Image of the Forest

“(...) all intelligence is an abstraction of the present context. Therefore producing an abstraction is the essence of intelligence. But that abstraction is only a snapshot of the organism; it is not the organism itself. All models are wrong, because we build them to perform actions that are not feasible using the original.”

~The Oxford Handbook of Ethics of AI

Background

The construction of meaning

06/2023

Data available through the layers of sensors offers us an opportunity to discover more about how we ourselves and our societies work. By allowing us to construct artefacts that mimic aspects of nature but provide new affordances for immersion and decoupling, we allow ourselves novel means of self-examination, including examination of our relationships with the surrounding environments.

In this exciting time scientific and artistic exploration as well as collaborative research bring new insights into the impacts of transition from natural to artificial domain.

Situated in the theory of architecture, affective neuroscience, and Gestalt psychology, Image of the Forest explores the fundamental, abstracted components of natural scenery that evoke positive emotions and can be further integrated into urban environments to improve cognitive well-being.

The scientific underpinning of our work is Joie, research from the MIT Media Lab on detecting joy through the analysis of electrophysiological patterns in the brain.