Virtual forest projected on the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, France
Naziha Mestaoui, an avant-garde artist has an unique vision of art which evokes questions related to the current environment issues throughout the globe.
According to the renowned French economist and writer Jacques Attali, “Today, for almost everybody, modernity is synonym to the western world. But does this modern world make us feel happy? Should we go back to anterior modernity conceptions, which visualized the future only through religious hope? Or should we let flourish the artistic, the scientific, the cultural, the political seeds of a new modernity, altruism, a modest utopia which will make one another happy, especially for the generations to come, the condition of our happiness? There are very few artists at the stage of altruism. One such artist is Naziha Mestaoui and her interactive installation One Beat One Tree which enables spectators to create a virtual tree which in reality is planted somewhere else, via a heart beat. Today, the artistic avant garde trend announces the end of individualism.”
Virtual forest projected on the Colosseum in Rome, Italy
Recipient of the COAL 2014 award, the installation One Beat, One Tree bridges the virtual and reality, technology and nature, as well as what is visible and invisible. The installation will be projected at the 21st Climate Conference to be held in December 2015 in the city of Paris. Also, the monumental installation One Heart, One Tree, a project based on the concept of crowd greening will see Paris’ monuments covered by a forest, allowing spectators to virtually create a tree they could see grow at the rhythm of their heart beats on the monuments. The virtually born tree is then planted in reality somewhere in Europe, Latin America, Africa or Asia.
Virtual forest projected on the Tower Birdge in London, UK
Virtual forest projected on the Hotel de Ville in Paris, France
“Long after being the City of Lights, symbol of industrial modernity and progress, Paris is enlightening to be the ecologic post modernity. The capital is reinventing itself, in a multi-polar and connected world, to define a urban and bright culture with solidarity, in harmony with nature. Far away from individualism, each citizen becomes a co-creator of our common future.” explains Naziha Mestaoui
Virtual forest projected on the Grand Place in Brussels, Belgium
Virtual forest projected on the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, Germany
Her extensive travels in the heart of indigenous communities in Amazon, India and Oman are the source of her inspiration to create a series of projections built on the plurality of man & nature interactions, which as Philippe Descola puts it, makes our western culture an exception, for its disconnection with its environment. She is researching on immaterial cultural patrimony of societies still living in a reality composed with visible and invisible realities. In a creative process, Naziha reinvents the future of our societies, with the existing technologies and sciences, especially through quantum physics. The project aims at dematerialization in order to create an optimistic vision which draws its inspirations from the more ancestral cultures in order to bring back the essential values into our reality.
Smartphone catches the heartbeat and generates a virtual tree on the screen
Virtually generated tree is projected on the Eiffel Tower in Paris, France
One Beat One Tree Pavilion
User interacting within the digitalized pavilion
Check out videos of the One Man One Beat installation
Also check out the Graine d’energie video:
Content (French): Naziha Mestaoui
Translation by: Lucile Baker
