Novocene

Mixed Reality Installation  |  Quest 3  |  Ongoing Development

Novocene is a mixed reality experience unfolding an interactive narrative about the Anthropocene, the current geological era, entirely dominated and shaped by humans. Accordingly, the polar ice masses in this interactive video installation will melt at some point and the climate crisis will cause the analog exhibition environment to sink under a virtually rising sea level.

At first, a pair of mixed reality glasses lies inconspicuously on a tree stump in the exhibition space. The felled tree is an improvised construction made from temporary materials such as wood, cardboard and plastic. Viewed through the headset, it unexpectedly sprouts young, virtual shoots and branches and grows to new life. As the plot unfolds around this tree sculpture, the viewer can construct a monument for an alternative future from the artefacts and totems of a proverbially lost civilization.

The interactive experience thematizes human impact on nature and inevitably leads to the question: Is it even possible to deal artistically and aesthetically with something as colossal as the climate crisis and its destructive consequences? How can the narrative of the possible end of all narratives succeed? Is it possible to strike a fine balance, hopefully somewhere between instruction and fatalism on the one hand and naïve ignorance and faith in technology on the other? Critical voices from the field of neuroscience tend to deny that humanity, in its subjective constitution, is capable of processing a challenge of such complexity and temporal horizon at all. Another prominent thesis is based on the imprint of the evolutionary pressure to adapt. According to this theory, egoism steeled by competition thwarts collective, global action. Consequently, the hope remains that we will develop the ability for this action as soon as possible.

First, however, the virtual, essayistic journey through time takes its recipients back to the untouched natural state of the Holocene, shortly before humans began to exert their global influence. The audiovisual excursion goes on to describe the onset of the soon unbridled exploitation and burning of natural resources. The title Novocene is a homage to the environmental philosopher James Lovelock, who as a scientist was also involved in the discovery of the hole in the ozone layer. He saw the aforementioned human dilemma being solved in a future age of hyperintelligence, which he outlined in his popular science book Novacene (2019).

The expectations of hyperintelligence are particularly topical in the context of the current hype surrounding so-called artificial intelligence. Critics see AI as the direct heir to the throne of blockchain and NFTs as the currently trending technological promise of salvation. Paradoxically, it contributes to real environmental problems primarily through its inflationary energy consumption and the resulting escalation in emissions – a conflict that is reflected in the development process of this project, in which Jens Isensee has increasingly resorted to interesting and useful AI tools to generate textures, objects, voice output, characters and even 3D objects. Whether this results in a new, visual identity for the work or a generic aesthetic that quickly overtakes itself remains an unresolved contemporary conflict, which is inevitably reflected in Novocene. Devices such as radio, television, monitor and a chatbot are located in the virtual space like representatives of media evolution and drive the plot forward with interspersed announcements and broadcasts. Here, belief in progress and media development go hand in hand. In the end, the devices come together to form a kind of slot machine that spits out solutions that counteract patterns and clichés.

Are we experiencing an abbreviated representation of well-known facts or rather the limits of media production represented by the cited medium of video games? It is mostly hard to follow the red line of narration and one could easily get the idea that the nested levels of action and time in this mixed reality experience reveal the narrative style of our time that has fallen prey to spectacle. In any case, the visual experience invites an in-depth examination of the intention of the work and its sources. Novocene aims to explore the immersive and activating potential of mixed reality hardware and interactive 3D engines, which is often talked about as a way of awakening empathy for the state of the earth. As a philosophical reflection, the work aims to stimulate the idea of a global sense of responsibility and to emphasize the urgency of action. Despite the unmistakable facts about the deplorable state of affairs in both the analog and virtual worlds, the source of the impetus to take decisive action against humanity’s crisis remains an unsolved and exciting mystery.

Jens Isensee creates his art not least in order to structure his insights and develop new ideas in the process of their realization. He sees accompanying texts as part of the body of work. Many trains of thought and narrative threads in this work are interpretations and collages of excerpts and fragments from books read in context. For the realization of Novocene, he credits the anthology Interspecies Future (2014) by the LAS Art Foundation and its authors as his main inspiration. Men who burn the world, Männer, die die Welt verbrennen (2024), by Christian Stöcker sharpened the final certainty that we are sacrificing the future of our living world to the profits of a vanishingly small minority. From Thomas Metzinger’s Culture of Consciousness, Bewusstseinskultur (2023), he took the astute analysis of the world situation and that it is now nothing more than an act of intellectual dishonesty not to name the actual catastrophe as such. There was also a lot on how we could develop a new consciousness in New Radical Enlightenment: Philosophy for a Common World (2024) by Marina Garcés.

In Collaboration with
 Aurora XR School for Artists | Hera Project | HTW Berlin

Novocene was selected by the XR Open Call jury of HTW Berlin’s AURORA XR School for Artists in April 2024. As a result, it is now being developed in close collaboration with HTW’s interdisciplinary project team, with co-funding from the European Regional Development Fund under the INP-III program and the kind support of the Senate Department for Culture and Community.