Hug this tree in virtual reality, and you’ll be sucked into an experience that can only be described as mind-altering.
How do you tell a first-person story about a tree? How do you give its wordless life a narrative, or explore its timeless inner world? Treehugger: Wahoma is an attempt to do just that for the giant sequoia. The exhibition, which launched recently at London’s Southbank Centre, mashes together virtual reality, data visualization, and installation art into one poignant, breathtaking experience, transporting participants through the nervous system of a 3,500-year-old redwood–one of the world’s largest living creatures, by volume.