Nature 3000+ (2017)

Nature 3000+ is an audiovisual VR-device developed by Marleen Fitterer, Ria Zhang and Jaime Belmonte as part of the program Transcultural Collaboration. Its presentation took place in September 2017 in Zurich.

The newest Technology is changing our whole way of living. Apps on our smartphone help to handle our days, machines try to make our life easier. One of the newest inventions: Virtual Reality. Suddenly we are able to experience different places by using a special goggle. Besides a weird, dizzy feeling, an uncomfortable object on your head and a ridiculous way of looking. It tries to trick our senses and promises an immersive experience.

With our project Nature 3000+ we wanted to put attention on the failure of such device. The idea to create a multi-sensorial experience as we tried to “invent” with the Nature 3000+ came to our mind when we were brainstorming in the Botanical garden in Zurich. According to our experience the botanical garden is quite a strange place: on the one hand it tries to be a place to relax and pretends to be a natural environment; on the other hand it is in the middle of the city, traffic sound kills the silence and pollution destroys the feeling. The aim of our project was a device that exaggerates the botanical garden to a maximum, a device that fits into your pocket and feigns an experience of nature. To show the ironical and critical position we have in mind we decided to shoot an over the top commercial similar to advertising in teleshopping. For that we built a prototype of “Nature 3000+” with a VR-Cardboard and headphones which we decorated with leafs, grass and flowers.