The Science Behind the Sublime

As an artist collective, Marshmallow Laser Feast seeks to find emotional resonance in scientific stories – stories that connect us to the more-than-human world. When coupled with emerging technologies, these stories deepen our understanding of what it is to be something other than human.

For Sanctuary of the Unseen Forest, Marshmallow Laser Feast undertook ecological surveys and collected field recordings and volumetric data of the kapok tree while embedded in the Amazon rainforest (4°02‘06.8 S 70°04‘44.1 W). This data collection is part of their process for preserving endangered ecosystems and the species that live there and is critical to creating and realistically rendering the artwork. They also spent time in Sequoia National Park (36°34‘58.3N 118°45‘00.4W) studying giant sequoia trees (commonly known as giant redwoods) that you’ve just encountered in We Live in an Ocean of Air. Both trees were scanned using LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging), which uses light and lasers to measure distance and volume. Computer graphics were then used to digitally render the trees’ inner and outer systems.

Marshmallow Laser Feast harness immersive VR and large-scale projections to recreate the awe we feel in these kinds of natural landscapes. Evolver explores this by shrinking our perspective to follow oxygen through our cavernous respiratory and cardiovascular systems. The meditation and massive works journeying through our body were formed from a collage of scientific datasets, including MRI and CT scans, and blood flow simulations. These were then processed through various software programs, including Houdini, commonly used in VFX in film and TV. The datasets were provided by leading scientific collaborators, including the Fraunhofer Institute for Digital Medicine MEVIS, Jennifer Garrison of Buck Institute for Research on Aging and the Allen Institute for Cell Science, among others.