Experimental Environments and the Aesthetic Experience of Metabolic Processes

This article explores the aesthetic experience of metabolic processes in two projects: the newly designed Jade Eco Park in Taiwan, by architect Philippe Rahm, and the virtual reality environment Give and Take, developed by Desiree Foerster, Michaela Büsse, Sarah Hermanutz, and Andreas Rau. The authors argue that a heightened sensitivity to atmospheric and metabolic processes enabled by these projects brings to the foreground a different mode of aesthetic perception, toward how we experience and not only what we feel. They propose further that an aesthetics of metabolism allows us to become more sensitive to our own bodily involvement with the world and other sentient beings with whom humans share the world.