Swarm
Every autumn, a miracle happens. A monarch butterfly born in Canada flies more than 3,000 miles across North America. It does so over land it has never seen, in the reverse direction of the streams of humans traveling steadily north. It’s destination: the rainforest of Mexico. It is a journey filled with peril. Many will never make it, and those that do will never return. No butterfly among them has ever made the journey before, and none will again. In the hands of artist, writer, filmmaker Leopoldo Goût, the tale of the monarch butterfly’s migration from North America to the Mexican town of Contepec gets the immersive, you-are-there treatment. Each monarch butterfly was hand-painted by Goût, then brought into 3D space in collaboration with multimedia artist Matt Bruinooge.
An epic struggle for survival that is also a story of astonishing beauty and marvel is told in an immersive video installation. A groundbreaking work of I-can’t-believe-what-I’m-seeing poetry, SWARM is also a drama about a great migration that explores the value of community, environmentalism, and, ultimately, transformation. The first in a series of installations, SWARM will expand to include holographic projections, volumetric television, music, scent and other visual sensorial technologies, enveloping room-sized installations blurring the lines between vision and experience; the real and the virtual.