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Soft Fascination — Adele Wilkes, Soft Fascination (detail), 2024.

ArtSpace at Realm

Adele Wilkes

Soft Fascination

Soft Fascination by artist Adele Wilkes is a digital installation incorporating audio-visual field recordings of a uniquely fascinating sub-tropical garden ecology to consider non-human intelligence, synaesthesia, multisensory experiences, and deep listening practices. The use of specialised recording equipment (such as microphones that can record the internal resonance of trees or water) allows us to perceive this world beyond the limitations of our ordinary abilities, expanding our senses to enhance our ecological connectedness, empathy, attention, and even devotion towards the nonhuman.

The concept of “soft fascination” comes from environmental psychology and refers to the “restorative attentional mode” – a kind of effortless or involuntary attention – experienced in nature. In the highly stimulating sensory landscape of contemporary life, we are often disconnected from the natural world yet hyperconnected digitally. Can nature restore tranquillity to our minds and in turn help us become more attuned to the ecosystems that sustain life on earth?

3 February—9 March

ArtSpace at Realm

179 Maroondah Hwy, Ringwood VIC 3134, Australia

www.maroondah.vic.gov.au/Explore/ArtsInMaroondah/Arts-venues-and-spaces/ArtSpace-at-Realm

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