Ars Electronica Garden Bangkok

Psych Garden: Spanning Metaphysical Geographies

Tentacles Gallery, Freaklab Thailand, Jennifer Katanyoutanant (TH)

Psych Garden uses physical sensations and auras to guide you through multiple planes of being, hosting virtual tours of Thailand’s tastes, sights, sounds and energies. The tours invite viewers to think about how our physical bodies absorb information through all of our senses. We travel for our survival or in search of fulfillment, and marry our psyches with our sensory understanding of the world and/or of other worlds. This exhibition shows snapshots of the search.

Psych Garden: Spanning Metaphysical Geographies

As you join us from home, watching through your own computer frame, travel takes on a whole new meaning. We move viewers through experiences that explore panpsychism and animism rooted in Thai culture, asking visitors to wonder: How do we understand planets, inanimate objects, engineered microorganisms, etc. through a cultural framework? How do scientists, anthropologists, and artists outside the Western canon formulate their perception of the observed world?

Jennifer Katanyoutanat and Scott Kildall have each created different ways to share remote sensations. With collaborator Michael Ang, Scott has created a live streamed audio installation that gives voice to Thai plants. Jennifer and her collaborators Grace Cong Xin Wong and Zden Brungot Svitekova have created a pathway to explore remote sensations through a taste-based guided meditation. Visitors are encouraged to bring their own garlic.

Moving on to the wider world, Tentacles and FREAK Lab Thailand investigate the cultural lens of our observed world through three different journeys exploring life, synthetic biology, geopolitics and geology, and the future of space exploration.

Timetable

Program

Project Credits / Acknowledgements

Henry Tan
Tentacles Gallery
Freaklab Thailand
Spacezab
Spaceth.co

Jennifer Katanyoutanant
Scott Kildall – Xenoform Labs
Michael Ang
Grace Cong Xin Wong – Art Farm
Zden Brungot Svíteková

Tentacles
Freaklab Thailand
Spaceth
Spacezab