The Relationships Between Humans and Nature

1. Forests Have Social Lives. Forests communicate and cooperate through underground mycorrhizal networks of roots and fungi. Remarkably, they display behaviors like those of humans––protection, caring, survival, territorial conflict, reward, and punishment––and even pass messages of wisdom to the next generation of seedlings. Paintings by Fedele Spadafora.

 

They are also humanity’s best friends, breathing in the carbon dioxide we exhale and releasing life-giving oxygen. And according to scientists, spending time in forests and breathing in their aerosols can reduce stress, improve well-being, and activate cancer-fighting cells.

 

While not a substitute for living ecosystems, researchers have found that immersive nature experiences created with art and technology can also reduce stress and support mental well-being, heighten awareness, care, and attention toward the natural world.

 

2. Breathing with the Forest by Marshmallow Laser Feast, an experiential artist collective, is an immersive installation that is a perfect example of this research. It gives viewers a felt sense of the symbiotic relationships between the kingdoms of life. Their nature-based works are presented worldwide.

 

3. The choreography of Martha Graham (1894–1991) offers another parallel. Graham’s pioneering technique of contraction and release mirrors the rhythms of breathing, as trees absorb carbon dioxide and release life-giving oxygen. Her choreography explores themes of protection, caring, survival, conflict, sacrifice, and resilience—themes that resonate with the underground social lives of forests. These connections are dramatically expressed by Martha Graham Dance Company principal dancer Xin Ying in her technology-based project Unraveling Technique and interpretations of Graham’s historic works, Immediate Tragedy, Lamentation, and others.

 

4. Atmospheric Forest (2020) was created by Rasa Smite and Raitis Smits, artists and co-founders of the RIXC Center for New Media Culture in Riga, Latvia. It is the result of three-years of research in Pfynwald, an ancient Swiss alpine coniferous forest suffering from drought due climate change, which Swiss scientists have turned into a unique living observatory. Atmospheric Forest reveals the complex relations between a forest ecosystem and the atmosphere. It blends science, technology and ecology in a way that immerses visitors in the sensation of awe as they wander through a forest experiencing the beauty and visualized micro energies of the breathing forest.

 

5. Indigenous Lifeways. Indigenous communities have deep understanding of the natural world and practice holistic sustainable lifeways developed over thousands of years. Their knowledge of ecosystems and biodiversity is vital to the technologically-anchored and sustainable future. Dedicated National Geographic and other explorers show that by protecting indigenous cultures we protect the planet. Indigenous artists tell the story to the modern world. 

 

Chris Rainier, photographer, National Geographic Explorer, co-founder of The Cultural Sanctuaries Foundation with Olivia McKendrick, and Terry Garcia, former National Geographic VP and Chief Science Officer.

Shipibo-Konibo artists of the Peruvian Amazon: Sara Flores, Chonon Bensho and Celia Vasquez Yui; presented by the Shipibo Conibo Center, NYC

 

6. Jennifer Steinkamp is a video and new media installation artist. Still-Life 3 (2019) "is about fruit bearing plants, the girl parts. I think about how female ovaries are overlooked in the most basic aspects of our culture." Blind Eye (2018-2019) connects to her fascination by the recent discoveries that trees communicate through an underground chemical exchange. "If anything, this is a consistent current in my work. The title Blind Eye is a play on words: it refers to a tree blind; it also conveys the singular eye scars left on birch trees after they lose their branches; it is seeing with one eye, or monocular vision; there are so many things we turn a blind eye to these days... We are dumping carbon and methane gases into the atmosphere, changing the climate at exceeding rates."

Viewing the Earth from Space

7. Rising Above, A Conversation with Astronaut Ron Garan. “In order for life to survive on Earth, one specific species–Homo sapiens–needs to figure out how to be the first species in history to cooperate on a global scale." Garan was featured in Centerpoint Now publication and A View From the Cloud public program.

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8. Nicole Stott, astronaut and artist, speaks about her experience in space at A View From The Cloud program. She believes that art is the ultimate universal communicator of complex ideas.

 

9. Constellation is a coalition of astronauts inspired by the "Overview Effect," a transformative experience of awe and wonder that astronauts have when looking at our beautiful home Planet Earth. “The world currently needs to be inspired to solve the greatest challenges we currently face. When in space, we maintained the life support systems that kept us alive. This is analogous to the life support systems on planet Earth - our biosphere. Our goal: through immersive storytelling experiences, we will connect and inspire action throughout the world in support of ‘Planetary Stewardship’.”

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Innovations and Technologies are Bringing Us Closer to Nature

 

10. The Energy+Art Garden (2023) was co-designed by artist Raphaele Shirley and Nina Colosi for the Land Art Generator Initiative's design competition for Spinelli Park, in Mannheim, Germany. It immerses visitors in a futuristic world of clean energy–producing interactive sculptures and lighting, lush plantings, pathways, and gathering spaces for public engagement. It was among the designs selected for exhibition and featured in the accompanying publication. An immersive multimedia version is currently in development.

11. Land Art Generator Initiative: Renewable Energy Can be Beautiful. Founded by Robert Ferry and Elizabeth Monoian, beginning with their first competition for Abu Dhabi’s Masdar City in 2010, LAGI helps design renewable energy structures around the world that are large scale works of art.

 

12. The Sounds of Life: How Digital Technology Is Bringing Us Closer to the Worlds of Animals and Plants by Karen Bakker, a researcher, educator, and author specializing in digital transformation, environmental governance, sustainability, and water governance. Art illustrations by Sharon Field, Marshmallow Laser Feast, Kai-Wilhelm Nessler.

 

13. Homeostasis (2025), an album and performance by Toninato & Lecours, saxophone/electro duo, reaches for the balance between humans and nature. As part of Streaming Museum’s annual invitation by the MUTEK Montréal Festival to interview featured artists, we continue to highlight creators whose work resonates with our views about the interconnected world. Lecours and Toninato exemplify this through Homeostasis, immersing listeners in the dynamic equilibrium of natural systems that sustain themselves through self-regulating processes, and human survival that depends on living within those limits.

 

14. Rebirth: A collection of art by Mariko Mori intersects nature, ancient culture and technology at Japan Society in New York City. “This work is designed to unite the celestial and the terrestrial. It will be a lasting testimony that pays respect to the natural beauty of our surroundings on earth.” Mori draws inspiration from the intersection of nature and technology, explaining, “I would like to reintroduce ancient culture to contemporary life in order to reconnect with nature.” The concept of oneness explored in the exhibition, aims to revive the link that universally binds our consciousness regardless of language, custom, or location.

 

15. Sounds of Life: Jana Winderen and the Art of Listening. Through field research around the world, sound artist Jana Winderen pays particular attention to acoustic environments and to creatures that are difficult for humans to access, both physically and aurally—deep underwater, inside ice, or in frequency ranges inaudible to the human ear. She describes her work as looking at and listening to “how humans have been treating the planet and the creatures and animals we share the planet with.” Listen to Surge (2020) and Out of Range (2014) featured in Art’s New Natures: Digital Dynamics in Contemporary Nordic Art. The program was made possible by Nordisk Kulturfond and Nordic Council of Ministers

 

16. Buckminster Fuller, Making the Invisible Visible. In the early 1960s, Fuller, a visionary inventor, architect, and systems thinker, conceived the idea of the Geoscope, a giant, computer-linked model of Earth to be installed outside the United Nations headquarters in New York City. Designed to display environmental, economic, demographic, and geopolitical information over time, the Geoscope would provide insight into the interconnected systems shaping the planet that could be used to develop practical solutions to global challenges. Fuller’s concept anticipated today’s digital Earth technologies, including Google Earth, real-time data visualization, and immersive global simulations.
 

Perspectives on Sustainability Through the Arts and Experts Across Disciplines

17. Centerpoint Now, Are we there yet? (2021) is an edition of Centerpoint Now, a publication of the World Council of Peoples for the United Nations, that was co-produced with Streaming Museum to commemorate the United Nations' 75th anniversary and the UN Sustainable Development Goals. It features artworks and commentary by international artists, activists, innovators, academics, and policymakers.

 

The related international public program series, A View From the Cloud,  brought together artists, scientists, astronauts, technologists, economists, United Nations officials, and other cross-disciplinary experts.

 

18. Paula DiPerna, a finance and climate policy pioneer, whose work spans the Oval Office to Antarctica and coral reefs to carbon markets, is the author of Pricing the Priceless: The Financial Transformation to Value the Planet, Solve the Climate Crisis, and Protect Our Most Precious Assets. Recognizing nature as an indispensable financial asset, she says, “Nature is an unpaid worker.”

19. high altitude (2008-10) by Michael Najjar is a hybrid photography series of ten works. Najjar transformed data visualizations of leading stock market spanning 20-30 years into the mountain ranges he photographed during his trek to Mt. Aconcagua, the highest mountain after the Himalayas. The indices include Bovespa, DAX, Dow Jones, Hang Seng, Lehman, MSCI, Nasdaq, Nikkei, RTS, and Sensex. high altitude is a metaphor for corporate influence on the environment, suggesting that corporations, through responsible business practices, can help steer the environmental movement.

20. cool earth (2021-ongoing) by Michael Najjar is a hybrid photography series that combines science and fiction, imagining the transition to a world beyond fossil fuels. The works open a mental field of possibilities to consider how we could shape a livable, post-destructive world.

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21. Sarah Kirkland Snider's Mass for the Endangered is a six-movement work performed by the English vocal ensemble Gallicantus, led by Gabriel Crouch. A celebration of, and elegy for, the natural world, it features lyrics by Nathaniel Bellows and video art by Deborah Johnson. "The Mass’s musical modes of spiritual contemplation apply to concern for non-human life—animals, plants, and the environment. There is an appeal to a higher power—for mercy, forgiveness, and intervention—but that appeal is directed not to God but rather to Nature itself.”"Breathtaking beauty." (The New Yorker) "A prayer for endangered wildlife and their imperiled environments...elegiac and affecting." (The Wall Street Journal).

 

22. Chinese High Fashion: Designers, Philosophy and Sustainable Practice by Amanda Vallance examines the work of four Chinese designers—Ma Ke, Uma Wang, Qiu Hao, and Wang Yiyang—who approach fashion through a sustainable lens. Their practices reflect slow fashion values, including a “less is more” philosophy, support for local production, higher-quality and longer-lasting garments, and a deeper awareness of a garment’s origin and path to purchase. Vallance also addresses the environmental impacts of the global fashion industry, including textile waste, depletion of natural resources, and chemical pollution.

23. Water, Mining and Exodus in the Atacama Desert by Marcos Zegers, a Chilean documentary photographer and researcher focused on geopolitical and territorial conflicts from a contemporary, multidisciplinary perspective, is a photographic essay that explores the narratives surrounding extractive activities in the Atacama Desert. It investigates the historical and present-day consequences of mining in Chile, including cultural displacement, conflicts over water resources, and desertification intensified by climate change. Covering territories in northern Chile and Bolivia, the project also addresses the debate surrounding lithium—the so-called “white oil” promoted under the green flag, yet also derived from an extractive process.

24. SOS International Law by Sohini Chatterjee and Daniel Stewar

One could not but paint a very dark portrait:of the World Trade Organization that is in disarray; human rights laws ignored and discarded; treaties designed to tackle the existential threat of climate change seemingly facing greater attack despite ever greater evidence of the dangers facing the planet. International law’s futility, its powerlessness, seems never more apparent to all but true and misguided believers. 

25. Wheatfield - A Confrontation (1982) by Agnes Denes was a prophetic work created in view of the World Trade Center. A symbol and universal concept, it represented food, energy, commerce, world trade, and economics while referring to mismanagement, waste, world hunger, and ecological concerns. It called attention to our misplaced priorities. The harvested grain traveled to twenty-eight cities around the world in the exhibition “The International Art Show for the End of World Hunger” (1987–90), organized by the Minnesota Museum of Art. The seeds were eventually carried away by people who planted them in many parts of the globe.

 

26. Slurb (2009) by Marina Zurkow is a video artwork that reflects the ocean’s radical changes in acidity and oxygen levels caused by overfishing, dumping, and climate change–driven warming of ocean currents. These changes have already caused parts of the ocean larger than the state of Texas to resemble the low-oxygen seas that existed on Earth hundreds of millions of years ago. Slurb is inspired by speculative fiction, including J. G. Ballard’s prescient 1962 novel The Drowned World, in which inhabitants of a flooded world feel the tug of the sun and dream of a return to their amniotic past.

 

Exhibitions on Big Screens in Public Spaces Around the World

27. Artists and Innovators for the Environment was a three-part exhibition series that featured more than 40 international visual and performing artists, new media and software artists, and innovators in the fields of science, mathematics, and sustainable design. From October 3, 2008 to April 3, 2009, the worldwide tour was presented in public spaces, cultural centers, Second Life, and online through StreamingMuseum.org in collaboration with international curators, galleries, arts organizations, corporate partners, and nonprofits. The tour was launched with an event at the Time Warner Center at Columbus Circle in New York City in collaboration with TED Prize, alongside a cross-continental live presentation with the Urban Screens Conference at Federation Square in Melbourne, Australia.

28. Mutual Core (2013) by Björk, the visionary Icelandic musician and multidisciplinary artist, was exhibited in a one-year world tour that launched in the Times Square Midnight Moment program as part of Streaming Museum's Nordic Outbreak project. In this music video, the forces of nature explode across a futuristic landscape as volcanoes erupt from the desert floor, a snowstorm transforms the environment, and anthropomorphic rocks come to life, orbiting around a goddess of nature.

 

29. Counting One to Four: Nature Morte (2015) by Debbie Symons is a seven-minute video that synthesizes findings from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change on projected mass species extinctions. Moving beyond a simple image of “damaged nature,” the work presents a layered analysis of cause and effect, including estimates that up to 52% of terrestrial mammals, reptiles, marine species, amphibians, and insects could face extinction by 2100. The video also references 20 Earth Summits held around the world by date and location, underscoring the failure of global meetings to produce effective mitigation.

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