Art & Science Underground

written by Elvira Crois

Ever gone down a cave? Experienced its cold humidity? Its endless darkness?

Or, when you turn on your headlamp, seen the finest of dust floating in the air, the silver sparkles of bacteria on the limestone?

Touched dark wet rock? Felt your body squeeze between immovable walls?

A month ago, I did.

Together with a team of Danish creators, Bob Lundgreen, Oscar Louw, Hannibal Glaser, Jan-Marc Heckman and Belgian geologists Sophie Verheyden, Serge Delaby, joined by their graduates Soraya, and Tolossa.

We went down the caves of Han and Hotton, which are situated in the forests of Southern Belgium.

Why were we there?

I was a bit of the odd one out – neither artist nor geologist. Yet, I belonged. I am a researcher in arts education and a dramaturg for participatory performance. I am a hyphen ( – ) between the world of arts and the world of academia. Artists and scientists are experts – experts in very different ways. They have their own way of thinking. They have their own way of communicating. And even when they speak the same language – e.g. English – often… they do not really speak the same ‘language’. Since I move in both worlds, I have slowly learned to speak both languages and can translate how people think and communicate. Even if I don’t know about the composition of stalactites or how to read the different layers of rocks, I know what is important in the world of academia and how artists can help scientists translate their knowledge to a wider audience, help to educate the general public. And so, I went caving, all in the name of Nyskaben.

Why did a group of Danish creators come to Belgium? It all started in November 2022, when I went to the Han caves with Bob, a graphic storyteller and visual artist who is developing a videogame with his partner Oscar, a programmer and technical lead on the project named ‘First to Feast’, an experimental videogame in which two-dimensional prehistoric cave art is projected onto a three-dimensional model of a cave wall, the visuals are supported by immersive storytelling in the form of shadow theatre and primitive human beatboxing to help the cave art come alive. While Bob tells stories with pictures and Oscar codes game mechanics, what they cannot create is a cave in 3D. For that, they need 3D modelers and environmental scanners, which is where Hannibal and Jan-Marc from Phenomenal Viborg, a virtual reality exhibition space, come in to help, and to make it all authentic and believable we need geologists like Sophie and Serge to inform us. And this is what our recent cave adventure was all about.

Why not in Denmark?

Being from Denmark and massively fascinated by historical caves carries one major problem… Denmark has no caves. Denmark has chalk mines, which are made and excavated by humans. Naturally formed caves? Alas. Denmark is too flat. The Earth never folded back onto itself to create mountains and erode its soft tissue into holes. And so, the team came to Belgium. Even though Belgium has no records of prehistoric cave paintings, we don’t know whether the conditions here didn’t support the preservation of paintings or if they simply weren’t created in the first place, and since we’re still fascinated by the caves themselves, we went to the caves of Han and Hotton.

The game is primarily intended to be fun. To develop this game, Bob and Oscar want to go places, look for scientific knowledge, speak to experts to inform their work, to find inspiration. The game won’t be scientifically correct but it will be scientifically informed.

Not our first time in Han

The day we went to Han in November, we were wondering out loud in the car if we would be able to talk to any scientists or experts working in the caves. Probably not, we thought, as it is a Saturday. And indeed, when we arrived and asked the guide if there were any experts around, the answer was ‘No’. So, we let ourselves be immersed by the caves’ smells and sounds and re-emerged, enriched by the experience. Also, we were curious about the small museum that displays some archaeological artefacts, such as golden objects that were found in the river that travels through the Han caves.

November is not high season for cave tourism, but the museum was packed! Not with tourists, but with scientists and cave explorers who had gathered for the annual days of scientific speleology. We were amazed. We had stumbled upon an almost fated source of expertise! And so we mingled among them, while they were drinking coffee and chatting away, to figure out if we could join the event. Some young cave explorers pointed out the organizer of the event: Sophie Verheyden, who works as a geologist at the Belgian national museum of natural sciences and my very own university, Vrije Universiteit Brussel. She was surprised by the interest of these unexpected tourists (us) and kindly invited us to join the lectures, which were in French – understandable for me, a little more challenging for someone from Denmark.

Creative Collaboration

Ever since, we have kept in touch, interested in each other’s work and dreaming of a collaboration that would bring all of our expertise together – a union of geology, arts, and education in the form of a VR experience which we call (for now) ‘Cave Walk’. This dream is why the Danish team travelled to Belgium: to experience the caves, to learn more about them, and… to scan them and import them into a VR environment. Hannibal and Jan-Marc were in charge of the scanning, while Oscar came in with a sound recorder to check the reverb of the caves with the aim of replicating their sonic atmospheres for the game and the VR experience.

The ideas are flowing and floating. Perhaps it should simply be a cave as an exhibition, giving people who cannot physically access the caves the opportunity to see the insides of a cave. Perhaps it could become a visualization of how the caves developed. Or perhaps it will be a playful narrative that takes the visitors on a journey through the geological and archaeological history of the cave. Maybe you could become one of the spelunkers stumbling upon the caves for the very first time. The next step is testing, experimentation and exploration of the scans to see what's possible, before acquiring the rights to use them commercially by finding a common goal with the cave owners.

What is next?

After spending time down there in the darkness, we came back eager for more. More mud on our hands and clothes. More sitting on rock, listening to silence and faint dripping of water. More experiments with scanning, seeing the light effect of a flame on the sharp-edged stones, discovering how sound reverberates through the cave halls. Could we take a step in the footprints of prehistoric man or become scientific adventurers like Sophie and Serge ourselves? We want to research and we want to learn. So, we are gathering our forces, preparing ourselves to dive in further and channel our abilities into developing what we imagine to be a great piece of art and education. Cave Walk: here we come.

Partners & Collaborators