Bear71 VR: An Interactive Documentary

Bear 71 is the story of a female grizzly bear monitored by the wildlife conservation offices from 2001 – 2009.

The bear lived her life under near camera surveillance and was continually stressed by the interactions with the human world. She was tracked and logged as data, reflecting the way we have to see the world around us through Tron and Matrix-like filters, qualifying and quantifying everything, rather than experiencing and interacting.

Leanne Allison sifted through thousands of photos from motion-triggered cameras from this project. The grainy images gathered over the past 10 years by various scientists reveal the hidden life of the forest, played out by the animals and humans – including Bear 71 – captured covertly on film.

Bear 71’s story is consistently played out in places all over the globe where humans and wildlife intersect – from cougars in Nova Scotia to Bears in suburban Vancouver to Bear culls in New Jersey.

It highlights how our growing dependence on technology divorces us from nature, even while allowing us to keep closer tabs on it. It raises questions about how we view nature, how we view ourselves in relation to technology and nature, and the nature and validity of surveillance both in the wild, and within human society.

Chances are, your picture gets taken dozens of times a day without you really knowing it. This type of surveillance is done so that you don’t steal gas, steal a car, or steal a kiss.

Life was not so different for this bear. She was trapped, collared, and given a number at the age of 3.

For 11 years, she suppressed her natural instincts, and survived in a maze of roads, towns, trains, tourists, and a barrage of tempting smells she had to learn to ignore.

Bear 71 reimagines the bear’s story from an omniscient narrative vantage point. She speaks directly to us, and her insight forms a bridge between millions of years of evolution in the wild, and a few decades of technological advances that have infiltrated nearly every part of our lives.

She’s still wild, and still speaks the language of the forest, writing her story on the trees.

At the same time, she can take stock of the various technologies that affect her, and critically assess human efforts to “manage” wildlife in an area where grizzly bears are barely hanging on.

Turning the lens of technology on itself, Bear 71 examines the story of the bear through the digital interactive medium, creating a vivid technological interpretation of nature for us to explore, and for the bear to inhabit as she tells her story.

We’re watching her. She’s watching us. And at the same time, we’re watching ourselves.

In the words of the bear, “Sometimes it’s hard to say where the wired world ends and the wild one begins.”