Trees Come Alive at the "World's First" Permanent Digital Art Park

NetPark even features sonic interpretations of its own landscape by experimental musicians Matmos.

October 6, 2015, 12:45pm

Matmos working on their project. Photo: Simon Fowler

A digital art park, NetPark, has recently opened at Southend on sea in Essex, England. The town, where bands like The Horrors and These New Puritans formed, now boasts the world's first-of-its-kind, which was launched by arts organization Metal and will merge virtual artworks—which can be experienced through a smartphone—with the natural landscape of Chalkwell Park. The virtual pieces—currently there are ten—are geo-located and will be activated by apps and range from sound art to stories, poetry, and augmented reality.

Baltimore-based sound artists and musicians Matmos, known for their collaborations with Björk, have created eight site-specific audio pieces. Duo M. C. Schmidt and Drew Daniel spent a week-long residency at Metal, whose headquarters are located in the park, to create the pieces, sampling sounds from the park and making songs. The result is what they call a "sonic interpretation and material interpolation and touristic hallucination of some of the locations and objects and living systems that are found here."

Matmos. Photo: Simon Fowler

“It was funny because these two had a certain vision of our park, seeing it as very English and quaint,” Simon Poulter, curator of the project, told local newspaper the Echo. The audio, which you can listen to online here, is lots of fun—the roses are "fat, obscene and hyperreal." Typical everyday English scenes taking place in and around the park are described with curious humor. Other pieces use musique concrete compositions to turn the recorded found sounds into immersive rhythms.

Other works include Talking Trees by Jamie Gledhill, an augmented reality app which brings the trees to life when you hold your device up to them. The trees recount the history of the park and the area. Another work, Oneironaut, by artist Joel Cahen, is a processional piece experienced through a sound app, and centers around a dream traveler and the concept of lucid dreaming.

Talking Trees. Photo courtesy of Metal

More works will be added in the future. Metal have been working on the digital art park with artist and curator Simon Poulter for the last four years:

"It became apparent that while there was lots of locative artwork in outdoor spaces, there wasn’t a place where these works had been curated into a permanent and growing collection," explains Colette Bailey, artistic director and CEO at Metal. "And so the idea for a permanent visitor attraction—a sculpture park for the 21st century—came about. The fact that the work leaves the natural environment physically untouched was also desirable. The only physical intervention has been a set of new signs for the park designed by Malcolm Garrett."