Utopian Garden: a Story-Based Immersive, Interactive Show Touring the World

Welcome to the world of edutainment: with Utopian Garden, flora&faunavisions expanded the world of immersive educational experiences. Utopian Garden is a project about the beauty we find in each other and the world around us: it is a thrilling, optimistic adventure that encourages participants to look deeper at themselves and at the exquisite detail of the natural world by exploring the connections between science, nature and art.

The exhibit is a joyful, colourful journey through a magnificently imagined immersive digital landscape where participants will bring their dreams to life by delving into the concepts around Utopia and playing through three gamified chapters.

Utopian Garden is a 45-minute story-based fully-immersive interactive experience driven by co-creation. Find yourself at the intersection of art, science and nature: participants co-create in an interactive adventure within an enormous digital projection. Following a guided, 3-part storyline, visitors actively build their journey through the Utopian Garden, interacting with dynamic projections in beautiful visual scenes focused on three gameified chapters.

A fully original, dynamic sound design paired with breathtaking digital art ensures that visitors are fully immersed in the incredible Utopian Garden adventure. Designed, created and owned by flora&faunavisions, Utopian Garden had its world premiere in Seattle/Tacoma on 19 May, hosted by Tacoma Arts Live, and is set to travel the world soon.

Told over three chapters, Utopian Garden explores how SCIENCE, NATURE, and ART can come together to create an exquisitely imagined digital paradise.

The SCIENCE chapter emphasizes curiosity and exploration and highlights how examining repeating patterns in nature can lead to new discoveries. Visitors can create and play with gameified ‘supershape’ elements based on mathematical and scientific formula.

NATURE explores the essential resources our planet offers while delving deeper into the gamiefied elements of the show. Four types of ‘seeds’ yield plants with different characteristics, each of which is key to our survival: medicine, food, material, and energy. Visitors are able to feed and care for their plants, which are in turn used to fuel the development of the Utopian Garden.

Finally, the ART chapter invites guests to explore how the subversion of perspective impacts our understanding of the world around us. Generated using AI-technology, the ART chapter is all about transformation: participants are able to manipulate and reconstruct shapes and plants as they build their Utopian Garden. Ultimately, the co-created Utopian Garden is unveiled as the final stage of the show.

After the show, visitors are invited to explore a workshop space with activities for all ages, with projects from making leaf rubbings to creating 'seed-bombs' and button-pins out of ecological materials. This hands-on element allows visitors to take their learnings and inspiration from the show and transform them into a physical product. Visitors are able to leave their projects behind and take creations from previous participants, re-enforcing the themes of sustainability, community, and connection explored in the show itself. Utopian Garden is an educational experience that teaches that we can take small steps to build a better, more sustainable world; the workshop space provides visitors with an opportunity to put that new knowledge into practice.

Utopian Garden is the latest and greatest addition to the growing field of ‘edutainment,’ which combines entertainment with learning opportunities. Built on the idea that we learn better when we have fun, this project combines immersive entertainment with educational elements, creating an inspirational experience that sparks joy and creativity.

This project is the culmination of over 25 years of experience in the interactive commercial space and borne from a deep-seated desire to offer a beautiful, thought-provoking and inspiring experience for everyone. “Utopian Garden invites visitors to embrace the hopeful, playful aspects of our connection with nature,” says Leigh Sachwitz, founder and CEO of flora&faunavisions. “We want to highlight imagination and inspiration, giving participants the opportunity to reconnect with the natural world and each other by exploring their connections to each other and the world around them.’

We are so grateful to Tacoma Arts Live for hosting us for the world premiere, to our partners at Wirmachenbunt for their incredible work on the interaction design, to freelance sound designer Julian Ganzer, and to Asako Fujimoto for her wonderful game design.