NIEVES DE LA FUENTE GUTIÉRREZ
Night Companions, 2023
Mixed media: XR Installation, 2023, XR Experience: ca. 15 min, English with English subtitles, color, interactive, hand and eye tracking, Modifed Oculus Quest 2, 3 Sculptures, 56*53*74, 77*45*58, 90*50*20 (Milled Styrofoam, texture coating, flip-flop paint)
The mixed-reality installation Night Companions is based on the behavior of dung beetles, which navigate using polarized moonlight or starlight—provided they are not disrupted by urban light pollution or communication satellites. How do non-human agents like dung beetles respond to these new bodies in the sky? Are they inexplicable events? Disorienting signals? Totems? Deities?
Visitors to Night Companions enter an extended reality experience using VR goggles modified with beetle-like antennae. Seated on a sphere resembling the dung balls transported by beetles and surrounded by sculptures that echo the texture of beetle carapaces, participants navigate through a virtual landscape. In a forest clearing, they must locate constellations to guide them to animal droppings, which they add to their ball. Mistaking a constellation triggers the front-facing cameras of the VR headset, momentarily revealing the actual exhibition space—while a communication satellite confronts the user with mechanical, non-human utterances.
Night Companions intertwines real and virtual spatial experiences from both human and non-human perspectives. It offers a speculative approach to the disruption of animal navigation systems and a call for empathy across species boundaries.
Supported by Academy of Media Arts Cologne within the framework of the E.R.D.E scholarship.
Photo documentation: Heidi Pfohl
https://www.nievesdelafuente.es
