#1391: OTHERLAND: Embodied and Relational Epistemologies Through East Asian Landscape Aesthetics

OTHERLAND is an interactive installation that invites participants to step into a projected North American landscape, transforming static viewing into an embodied encounter. Within a 3m × 3m immersive environment, participants' gestures generate rippling waves of light that respond dynamically to movement. Based on a 2024 prototype by Glorie Gao's team, the installation draws on East Asian landscape aesthetics, in which water symbolizes philosophical depth and relational harmony. Real-time ambient sounds amplify this multisensory dialogue, challenging hierarchies privileging visual or cognitive knowledge over somatic and relational knowing (Abrahamson, 2014; Glenberg, 2010).