IMMERSIVEMOVING IMAGE
PHOTO
DESIGN
Will We Disappear in the
Cover of the Sky?
Immersive Experimental Film
A more-than-human perspective emerges where a starling guides the visitor through the challenges brought about by rapidly growing human activities, especially a change in starlings’ wayfinding, nesting and foraging opportunities. While the visual narrative outlines the various places where a starling moves around, a text narration and soundscape help unfold the story.
Umwelt is the part of an animal’s surroundings that it can sense and experience - its perceptual world. A manifestation of anthropomorphism is the tendency to forget about other umwelten. Can a new mode of thinking emerge through understanding the umwelt of a starling? Can the translation of vivid sensory information via digital technologies induce a sense of biophilia? In the end, we hope our audience leaves with a deeper understanding of how the Anthropocene affects the flourishing of starlings.
Lian Dyogi
ToolsUnreal Engine, Blender, Ableton Live
& Adobe Suite
Exhibition at Outernet London
Following the development of The Secret Garden, a handheld AR experience that invites the audience to embody a starling and indulge in play, we were driven to deepen our inquiry through transmedia storytelling. This led to our research question: Can we encourage the flourishing of starlings by translating more-than-human perspectives to humans through immersive technologies?
Our research began with understanding bird behaviour, specifically, how birds like starlings perceive the world through their unique ‘sensescapes’, and how these perceptual environments are increasingly disrupted by human activity. We also examined how starlings are adapting to their changing habitats, as well as the implications of those adaptations. To support this exploration, we engaged with relevant literature, including books, academic journals and scholarly articles.
Primary Research
As part of our primary research, we visited the exhibition Birds: Brilliant and Bizarre at the Natural History Museum. The exhibition offered a comprehensive look into the lives of birds, from their evolutionary origins to the modern-day threats they face. It not only provided us with new factual insights but also reinforced many of our earlier research findings.
We continued to engage in conversations with experts in avian ecology from organisations including the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB), British Trust for Ornithology, Cornell Lab of Ornithology and The Institute for Bird Populations. These interactions helped us refine our focus and led to two key findings:
Story Development
The story begins with a starling waking up in a city park, where it has spent the night. As morning breaks, it prepares to leave and forage for food in nearby agricultural lands. Upon arrival, the murmuration splits into two; some begin searching for food, while others remain vigilant, scanning the surroundings for danger.
They manage to gather some food, but it isn’t enough to satisfy their hunger. The land is shared with other creatures, making resources scarce. As they journey back to the city, they face new challenges, struggling to distinguish glass from reality.
In the final moments, the starlings reflect on a nostalgic past and imagine a hopeful future, inviting the audience to consider what it means to share space with more-than-humans.
We wanted to stay close to reality while speculating about that reality from the eyes of another critter. A live-action or documentary approach seemed too close to a human’s perspective. We wanted our audience to enter a different body and start to think like another. Using a 3D engine allowed us to have a certain kind of creative freedom while still applying real-world physics.
Visual Design
The use of particles was inspired by the book In Flight with Starlings, where the author draws parallels between the flocking patterns of starlings and atomic structure. In our work, the particles echo the dance of electrons and protons that Parisi talks about. The particles also allow us to create a burst of colours—an artistic interpretation of how tetrachromats might see. The movement of particles suggests a different temporal rhythm where the landscape remains ephemeral and never turns entirely opaque.
A visuality that emulates point clouds helps establish an indexical relationship to reality, which could not be achieved through CGI aesthetics that often create a dissociative effect from nature.
Sound Design
Sound and camera movement are closely linked, both shifting vertically to mimic the motion of birds and reinforce a sense of spatial presence. In the park and the farm, bird calls are more distinct and foregrounded, while human sounds are pushed to the back. In contrast, the bird sounds are later drowned by the city rumble. Subtle, jittery sound textures hint at an altered temporal rhythm and the perceptual world of the starling.