Festival of Ideas: Nature Unseen

What is nature if you cannot see it? How high is the cedar tree when the eyes cannot climb its boughs? What are the sounds that gather around you in the blue dawn of a summer morning?

There are traditions of thinking about landscapes as seen. We recognise this in landscape paintings and how we stand and “view” nature.

This exhibition invites you into the world of sight impaired collaborators and their experiences of Wakehurst, Kew's wild botanic garden in the heart of Sussex and home to the Millennium Seed Bank. 

Immerse yourself in a soundscape composition, feel along a tactile forest crafted with foraged nature, and meet the collaborators in a Q+A. You will leave inspired to think and feel differently about ‘nature’.

The exhibition encourages you to engage your non-visual senses in what is a predominantly visual world. Through a composition of sounds and textures, you are invited into a deeper connection with nature and art beyond traditional visual engagement.

We are a group of artists and multidisciplinary researchers collaborating on a project based at the University of Sussex exploring pathways to inclusion in the heritage sector through the arts. This research project is led by Dr Karis Jade Petty, Assistant Professor in Anthropology at the University of Sussex. The soundscape is composed by Chris Sciacca, an American sound artist and practice-based researcher specialising in sonic ethnography and soundscape composition. The diverse landscapes and sounds at Wakehurst provided the setting for this collaborative project. 

Co-produced by Chris Sciacca and Dr Karis Jade Petty