Night Companions
Mixed Media 3 Sculptures and extended Reality
2023
The narrative starting point of the mixed-reality installation “Night Companions,' is the behavior of dung beetles, which orient themselves using the polarized light of the moon or – on moonless nights – by the Milky Way, if not disturbed by urban light pollution or communication satellites. How do non-human actors like dung beetles deal with these new bodies in the sky? Are they inexplicable events? Confusing elements? Totems? Deities?
In the installation, comprised of sculptures resembling the carapaces of dung beetles, exhibition visitors engage in an extended reality experience using VR goggles modified with beetle antennas. Seated on a sphere resembling the dung balls these beetles transport, the visitors navigate through the landscape. In the forest clearing, they must locate constellations to help them find feces to add to their ball. Using a VR tracker, they decide between polarized natural light and light reflections generated by satellites in order to move through a virtual narrative by means of eye-tracking. Mistakes in identifying the constellations activate the front-facing cameras of the VR goggles, revealing the actual space around the visitors, while a communications satellite engages them with machine-like expressions. For Night Companions,' Nieves de la Fuente Gutiérrez links real spatial and virtual experiences of human and non-human perspectives, in a speculative attempt to address disturbances in animal navigation systems and a call for empathy.