Once Upon A Time There Were Forests
Vibeke Bryld / Maria Kristensen / Denmark
An immersive XR experience about the insistence on hope – a reminder that even in a time that can feel hopeless, what we do still matters. And that we can paint the light, the music and the life back into our world.
In this XR experience the viewer’s own body becomes the engine of the story. You step into a dark, porous forest where everything appears scorched and abandoned. In the distance, a fragile flicker of light. From here, everything depends on you: as you move, raise your arms, dare to reach out, light blooms across the landscape, voices emerge, and music unfolds. The more you move, the clearer the choir’s resonance, the stronger nature’s pulse. Stand still, and the darkness returns. The audience’s presence becomes the dramaturgical engine – every step and gesture a small act of creation that pushes back the fire and lets a new world take root.
An overwhelming apathy is often what settles in first when we face the climate crisis and the political unrest of a world in flux. This work is born of the refusal to surrender to it: the insistence, against everything, on finding meaning, reaching out to one another, and locating the light and the music in the middle of the dark.
Developed in dialogue with climate researchers, the work grounds its visual and sonic universe in real science: the birds, insects, plants and forests that vanish first as the climate crisis deepens. Absent at the outset, they are reclaimed through the user’s action – a confrontation with what future generations risk never seeing or hearing if we fail to act.
The second chapter of a trilogy on our bodily connection to the elements – sea (Hush / Havfolket Kalder Mørknet Vand, 2020) earth, and finally air – the piece uses XR not as a screen we watch but as a space that envelops the body and the senses completely, where the viewer becomes a co-creator rather than a spectator. Here, the smallest gesture can make a difference, and action becomes hope.
