The Pollination Game
A multi-sensory, multi-dimensional maze
This colourful maze is designed as a temporary installation for a major English landscape garden.
The concept combines art, horticulture, education, and play.
Exploring the Maze
Wandering through spacious gardens, you suddenly find yourself walled in by multi-coloured translucent panels, through which you can make out the outlines of other explorers. Your challenge; to find your way into the centre of the maze, losing yourself in a hypnotic field of colour.
Hidden Paths
What seems like a straightforward maze is in fact several mazes overlaid. At the centre of the maze, you are transformed into a giant insect, and through augmented senses are now able to follow a string of previously invisible trails. Different insects use different clues, leading to different plants.
Which plants match which insect? To find out you will have to use your senses.
Certain lilies attract Dung beetles with an unmistakeable scent. Since you have been transformed into a beetle, you follow a trail of scent through the maze, preferring the smell of manure to that of roses.
What attracts the Lotus Wasp?
An infrared camera shows us the answer: Heat!
As a Lotus Wasp, you follow a trail of heat by touching painted panels. Although the panels look alike, underneath they are made from different materials, to feel warm or cool to the touch.
Bees see flowers very differently to us - where we might see a single colour, they see a target, drawing them to a sweet reward of nectar.
As a bee, you are given special glasses which limit your sight, helping you see through disruptive patterns like the one on the right to find clues to guide you through the maze.
Geometry and Poetry
Seen from above, the maze has an intricate floral geometry; a shape known as a 'zonagon'. This layout is chosen both for its beauty and practicality; since the shape is composed from parallelograms, each wall is the same size, a module which allows the overall construction to be configured in various shapes and sizes to suit the site and budget. Materials are kept simple, with scaffold netting strung across arching 'croquet hoops'.
