Wood Wide Web

Artists: Kanchan Joneja (India) and Kristina Pulejkova (UK)

Supporting Artists: Anupam Mahajan (India) and Cameron Naylor (UK)

A hybrid interactive installation that brings ancient trees to life using AI and skeletal tracking

Wood Wide Web is an artwork where endangered tree ecosystems from India and the UK are personified to tell stories of erasure, mourning the loss of their existence. Using stories, sounds, interviews and visual data from the field shared by Farmers for Forests (India) and the Kew Gardens Library and Archive (London), the AI models have been trained to generate text and textures that make these elder giants come alive. Skeletal tracking helps audiences embody an ancient tree that shares its story, invoking a sense of interconnectedness, interspecies empathy and melancholy. 

The artwork aims to reawaken the motivation to preserve old forests, and the importance of reforesting land while reducing one’s carbon footprint. It reinforces the need for protecting the biodiversity of these habitats for natural and human survival especially given the climate crisis. Wood Wide Web is an act of embodiment to inspire care for our planet in an increasingly desensitised world. 

Can a hybrid installation reignite our motivation to protect ancient trees and preserve their habitats through AI and skeletal tracking?

Tech Tags: Skeletal Tracking, Labour of Datasets

Supported by the India-UK Together Season of Culture Grant by the British Council as a part of the BeFantastic Beyond Programm