Back in the time of the pandemic, when nature was virtually impossible to access, Chilean director Francisca Silva came up with an idea to offer up mindful and therapeutic comfort or escape.
“She thought about how to create natural forest baths for those people who do not have (or did not have at that time) access to natural spaces,” producer María José Díaz tells BDE. “The forest bath is a meditative practice inside a forest, which connects people with the enormous healing potential of nature.” The concept is inspired by the Japanese religion/philosophy of shintoism.
The pair subsequently partnered with psychiatrist Simon Guendelman, an expert in mindfulness and neuroscience, who was enthusiastic about using mixed reality and digital environments to create a virtual healing space, in order to create the interactive experience Knowing Your Nature.
“Today, given the high levels of stress and anxiety to which we are all exposed all over the world, and also to those who are unable to visit the forest, I found it a fascinating project that in addition to using available technologies with enormous artistic potential such as mixed reality, also has a purpose which is to become a tool that has positive effects on the well-being and mental health of people,” says Díaz. “It is an artistic project with a social impact, and it is interesting for me as a producer to get involved in a project like this.”
In each of the twelve different paths of the forest, the user is invited to have a meditative and magical experience lasting five, ten or 45 minutes. Each experience seeks to work on different aspects of the mind such as focus, calm, perspective and difficult emotions such as stress, among others.
Díaz explains the hurdles she must overcome to get the project to the end-user, which she hopes to do by the end of 2025. “First of all, it’s about funding. This is the most ambitious project we’ve embarked on so far. It requires significant partnerships with major players who dare to take on this challenge with us. It also needs an international and interdisciplinary focus, because the XR industry in our country, Chile, and in our Latin American region, has yet to recognize the importance of investing in XR projects, which are highly powerful, surprising, and interesting. Public and private funds are slowly beginning to include these types of projects in their funding possibilities, and Knowing Your Nature would certainly be a pioneer in carrying out a project of this magnitude for our region.”
In Barcelona, Díaz is therefore looking both for funding and multidisciplinary partnerships, especially from the technical and technological fields, “to better develop how biofeedback-based interaction is implemented in this project.” The team is also seeking video game and fulldome creators to give the project “alternative avenues” for release.
The producer underlines that this is a project ripe for investment as its benefits, whether in terms of mindfulness, gender politics or the dissemination of Latin American, are considerable.
“We are women in technology, and we have the strength and ambition to achieve our goals because we believe that Latin American stories and projects need their place in an industry predominantly led by white, European men,” she says. “We want to use mixed reality not only as an entertainment tool but also to serve beneficial purposes for users. Especially in times when the world is advancing at a frenetic pace toward new technological developments that can instil fear in the public, and potentially have negative externalities.”
“We aim to use existing technology to create a positive social impact, build a project that is artistically valuable, and turn it into a sustainable business. That’s what we are working toward today, and for that reason, we are seeking investors who want to join us, as well as audiences who want to take a meditative journey through a digital forest rooted in a biodiversity-rich area of our country,” Díaz ends.
