Thomas Grogan

Residency report
During his residency Thomas first met with winemakers in the Lavaux region to observe current wine-growing trends before projecting into the future and designing a speculative fiction using Virtual Reality (VR).

This fictional piece, entitled Lunar-Sting, addresses the role of emerging wine-growing techniques as triggers for a repositioning of the human species within a threatened ecosystem. It takes the form of a 360-degree video that places the viewer in a near future and enables us to observe the transition from chemical to esoteric agriculture, and a world where conventional sciences are becoming more empirical. This immersive video work is framed by a landscape defined by its geological, cosmological, pastoral and literary history. It plays on the plurality of conscious elements, sentient and non-sentient, that contribute to this environmental architecture.

The use of VR in Thomas’s work refers to processes, now commonplace, that aim to facilitate remote immersion into a distant space or time. For example, VR is used during wine tasting sessions, enabling customers to see the place where the wine is produced while being elsewhere. These virtual immersion processes emphasize the importance of the relationship between agricultural products and the topography of their place of origin.

More specifically, Lunar-Sting addresses the relationship between landscapes in the unique Lavaux region of Switzerland, which is characterised by its abundance of grapevines and local vinicultural productions. Located in the heart of a Europe, where agriculture us threatened by climate change, Lavaux appeared as the ideal framework for this artistic project whose ambition was to address our current ecological situation.

Biography
Graduate in Industrial Design from ECAL and in Design Interactions from the Royal College of Art in London, Thomas Grogan has developed a research-oriented practice that examinates social issues around emerging technologies through sculpture, installation, video animation and digital platform. His visual language is strongly influenced by corporate branding, manufacturing and product hacking. His work has been exhibited at Baltan Laboratories in Eindhoven, Strelka Institute in Moscow and Biennale Internationale Design Saint-Étienne.