This Land

This interactive art work represents an imagined Ontario landscape before human development.

Every element in the work has been carefully selected to be faithful to this representation, including the more than 38 native species of birds, bugs, plants and animals that you see and hear in the work.

Everything you see in it was hand-painted with watercolours on paper before being digitized to create the virtual environment.

The watercolour style was adopted both as a means of joining the physical and digital into one as well as to evoke ideas of imagined spaces and children's tales. The use of watercolour paintings, a medium traditionally associated with landscapes, underscores this connection to the natural world, while the addition of digital technology offers a new perspective on these pressing issues. 

The work provides a space to reflect on the changes in the natural environment and invites viewers to consider on the delicate balance between human development and the natural world while paying homage to the land's rich history.

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There are two files included, the first should be a non-VR version that should work on any Windows computer, and the second is the VR file. The VR version was developed for use with the Quest 2 VR headset linked to a Windows computer either through wifi or a USB C cable.  By default, the work only has keybindings for meta/oculus headsets. I have used it with a Vive headset by adding the work to Steam as a nonsteam game to use Steam's keybindings.