Respired inspired

Te Papa's big summer show is an exhibition of large-scale digital works that explores the living, breathing world in forensic detail.

- SARAH CATHERALL

Ever wondered how a tree works? Or what the processes of photosynthesis, respiration, transpiration and osmosis might look like? And if we breathe in what a tree breathes out, are we all that different on a molecular level?

There's an exhibition for that - Breathe | Mauri Ora is Te Papa Tongarewa's big summer drawcard, a multi-sensory, immersive digital exhibition. Made up of five large-scale video artworks and a virtual reality experience - the digital files of which arrived from its London producers in a small suitcase - the show aims to tell a story about the physiological connection between people, trees, the ocean and galaxies.

Such big-picture themes require some very big pictures - visitors will be greeted by an enormous, digitally created rainforest tree beamed from a 5m-high screen, showing its breathing and nutrients flowing up through the tree roots.

The work, Sanctuary of the Unseen Forest, like the full exhibition, is from London immersive art collective Marshmallow Laser Feast (MLF), which has been creating VR experiences, often with natural history themes, since 2012. Along the way, MLF has also done lights and videos for Miley Cyrus and U2, and a motion-capture production of A Midsummer Night's Dream for the Royal Shakespeare Company.

Breathe | Mauri Ora is a rebranding of Works of Nature, the show commissioned by the Melbourne-sited ACMI, Australia's national museum of screen culture, which showed it in 2023-24. It also features works that predate the Melbourne commission.

Some involved collaborations with biologists, geologists, gaming specialists and spatial audio engineers. And artists, too, such as American arthouse director Terrence Malick - whose films have always shown a thing for botany - and musicians including Radiohead guitarist Jonny Greenwood and the late soundtrack composer Jóhann Jóhannsson.