Sentient Forest

Bompas & Parr has collaborated with Assoc Prof Monica Gagliano, Dr Claire Farrell and the Faculty of Engineering and Information Technology at University of Melbourne, to conceptualise and create Sentient Forest, an installation for Science Gallery Melbourne’s SWARM exhibition, which explores interspecies connectivity.

Visitors will encounter some curious roving Tree-Bots – these bio-synthetic entities are programmed to behave like a pack of animals. Each Tree-Bot moves independently but shares the same central brain; therefore, instead of acting in isolation, the bots have intertwined behaviours that ripple through the group.