In researching this project, the artists spent five months living off-grid in the Daintree, learning from Kuku Yalanji elders and scientists to understand this very special place, and experiencing firsthand the immeasurable complexity, interconnectedness, and sentience of this vast and ancient ecosystem. To be entangled within the Daintree’s living, breathing nature, is to put the human perspective into proportionate scale. Here, they understood how small human beings really are: organisms floating inside the lungs of something infinitely larger. Time collapses in on itself, its cycles moving a few rings wider than normal. 

In creating this work, the artists want audiences from around the world to become entranced by the Daintree, to come together to hear the call-and-response of the Wompoo dove, to experience the incredible power of a wet-season deluge, to understand how the rhythms of the cicadas change as the weather does. But they also want visitors to feel the difference in the forest when the Wompoo doves are no longer sounding, when the rainfall is no longer frequent, when the light changes in the forest as the canopy recedes.

The speculative, procedurally degenerative nature of Gondwana acknowledges that human beings do not know exactly which way things might unfold—data changes, models are updated. But one thing is for sure: if we do not act, and act with urgency, we stand to lose something magical, something ancient, something irreplaceable.

Credits
Lead artists: Ben Joseph Andrews & Emma Roberts
Developer: Lachlan Sleight
Tilt brush artist: Michelle Brown
Generative sound design: Matt Faisandier & Erin K Taylor
Wet Tropics field recordings: Andrew Skeoch
Kuku Yalanji consultants: Uncle Mick “Spooks” Kulka, Uncle Ray Pierce & Binna Swindley
In memory of Uncle Ray Pierce, a supreme storyteller and champion for Yalanji language.

Supported by Screen Australia, Vicscreen, and Greenpeace.

Durational VR | 2022