Rutopia

My dream is that the entire world is turned into a Park…This Park should be like this Landscape Park, Man and Nature so perfectly combined. Dmitry Likhachev discussing the parks surrounding Tsarskoye Selo, Russia.

Rutopia is a virtual reality art project developed for the CAVE and the C-Wall virtual reality systems. Its visual style is based on poetics and symbology from Russian fairy tales and folk art. In Rutopia trees communicate with the visitor of the park. The visitor can control the evolution of the trees as well as reverse their growth. In this unattainable fairy environment, rationalistic technology, the mystery of nature and human presence are harmonized in a perfect balance. Rutopia shows this interactive virtual park as a sketch of a premature embodiment of this wonderful time and place.

The project was presented in the following networked tele-immersive virtual reality exhibitions IEEE VR 2004, Chicago; SVR 2004, Brazil; IDEAS 2003, Bloomington; Networks, Art and Collaboration Conference 2004, Buffalo and Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago.