How to Touch a Dragonfly

How to Touch a Dragonfly is a large-scale installation that engenders empathy with dragonflies in the time of anthropogenic climate and biodiversity crises. The installation, a 4m dome that acts as a deconstructed screen made using Korean paper hanji, creates an ultra-low-res immersive environment of sound and image displaying dragonflies entangled with landscapes in the post-anthropocene.

Structurally, the installation draws on the compound structure of the eye of the dragonfly, which comprises thousands of hexagonal lenses. The installation is made of 2100 hexagonal pixels - each around 14cm wide - brought together to create a dome-shaped deconstructed, ultra low-resolution screen. Each hexagonal pixel consists of a folded hanji front, illuminated from behind using RGB LEDs mounted on aluminium 6-pointed frames. Using video mapping, 360 degree video footage is displayed on the inside of the dome along with a synchronous soundscape that uses field recordings and vocal excerpts.

Hanji was chosen as the surface material for the screen, due to its cultural relevance in Korea, its sustainability credentials and its excellent light diffusion capacity. Korea's main centre for hanji production is the city of Jeonju. Hanji for the installation of How to Touch a Dragonfly was hand-made to produce the correct light diffusion properties for the installation by artisans of the Jeonju Millennium Hanji Museum, which co-sponsored the production.

The 360 video footage, audio field recordings and interviews were made on the island of Cheongsan-do (Cheongsan Island) in Republic of Korea. At the southern tip of the peninsula, the island of Cheongsan is home to the country's first UN FAO designated Globally Important Agricultural Heritage site - the Gudeuljang; rice fields irrigated by a centuries-old network of underground stone channels, farmed using the same methods that were used when the channels were first built. The island is also at the boundary of humid continental and sub-tropical climate zones, which is gradually shifting northwards with changing global climate. As such, the island provides a unique site at which modern and traditional human agricultural practices exist side by side within a rapidly changing climate context. Artistic research was carried out on the island, alongside in-person interviews with elders living on the island. Their voices, with tales of changing climate and disappearing dragonflies, form part of the narrative of the installation.