The Rite of Ten Winds, 2026 (work in progress)

interactive VR experience

The Rite of Ten Winds is a new interactive VR experience rooted within an unfolding dialogue around the climate crisis, natural processes of greenhouse gas removal (GGR), and the technologies that seek to expedite these processes. Toggling across scales, technologies, and temporalities, it critically examines contemporary GGR projects that are undergoing research and development in the UK.

This speculative future imagines a symbiosis between science and spirituality, nature and technology. These new relationships unfold through a series of five communal purification rituals, drawing inspiration from Zen Buddhist and Shinto practices where nature is a cultural force that reframes how we inhabit and protect the natural world. 

Each ritual examines the key role of the more-than-human in GGR across five different virtual environments: a basalt stone circle, a raceway pool, a pyrolysis chamber, a peatland cauldron hole, and a new woodland. Through ceremonial experiences, slower natural rhythms are compressed into faster technological timescales, accelerating the activities of algae, bacteria, fungi, crops, trees, and rocks. Participants gather at sunset to enact these new ways of interacting with the land through acts of creation, destruction, and renewal. 

These rituals are positioned as part of a crucial cultural shift, which imagines how sacred places and practices can reorient human motivations toward long term ecological stewardship. They propose a future where the biosphere and technosphere converge to reawaken a lost kinship with the earth and combat the climate crisis.

Credits

Artist: Yambe Tam

Software Development: Albert Barbu

Music Composition: Dr. Seán Clancy

Commissioned by the UK Greenhouse Gas Removal Hub (CO2RE), University of Oxford. Supported by the Natural Environment Research Council.

With thanks to Paul Rouse, Natasha Matirosian, Mikal Mast, and Emily Cracknell.

Research Consultants:

Dr. David Beerling FRS FLSW, University of Sheffield

Jonny Ritson, University of Manchester

Lucas Coppens, Imperial College London

Dr. Rodrigo Lesdama Amaro, Imperial College London

Dr. Judith Thornton, University of Aberystwyth

Colin Snape FRSE, University of Nottingham