The Interactive Forest

presented at DHRA London, Sept 2014. At the New Forest Centre Gallery, Lyndhurst The Interactive Forest engages with the heritage and landscape of the New Forest, an area of that covers one third of Hampshire, and involved generating image and sound for exhibition, electronic publishing and the Internet. The underpinning research explored the development of landscape imagery in terms of: the formal qualities of the picturesque and its use in photography; the emotive and time based elements of landscape film-making; the use of interactive gaming technologies to create landscapes driven by the physical presence of the audience; and the depiction of different landscapes within the forest driven by the social history and literature based on the area. The New Forest landscape has a rich heritage in terms of art and design as it was in the village of Boldre that William Gilpin developed critical analysis of the landscape and the “picturesque”. The project involves collaborating with the New Forest Centre Lyndhurst, which houses the New Forest Archive containing texts and images relating to the natural and social history of this area. The website <theinteractiveforest.com> is the main interface for the research work and social media charts the developmental processes of the project – image and sound are used to document and engaging audiences in the creative journey. At the core of the website and installation are a series of monthly video pieces that depict the changing of the seasons, incorporating a soundtrack that re-interprets Vivaldi’s Four Seasons using contemporary electronic and ambient stylistic elements. The New Forest Visitors Centre is exhibiting the research work in November 2013 – in the form of an exhibition that combines modern image making, interactive video and archive references and a printed catalogue with contributions from Philip Hoare an established writer based in Hampshire.