The tropical forest is a place that is alive with magic. Its lush vegetation and diverse animal life create a vibrant and enchanting atmosphere. As you enter the forest, you can feel a sense of awe and wonder. The dense canopy overhead creates a dappled light that filters through the leaves, casting a magical glow on the forest floor. The air is thick with the sounds of chirping birds, buzzing insects, and rustling leaves. **The main idea is:** The tropical forest is a place that is alive with magic.
“In the span of that road trip we went over endless dead riverbeds in the Murray-Darling Basin, areas of southeast Queensland that had been burned in unseasonal bushfires the year before, and straight into the biggest flooding event in Queensland’s history … well, at the time anyway,” says Roberts. “We arrived in the Daintree in the middle of an unprecedented heatwave; around half the flying fox population was killed in a week. There were multiple cyclones and fires in the wet tropics area that had never been burned before.”
Both passionate environmentalists, with backgrounds in immersive creation part installation, part cinema, part live performance they were drawn to the idea of harnessing VR to explore the climate crisis. In 2019 they left Melbourne with a plan to immerse themselves in the Daintree and what they thought was a fairly informed understanding of the climate crisis.
**The main idea is:** The tropical forest is a place that is alive with magic..
100 years in 48 hours: the ‘epic’ VR film Gondwana is set in the world’s oldest tropical rainforest
B en Joseph Andrews and Emma Roberts stopped all the clocks the moment they arrived in the Daintree Rainforest to start a five month research trip for their epic, 48-hour, virtual reality film Gondwana. Arriving in the wet season of 2019, “we scrambled our phones, our computers. We embraced the cycles of time that occur in the forest,” says Andrews, the film’s director. “That letting go and surrendering gave us time to listen, and gain a deep appreciation of the multi-layered nature of that environment.”
Their experience in the 180m-year-old rainforest, which literally re-shaped their sense of time, has never left them. Now, the pair hope to immerse audiences in a similarly perspective-altering experience with the installation of Gondwana at ACMI as part of Melbourne’s international film festival, which will screen over 48 hours from Thursday to Saturday.
Art, science and a reef made of sugar: an exploration of climate change Read moreMapping 100 years of real-world data projections on to a simulated ecosystem, Gondwana is a “world-first durational VR installation” that places viewers inside the pulsating heart of the Daintree, and invites them to stay for as long as 48 hours (the longest stint so far has been 16 hours). Every 14 minutes, the environment jumps forward in time by one year – heading towards a speculative 2090.
Four years in the making, Gondwana is a jaw-dropping feat. The forest covers 350 square metres, a huge chunk of space for VR (some have said it feels limitless). Rather than one specific slice of the map, “it’s a smoosh of the Daintree,” says Andrews. Essentially, they have built an ecosystem from the ground up, with 50,000 plants and 40 hours of audio poured into the mix.
The Gondwana trailer.
The canopy grows and recedes as viewers glide along rivers, across mountains, and along the rippling sands of Cape Tribulation. Stars wheel overhead as the sun rises and sets, and light oozes across the rainforest floor, as time both slows and speeds up simultaneously.
Andrews and Roberts, a long-term creative duo, have always been drawn to the “notion of awe.” Both passionate environmentalists, with backgrounds in “immersive creation” – part installation, part cinema, part live performance – they were drawn to the idea of harnessing VR to explore the climate crisis.
“It’s really easy to forget the magic and the presence that comes with being out in a natural space – it’s something that’s so primarily fundamental to us. Reconnecting people back to that is, literally and figuratively, perspective shifting,” says Roberts, the film’s producer.
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In 2019 they left Melbourne with a plan to immerse themselves in the Daintree and what they thought was a fairly informed understanding of the climate crisis. But that trip catapulted them into a country in the throes of a reality that they had presumed was still far off.
“In the span of that road trip we went over endless dead riverbeds in the Murray-Darling Basin, areas of southeast Queensland that had been burned in unseasonal bushfires the year before, and straight into the biggest flooding event in Queensland’s history … well, at the time anyway,” says Roberts. “We arrived in the Daintree in the middle of an unprecedented heatwave; around half the flying fox population was killed in a week. There were multiple cyclones and fires in the wet tropics area that had never been burned before.”
‘The environment has these moments that are super precious and rare’ … A strangler fig inside Gondwana. Photograph: PR
They also found a forest that was out of sync. 2019 was the year that the Wet Tropics Management Authority released a desperate report flagging the climate crisis as “the most significant threat” to the Daintree, named the second-most irreplaceable World Heritage area on the planet by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.
The two worked closely with both scientists and Kuku Yalanji elders, whose people have cohabited with the forest for millennia. “Their seasonal calendars were no longer matching up with their traditional understanding and knowledge – tens of thousands of years of knowledge,” says Andrews. “This idea of falling out of sync was like an important artistic metaphor that we had to grapple with.”
Gondwana portrays the decline both sonically and visually. The Daintree is essentially going through the “equivalent of the bleaching of the Great Barrier Reef, the much better known nextdoor neighbour,” says Roberts. “But the destruction is much harder to spot if you don’t know the difference between your ancient Gondwanan species and your modern Sumatran jungle species. You can’t see the change that’s happening. So we took that metaphor of bleaching into the experience.”
Mangroves in Gondwana. Photograph: PR
As the viewer is moved through time, certain plants and animals begin to turn white. At first, a single palm appears ghostlike in the gloaming but, as species become critically endangered or extinct, the bleach extends across the forest. Sounds stretch and become more ghostly, as birds begin to fade from view.
It’s an echo of Andrews and Roberts’ shift from awe to horror when they returned home.
“We started looking at the data in detail – it was a shocking, shocking portrait, even of what we’ve lost already. We went through this very dark night of the soul,” says Roberts. “To take that experience of living there and then to learn about what we stand to lose … it was like learning about the painful death of a close relative.”
“It was almost as if we had to go through the grief before we realised ourselves that we needed to shift how we were approaching the work,” says Andrews.
The canopy grows and recedes as viewers glide along rivers, across mountains, and along the rippling sands of Cape Tribulation. Stars wheel overhead as the sun rises and sets, and light oozes across the rainforest floor, as time both slows and speeds up simultaneously.
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Reviews for "The Dance of Life in the Tropical Forest"
1. John - 1 star
I was highly disappointed with "The tropical forest epic alive with magic". The storyline was confusing and disjointed, making it difficult to follow and understand what was happening. The characters were poorly developed and lacked depth, making it hard to connect with them on any level. The writing style felt forced and awkward, and the dialogue was unrealistic and unconvincing. Overall, I found this book to be a complete waste of time and would not recommend it to anyone.
2. Sarah - 2 stars
"The tropical forest epic alive with magic" had potential, but it fell short for me. The descriptions of the tropical forest were beautiful, but the story was lacking in substance. The magical elements felt forced and predictable, and I didn't find myself invested in the outcome of the characters. The pacing was also off, with the story dragging in some parts and rushing through others. While it wasn't the worst book I've read, it didn't live up to my expectations and I wouldn't read it again.
3. David - 2 stars
I struggled to get through "The tropical forest epic alive with magic". The world-building was interesting, but the plot was confusing and muddled. There were too many characters introduced without proper development, and I found it hard to keep track of who was who. The writing style was also overly descriptive, with unnecessary details that didn't add to the overall story. I had high hopes for this book, but unfortunately, it fell flat for me.