Did you ask the river?

Playing with the idea of self – and selfishness – acclaimed visual artist Joan Ross’ latest interactive experience is knowingly superficial, exploring what VR can achieve when put to untoward ends. Deploying humor and bending space, this is a multilayered critique of colonial history, globalization, and capitalism, taking a cynical and incisive look at their effect on our environment. The viewer becomes an active participant, and therefore complicit. Recognition that our actions have consequences, we are prompted to think more deeply about the repercussions of our actions and our lack of communion with nature: ‘Did you ask the river?’