My body bubbles up around me as I gaze up at the forest above, the air dark and misty, plants visible only by tiny glowing lights that make up their outlines cast in purple and blue. The musty scent of decaying leaves surrounds me. My energy is focused on chasing tasty nutrients. I hear nothing but a rolling inner-narration in my ears.
I am a slime mold, and my purpose is clear.
In reality – that is to say, in our present, physical reality – I was standing in a small room at PAM CUT (formerly the Northwest Film Center), laden with gadgets and tubes, participating in the Portland Art Museum’s latest exhibition: an immersive extended reality experience called “Symbiosis,” which opened to the public Nov. 12 and will run for three months.
Created by Dutch design collective Polymorf, the XR experience plunges participants into a fictional world set in a distant post-humanist future, where people “symbiogenetically” join with animals, plants and artificial intelligence – the idea being that these symbiotic connections could help bring humans back into deeper connection with the rest of the natural world.
In “Symbiosis,” the immersive experience is meant to do some of that work in the present, giving people the perspective of other lifeforms, strange as they may be.
Polymorf unveiled the experience in 2021 in Holland. The exhibition in Portland is its international debut, the company said, and there is an ongoing effort to bring the experience to other cities in the U.S. and around the world.
As someone with no real interest in virtual reality or digital worlds, I didn’t feel like the target audience for “Symbiosis.” I feel much more inclined to immerse myself into the “real” natural world, not a constructed one, but as I and five other participants entered the small room at PAM CUT, I decided to let my curiosity lead the way.
The experience starts out with a waiver, as well as a warning about smells and tastes that could be unpleasant. Yes, you can opt out of any scents, and yes, there is a vegan option for taste. (Food wasn’t available on the media preview day, as it was apparently still waiting to clear customs, but it is an integral part of the experience.)
Ushered into the room at our allotted 45-minute time slot, the six of us were given a brief rundown of the four characters, and were then left to decide amongst ourselves which ones we would play.
There was the Colorado river toad, a combination of human and frog DNA; the slime mold, a simple organism that feeds on bacteria, yeast and other matter; a creature called Camilla, a symbiont child of a human and a monarch caterpillar with an extraordinary sense of smell; and the Multibody creature, which is a cross between a human, angler fish, octopus and AI, and takes three people to play.
After some discussion, I wound up with the slime mold, an experience that was promised to be more “psychedelic” than the others. An assistant helped me into my slime mold haptic suit, which resembled a bulky sleeping bag, and then helped me strap on my goggles and headphones. Seconds later, the 15-minute XR experience began.
I find myself surrounded by darkness, tinged with a rust-colored haze. Streaks of light surround me, whizzing by and exploding like fireworks. Looking down, I see my body, an oozing pile of yellow bubbles. I feel my body bubble up, like a deep breath, only without lungs I can feel it everywhere.
The landscape seems to change and I turn around to inspect it. I can make out the outlines of trees above me. Their shapes are made up of little glowing lights, red and green and blue. There is constant talking in my ears, but with all the visuals it’s hard to keep track of… something about modified tiger mosquitos and a disturbance in the forest.
One phrase does catch my ear: “My body is a tongue.” My body is a tongue. I look back at a trail of bubbles behind me, tasting their way across this world, and it seems perfectly clear. My body … is a tongue.
I am driven to find new tastes and nutrients. My whole body keeps bubbling and expanding. I find a particularly interesting taste, a friendly creature, and suddenly I am moving much higher up and faster through the forest. Up in the air, another being approaches me, an AI of some sort that appears as a big glowing light hovering just above me. The AI asks me to open myself up and allow it to probe my DNA. I feel amenable, but also a bit helpless – a humble slime mold in this world of creatures that are bigger, faster and act on greater motivations than my own.
Eventually I fall from the creature who has been carrying me, plopping back down on the forest floor. I can see two much larger beings glide away above me, and suddenly I am back to my foraging. A sense of calm washes over me. The familiar tastes and smells welcome me home. I am here. I am living. I am alive in this place.
Credits rolled on the headset, and I quickly felt the headphones and goggles being lifted away. Around the room, my fellow participants looked awestruck and giddy from their own experiences. Out of the suits, we lingered in the room to share our stories. I heard tales about swimming underwater, about strange bodily sensations, about being a frog with swollen cheeks.
It might have been the oxytocin being pumped in through the scent tubes, but there seemed to be a real sense of camaraderie between us. This despite the fact that most of us (save the multibody creature) went through the experience alone.
Walking away from PAM CUT, my head still swimming from my slime mold morning, I couldn’t stop thinking about those other experiences. What was it like to be the flying humanoid, the toad (who, as it turns out, had carried me on its back), or one part of the multibody creature?
That curiosity about the experiences of other beings seems to be the whole point of “Symbiosis,” and thankfully, for the next three months at least, it offers plenty of opportunities to find out for yourself.
“Symbiosis” runs from Nov. 12, 2022, to Feb. 12, 2023 at PAM CUT; 934 S.W. Salmon St.; timed-entry tickets are $30 per person, available at portlandartmuseum.org.
— Jamie Hale
503-294-4077; jhale@oregonian.com; @HaleJamesB
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