Doon - Art Fair Philippines'20

Through 2018, Issay Rodriguez conducted a local artist residency with Bellas Artes Projects in Bataan, Philippines,​ which strongly influenced her practice today around honey bees and its social, ethological, and spiritual implications.

DOON explores the possibilities of augmented and virtual reality in art production to promote a new medium for aesthetic experience. In interpreting Rudolf Steiner’s Hegaxonal Force where beehives are described as having a life process that mirrors the human brain, viewers are thus immersed in a beehive. Geared towards rhythmic movement, DOON makes use of the immersive capacity of the VR space to illustrate and give life to one of nature’s seven wonders— the nonverbal communication of bees in a hive. The experience focuses on the goal of “guiding” one’s hive mates by performing signals based on Karl Von Frisch’s greatest contributions to the ethological study of bees called the waggle dance— a figure 8 movement done by bees to show a potential source of nectar and pollen harvest.

Simultaneously, an augmented reality experience is set up through a counter part mobile application to facilitate the act of foraging 3D animations of local flora rendered by G/FK/DS.

This work was made possible through IMAGINE REALITIES STUDIO and is presented by art/ n23 incubator space at Art Fair Philippines 2020.