Unreal nature: Inside Mark Dorf’s digital vivariums and infinite livestreams

Inside NYC-based artist Mark Dorf’s project Late Pastoral, the ecological world is trapped in a rear-illuminated print. It’s real – but something is off, it’s been digitally altered, data-noise clutters images of glowing plant life. Shaped by the pervasive influence of technology, design and the rhythms of digital connectivity, even nature becomes at one with the unreal. Non-human nature is the main thesis of Mark’s wide-spanning digital art works, offering reflections on our digital age. Inspired by his urban city surroundings, where nature finds itself in unexpected places, Mark approaches nature dominantly through images and digital experience.

A central axis of Mark’s work is a long-term collaboration with ecologists Dr Paul CaraDonna and Dr Amy Iler, a relationship that has lasted over twelve years at a remote high-altitude field research station in the Colorado Rockies. It’s what fuels and roots his practice in the spectrum of art-science. “Nature is a subject of interest for me because everyone carries some relationship to landscape and non-human life. It is one of humanity’s oldest shared languages, perhaps second only to the body itself,” says Mark. “Technology enters my work because it is the fabric of contemporary reality; networks, automated systems and communication technologies have wholly altered and reshaped how we perceive and navigate the world.”

In Livestream.Earth, Mark immerses viewers in a continuous current of live streams sourced from across the internet. It’s literally live streams – of trickling water or rivers, all rendered through pixels. The viewer is drawn in, but held back by the limitations of the technological experience. His newest project Homecoming (which just premiered at the International Film Festival Rotterdam) is a reimagining of Homer’s The Odyssey channelled through algorithmic technology and “environmental uncertainty”. Relentless visual torrents turn the viewer’s gaze to distortions within artificial realities, reconsidering what it means to “belong in a time” – to a planet where home feels increasingly intangible. “I invite viewers to consider how digital materials shape their own lives and subsequently alter their understanding of the ‘natural’ world and beyond,” says Mark. “I am lucky in that a lot of my work is about perception so in effect I find creative influence from just being in and experiencing the world.”