This digital artwork explores the relationships and stories between climate, environmental change and the speculative “extreme evolution” needed for some creatures to survive. The artwork coaxes visitors into experiencing animated and interactive digital creatures via their smartphones or other devices.

The natural world produces amazing creatures, evolved for survival, and adapted to specialised environments. Australia, in particular, has some of the world’s most unique and beautiful organisms. And yet the speed of changes in our climate and ecosystems are threatening these species, who are struggling to adapt to altered environments, leading to extinction.

“CurioCreatures” explores the idea of speculative and imaginative zoology, wherein extreme evolution or extreme adaptation has taken place deep into the future to combat the Anthropocene. This is a natural world where previously divergent creatures converge to create strange and unusual forms of life bordering on Science Fiction. Using current scientific research into climate change and adaptation, and plenty of Science Fiction artistic license, CurioCreatures is an enjoyable and gamified walking experience, with a serious underlying message. This work allows readers to explore an augmented world, read the creature’s speculative narratives, and collect images of them to form their taxonomy collection of the world’s future wildlife.

Born in Oklahoma and calling Queensland home, Jason Nelson is a creator of wondrous digital poems and fictions, builder of art games and all manner of digital art creatures. He is an Adjunct Academic at Griffith University’s Queensland College of Art and an Associate Professor of Digital Art and Writing at the University of Bergen in Norway. Aside from coaxing his students into breaking, playing and morphing their creativity with all manner of technologies, he exhibits widely in galleries and journals, with work featured around the globe at FILE, ACM, LEA, ISEA, SIGGRAPH, ELO and dozens of other acronyms. There are awards to list (Paris Biennale Media Poetry Prize), organizational boards he frequents (Australia Council Literature Board and the Electronic Literature Organization), and Fellowships he’s adventured into Fulbright Fellowship at the University of Bergen, Moore Fellowship at the National University of Ireland, and numerous other accolades (Webby Award, Digital Writing Prize).

Alinta is a multidisciplinary new media artist, interaction & exhibition designer, and co-founder of EphemerLab. She is also a researcher of interactive art for more-than-human situations and spaces. Her research focuses include the use of interactive devices as a response to more–than–human agency, and caring for non–humans. Much of her work involves ecological themes and scientific fieldwork alongside ecology experts and wildlife rescue organisations. Recent installations of her creative works have been seen in GentleMonster, Seoul South Korea, Botanica Festival, Brisbane Australia, White Night (Nuit Blanche), Melbourne Australia, The Powerhouse, Sydney Australia, Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule, Zurich Switzerland, and Art Laboratory Berlin, Berlin Germany.

University of Bergen

Jason@dpoetry.com

https://curiocreatures.com/elo22/