Hearts and Minds: The Interrogations Project is an interactive virtual reality narrative performance made for the EVL’s CAVE2™ large-scale 320-degree panoramic virtual reality environment that visualizes stories of violence and the post-traumatic stress experienced by ordinary American soldiers who became torturers in the course of serving their country. During the American-led counterinsurgency and counter-terrorism campaigns in Iraq in the years after 11 September 2001, the torture and abuse of detainees was a commonplace tactic.

Gardens express ideas and social relations; some are sites where art and technology produce material realities, construct social narratives and visualize politics. Soybots: Mobile Micro-Gardens unite code, robotics and soybean plants (robotanics) to create a speculative responsive installation that suggests questions about climate, place and agriculture implicated in contemporary practices and values. Soybots utilize light sensors to track sunlight intensity or to locate LED grow lights. As self-pollinating organisms in combination with a light-seeking mobile robotic platform, soybean plants metaphorically address the continually evolving interdependence between humans and cultivated crops, as well as the underlying political nature of photosynthesis.

One of the main characteristics of cities is the large amount of people moving around. These flows are reflected in all the subways dashing through the city. With the authors’ work, they strive to give an impression of this pulse of the city. They present Shanghai Metro Flow, consisting of an animated visualization composed of three scenes, each giving another perspective into the metro network, and an accompanying poster showing subway line details. Each visualization combines established techniques with a highly aesthetic form in order to attract people to observe and dwell on different aspects of urban mobility.