Jonah King


Jonah King is an interdisciplinary artist exploring human/nonhuman relations and speculative futures. Their multifaceted world-building create immersive experiences to examine how ecological intimacies influence individual and social identity.

About

Film
Immersive
Lecture/Workshop
Performance
Sculpture
Web
Writing

Exhibitions

Image View




Jonah King
Projects:

Virtual Reality Experience & Installation

2024 

Honey Fungus is a sci-fi Virtual Reality installation that invites audiences to expand their sensory connection to the greater ecosystem. A sentient ecological presence—manifested as an omnipresent mycelial entity—guides participants on a journey through an entangled ecology.

Through a series of interactive vignettes inspired by the fungal reproductive cycle, users are invited to shape and transform the virtual environment. As they progress, they encounter spores that speak in poetic passages generated by AI, trained on a unique blend of Smithsonian field research and amateur erotica. In these spaces, the scientific merges with the sensual, unveiling the earth’s queer erotic potential and opening new possibilities for ecological stewardship and mutual care between human and non-human life.

This VR world embraces the idea that each of us possesses more than a singular, isolated body. As scholar Daisy Hildyard suggests, we have a 'second body'—one that exists through our interconnectedness with the world around us.

Completed October 2024


Exhibited as Work In Progress:
Bolivar Gallery, Lexington, Kentucky
Hesse Flatow, Expo Chicago
Myclological Film Festival, SVA Theatre, New York
GBA, Brooklyn
Benton Museum of Art, University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT
Urban Soils Institute, LMCC Arts Center, Governor’s Island, New York
RealMix 2022, Hyphen Hub, Colombia
Moss Arts Center, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA
NEW INC, NewLab, Brooklyn
VISUAL Carlow, Ireland

Producer
Alex Darby, Hybrid.Studio

VR Production
Pariah Interactive

Audio
Reading: Helga Hansen Logan
Sound Design: Frank Sweeney
Vocals: Anna Roberts-Gevalt
Mixing Engineer: Daniel Neumann
Contributing Writer: Sue Huang

Supported by
The Arts Council of Ireland / An Chomhairle Ealaíon
Stevens Institute 
Science Sandbox - Simons Foundation
NEW INC - New Museum

Lower Manhattan Cultural Council




2D Extract of VR Experience


Hybrid Drift

Geolocated Augmented Reality

2023

Hybrid Drift is a site-specific augmented reality (AR) project that invites the audience to experience the landscape of Itaparica as an extended technological/biological hybrid body.

Photogrammetry scanned organic and human-made objects will be reconfigured into floating beings that are visible to anyone using a smartphone.

Supported by the Sacatar Foundation



Honey Fungus: WebVR

WebVR

2022

A Social VR interpretation of Honey Fungus created by RealMix 0.2 - Art in Escadão.

This is a virtual event of the District Institute of the Arts - Idartes organized by its Line of Art, Science and Technology and by the Planetarium of Bogotá, which aims to recognize and encourage technological creation and experimentation through projects of Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented Reality (AR) and Mixed Realities (MX).

Supported by Hyphen-Hub, Newrona, Planetarium of Bogotá, Idartes.

Watch Walkthrough


Screen capture of WebVR.

Interactive Sculpture; Experimental Digital Pipeline, Depth Scanner, Photogrammetry Scanner, Python/3.js Pipeline, Networked media, steel, LCD screens, Motor, Wood, LEDs, 120” x 120” x 120”

2019

All My Friends Are In The Cloud is a series of video sculptures focused on intimacy and ephemerality within digital ecosystems. The project centers on aggregating an ever-expanding digital archive viewed via a pillar of video monitors. Images of people embracing gently spin and scroll upward like video clips in a social media feed. As the images ascend, they unfurl into a whirl of digital fragments. By the time each embrace reaches the top of the screen, its image has disintegrated completely.

Harvest Gyre expands this project, via an apparatus that allows members of the public to contribute their image to the archive and instantly wittness themselves unfurling on adjacent screens.

Exhibition
University Galleries of Ilinois State University

Creative Producer
Zach Buckley

Creative Technologists/ Fabrication
Luke Lowers , Hananosuke Takimoto, Bret Williams,   Jason Hoffman Studios


Supported by
Alice and Fannie Fell Trust
Illinois Arts Council Agency
Meyohas Gallery
Wonsook Kim College of Fine Arts





Bodies of Water

Video Installation, Theatre, Participatory

2019

Bodies of Water is a four-channel video exhibition and theatrical work created under the guise of Ira Dean, a fictional video artist who dissapeard 10 years ago on a voyage to the North Atlantic Garbage Patch. Every evening, the exhibition becomes a responsive theatrical performance led by curator Jan Kavanagh (Una Kavanagh), Ira Dean's former assistant and romantic partner...
The mystery of her disappearance has haunted Jan for the last decade. Was it an accident? A tragedy? A hoax? We join her as she searches for clues in the surviving artworks.

Developed in collaboration with Maeve Stone and Eoghan Carrick, with sound design by Frank Sweeny, Bodies of Water premiered at the Dublin Fringe Festival in September 2019.  

Co-created with Eoghan Carrick, Maeve Stone, Úna Kavanagh.
Performed by Úna Kavanagh
Video Performance - Maria Oxley Boardman, Maeve O’Mahony
Sound Design
Frank Sweeney
Costume Design
Maeve Stone
Lighting Design
Eoghan Carrick and Cillian MacNamara
Text compiled by 
Maeve Stone
Producer
Aisling Ormonde
Production Manager
Sean Dennehy
Stage Manager
Zoe Reynolds
Assistant Directors
Kevin Michael Reed, Annachiara Vispi
Set Construction
Andreas Kindler von Knobloch, Ivan Pelaez
Photography Alex Gill


Exhibition
Dublin Fringe 2019

Awards
Nominated for Best Audio Visual Design Dublin Fringe Festival Awards.


Supported by
The Arts Council of Ireland / An Chomhairle Ealaíon, Corn Exchange Theatre Company, Hesse Flatow New York, Dublin City Council, The Samuel Beckett Centre and MAKE Artist Residency. Developed at FRINGE LAB.