Extended reality experience ‘Symbiosis’ makes international debut in Portland – By Jamie Hale (The Oregonian/OregonLive) / Nov 14, 2022
My body bubbles up around me as I gaze up at the forest above, the air dark and misty, plants visible only by tiny glowing lights that make up their outlines cast in purple and blue. The musty scent of decaying leaves surrounds me. My energy is focused on chasing tasty nutrients. I hear nothing but a rolling inner-narration in my ears.
I am a slime mold, and my purpose is clear.
In reality – that is to say, in our present, physical reality – I was standing in a small room at PAM CUT (formerly the Northwest Film Center), laden with gadgets and tubes, participating in the Portland Art Museum’s latest exhibition: an immersive extended reality experience called “Symbiosis,” which opened to the public Nov. 12 and will run for three months.
Created by Dutch design collective Polymorf, the XR experience plunges participants into a fictional world set in a distant post-humanist future, where people “symbiogenetically” join with animals, plants and artificial intelligence – the idea being that these symbiotic connections could help bring humans back into deeper connection with the rest of the natural world.
In “Symbiosis,” the immersive experience is meant to do some of that work in the present, giving people the perspective of other lifeforms, strange as they may be.
