, educational and civic engagement purposes.