forest (h)EART(H)

Forest (H)eart(H)

Body Armor to Save the Planet

Name                   Forest (H)eart(H)
Team                     Tiia Vahula and Philip H. Wilck (UTOPIA blu), Sabrina Verhage
Period                   10/2019-12/2019

Client                    AI Summit New York
Construction        Shapeways (3d print)

Photography        Olga Perevalova
Videography       Gleb Tikhomirov
Sound design     Rutger Muller
Models                Tinotenda Mushore, Jessica Kuhn, Cici Krause
MUAH                   Charlotte van Beusekom

Forest (H)eart(H) is a wearable technology project designed to provide the wearer with the superhuman power to raise awareness of climate change. Presented at the NYC AI summit by Amsterdam cooperative Utopia BLU, the piece combines bleeding-edge technology, 3D printing and a distinctive aesthetic to provide a counterpoint to the silence over climate change. 

Forest (H)eart(H) explores critical changes in our environment. It asks questions about how we interact with the world, and how hidden most of the small differences and changes in our everyday environment are to the naked eye. The piece collects data about deforestation and pollution and reacts to the changes of the world by expressing it to the wearer through light and sound.

As much as Forest (H)eart(H) explores environmental shifts, it also asks how technology plays into this. How we communicate with the world, how we see ourselves and our impact on it, and how the interaction between our surroundings and ourselves is constantly changing and transforming. 

People around the world often experience how art, design and architecture can be in conflict with technology. When does a piece of art become a product, a design? From what point will design and art become architecture, and vice versa? Trained as architects in an art world, Utopia BLU use art and design in combination with technology in unusual and unexpected ways to expand the meaning of physical interfaces to bring technology to life. Interdisciplinarity and learning from communities around the world is the key to a more collaborative and accepting world. 

Forest (H)eart(H) observers directly interact with plants, which inform the wearable pieces to react accordingly. If a plant, or potentially on a larger scale, a whole ecosystem, is endangered, your personal wearable object can help to spread awareness and create a personal relationship with the various natural habitats on our beautiful planet. 

Sensors are integrated into a fully digitally created and 3D-printed upper body armor. The piece itself has a ‘personality’, a creature-like appearance that draws the wearer and the observer back to the feeling of being immersed in a digital forest. The wearer will almost become superhuman by embodying a display of the seemingly ‘hidden’ processes that continuously take place around us. Pollution, deforestation, endangered ecosystems and more will receive a voice that is often hard to visualize and understand in our busy everyday lives. 

The main piece almost seduces you into loving it. By creating a notion of enchanting creepiness, we invite people to think more about the content that it is translating, and through that raise awareness of how technology can be a powerful tool for humans to monitor and maintain the balance in nature.

Technology is a powerful tool that can create harm. At the same time, with enough awareness and knowledge, it can also help us to find the right balance between humankind’s powerful presence and the natural environment of the beautiful planet that is our host.