Thomas Pellerey Grogan

Lunar-Sting (original title: Piqûre-Lunaire)

Installation with 360° stereoscopic video (12’25”)

“Lunar-Sting”, La Becque, La Tour-de-Peilz (CH), 2019; “Open-Studios”, Space, London (UK), 2019

Dimensions: w.4.5 x h.2 x d.3 m

Materials: cherry wood, polyethylene, nylon, VR headsets

A VR video essay, entitled Lunar-Sting (original title: Piqûre-Lunaire), explores the role of emerging winemaking techniques as a means of repositioning the human species within a threatened ecosystem. Created after being awarded the first EXECAL residency at La Becque, Switzerland, the speculative fiction incorporates research in the Lavaux region in order to project a possible future for the wine and other agricultural industries, incorporating geological, cosmological, and literary elements of the same space. VR processes, now commonplace in hospitality and tourism sectors, aim to facilitate remote immersion within a distant site or time. These virtual processes emphasise the importance of connection between agricultural products and the topography of their place of origin, from an environmental and economic point of view. The work explores the potential of VR as a technology bridging the virtual and physical.