Field Collective

Over the summer and early fall, Alex became aware of the disturbing phenomenon of leaves, burnt by wildfires, falling from the sky miles away from where they originated. Burnt leaves were falling into people’s backyards, physically connecting them to fires and trees miles away.

During Fall 2020 Alex participated in the Creative Code Immersive at Gray Area for the Arts. For her final project she developed an augmented reality interface that mimics this phenomenon while allowing the user to tap on a leaf to identify the species of tree it came from.

Image credit: Instagram post image from @groundupjournal

Alex’s project was picked by GROUND UP to be included in their Issue 10 Breathe,. Our congratulations to Alex for her success on this innovative and thought-provoking piece of digital art.

“The theme for this year’s issue invokes a universal requirement for life which has been threatened by the overlapping crises of the pandemic, racial injustice, and climate disaster. What emerged is a testament to our collective experiences of the past year — a scrapbook of reflections and memories, a time capsule, a pointed and urgent critique.”

GROUND UP is the award-winning graduate student journal of the Department of Landscape Architecture & Environmental Planning at UC Berkeley. GROUND UP publishes one themed edition annually.