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The Enchanted Forest: Satellite Canopies and Digital Understories
Jenny Rodenhouse

Opening: August 18, 2017. 7:45 pm open; 8:15 pm remarks.
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“The ISS will be visible for 4 min.” -- Text message from SpotTheStation

From satellite sensors to virtual reality, forests are being scanned, rendered, and built to resolve our current climate reality and to escape into a entirely different one. Evolving into a multi-scaled system of networked devices, media, and data, forests now extend well beyond their physical, natural, and conceptual bounds—into outer space, into the living room, and into the body.

Using a forest located in Sottochiesa Italy, The Enchanted Forest aligns satellite pathways and VR technologies to simulate an ecosystem that appears and disappears with the passing of the International Space Station—our new artificial moon. Within each 4 minute scanning season, the film imagines how our natural rhythms will be transformed by emerging technological forces, representative of our growing dependency on the multi-layered realm we inhabit—the planetary interface.

Jenny Rodenhouse works within the fields of interaction design and art. Her work investigates the merging of technology and the landscape, the digitizing of nature, and the interface as humanity’s new natural habitat. Appropriating the 'test site' as a platform, she creates sites of experimentation to prototype alternates — the other possible realities and cultural choices we could have as we develop our technological futures. Jenny teaches at Art Center College of Design in the Interaction Design Department and Media Design Practices MFA program. She holds a Masters of Fine Art degree from Art Center College of Design and Bachelors of Industrial Design from Syracuse University. www.jennyrodenhouse.com