Research
The research draws on artistic research, ecological fieldwork, and design methods in combination. Artistic research investigates presence, agency, and embodied cognition through making and testing. Ecological fieldwork brings mixed groups of artists and scientists into direct contact with habitats, archives, and field stations. Design research runs across both: iterative prototyping and public playtesting shape each work from early concept toward final form.
Technical and scientific research capacity connects artistic intent to material and technological realisation, bridging the work between immersive experience design and the precision of ecological measurement. The ambition is to reach a wide public through high-traffic venues and public space, and to contribute openly to the wider IX field through design guidelines and documented methods.
The research begins with the ecological partners. Each brings a different relationship to non-human life: one rooted in biodiversity science, one in the mechanisms of ecological systems, one in how humans and other species share urban and natural space. From within their active scientific programmes, each partner identifies research themes where the distance between what science knows and what the general public can feel is largest. These themes become the starting points for the work.
From each theme, a working group forms around at least one maker, with a core of complementary expertise drawn from ecology, technology, and design. The structure is flexible: a fixed inner core provides continuity, while an outer layer of specialists and invited practitioners expands as the work demands. The ecological partner stays involved throughout as a research collaborator, contributing literature, field access, and scientific context.
The groups go into the field together. Multi-day expeditions bring the full team into direct contact with the habitats, archives, and environments relevant to their theme. Fieldwork is followed by prototyping in labs and facilities available to the project. Prototypes are tested publicly, refined, and tested again. What accumulates across this cycle is not just a set of works but a documented body of knowledge: methods, findings, design guidelines, and field materials published openly as they develop.
Naturalis
Naturalis connects the research to active scientific programmes, specimen collections, and researchers working at the frontier of biodiversity science. Research themes are drawn from their current scientific agenda.
NIOO-KNAW
NIOO brings ecological research into the dynamics of ecosystems: how they function, how they respond to disturbance, and how intervention can shift outcomes. Their field stations and research programmes provide direct access to ecological processes in action.
ARTIS
ARTIS anchors the track concerned with how humans already encounter and relate to non-human life. Their expertise in public mediation, their facilities, and their audiences make them a testing ground for how IX can shift that encounter.
The research is published openly. Design guidelines, methodological frameworks, field documentation, and prototype records are made available as an open-access IX design toolkit: a concrete, reusable resource for practitioners and researchers working at the intersection of ecology and immersive experience.