Grounded in the research project ‘Botanical Gardens in a Shifting Conservation Regime’, the art installation Diffracting Natures stages spatial stories about nature conservation collected in the botanical gardens of Berlin and Edinburgh. The project aimed to understand which main challenges are faced by the gardens in the realisation of their conservation mission in the course of refiguring processes such as digitalisation, decolonisation and climate change.

By de/re-constructing spatial drawings made during the research — a process understood here as a type of diffraction — and by re-assembling them in the contemporary digital environment of the ‘Metaverse’, alternative multimodal interpretation of the stories are composed. The digital staging of these stories as a walk-in spatiotemporal drawing allows for a open and flexible appropriation by the visitors, breaking with any linear succession of the different stories and offering new speculations on spatial figures in the Anthropocene.

The experiment at the intersection between art and humanities aims at reflecting on the potential of such digital technology, beyond the mere diffusion of scientific knowledge, as an immersive, multimodal mapping tool for visual-spatial research and analysis.

To access the art installation, please click here: http://www.monaverse.com/spaces/refigbo [direct access via the browser, no further installation needed]