Inspired by William Morris’ proto-ecotopian novel News From Nowhere, HERVISIONS digital art studio presents an exciting speculative public artwork exploring the natural environment and landscapes of Langthorne Park E11, produced in collaboration with local communities.

This project aims to explore digital rewilding, connecting the hyperlocal ecology of Langthorne Park to the wider global climate emergency and how boundaries between humans, nature and technology are dissolving. The work draws on themes of identity, social mobility, collective storytelling, and our relationship to place.

In a series of workshops – in partnership with Leytonstone Toy Library – local residents and young people from ​​the Youth Club at Worth Unlimited worked with digital artists Kristina Pulejkova, Melissa Schwarz and Chun Sun to imagine the future of Langthorne Park set in a parallel universe by collaging words and images of local wildlife into a story and visual narrative. With the help of image-generating AI systems, participants learned about how to transform images and think about how the park could look in hundreds of years. Drawing inspiration from local plants and their medicinal properties and imagining the land of the park as a living body, the groups began to wonder what superpowers its organs could harness.

The results of the workshops are re-interpreted into an interactive site-specific game produced with artistic queer duo Eternal Engine and 3D artist ​​Bianca Shonee Arroyo-Kreimes. Game development by Nicholas Delap, graphic design by Alessia Arcuri and animation and motion design by Nerian Keywan.

The Game

You are invited to visit the Long Thorn Valley, a place that exists in the exact location of Langthorne Park on a planet that we will call Other Earth, where organs, organisms, and parasites thrive in symbiotic relationships. The flora and fauna of the Long Thorn Valley are suffering from memory loss caused by air, land and water pollution. Explore the game and play with fantastical creatures to collect their memories. To play, scan one of the QR codes on banners located around Langthorne Park using your mobile phone and look around for passwords to access five game environments.

Visit Wild Wired World

Wild Wired! Rewilding Encounters of Langthorne Park is co-curated and produced by Zaiba Jabbar and Tanya Boyarkina with Christine Lai.

Image: HERVISIONS