Do I hear the whisper of emptiness?

Mobile App as Interface for Net-Based Installations

Fly through a constantly changing Zen garden and discover the principles of mindfulness. With your smartphone or tablet, you can explore an immersive virtual world in a dynamic 3D environment. The gentle movements of the leaves in the wind invite you to consciously experience and mindfully perceive the present moment. By touching the leaves and branches, you set them into motion. Inspiring wisdom, which gradually appears, helps you to experience and understand the world in new ways. When you click on these words of wisdom, they linger for a moment before disappearing. The virtual environment is infinite and can be navigated interactively in all directions. The sounds specially composed for the app respond to all these movements and navigation modes. In the exhibition space, the mobile app’s screen can be projected onto one or more walls. We invite you to experience and understand the moment, nature, and the world as a harmonious symbiosis.

Trees mobile app download (free)

Background
There’s a moment I’ll never forget. It was a quiet afternoon in Eglisau. The kind of stillness that wraps around you like a blanket you didn’t know you needed. I sat by the Rhine river, as I often do, and watched the water flow by – so calmly, so effortlessly. I thought, “This is peace.” But then, as I sat there, I heard the distant hum of a chainsaw cutting through the silence. The more I resisted it, the louder it seemed. But when I accepted it, it became very quiet. A part of me wanted to get upset, but I stopped. I just sat and listened. Funny thing was, the sound didn’t ruin my peace at all. It didn’t disturb the quiet of the river or the soft rustling of leaves. It was simply there.

I realized something that day: peace doesn’t come from the absence of noise or chaos. It comes from being in the moment, as it is, without judgment. We often think of peace as something we achieve, like a goal to be reached, but in truth, it’s already here—like the river, like the chainsaw, both existing side by side. Peace doesn’t require the world to be perfect. It simply asks us to stop adding stories to what is.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying you shouldn’t have an opinion or feel frustrated sometimes. Life’s messy. But perhaps the trick is in noticing when the frustration starts to own you, instead of the other way around. That’s when you begin to notice how restlessness is like a storm in a teacup—always brewing in our minds, but it’s just an illusion. You could spend a lifetime chasing it down, but the more you chase it, the more it slips away. It’s like trying to catch the wind in your hand.

So, I try to remind myself: when my mind starts to swirl with all sorts of thoughts, I let it swirl. I don’t need to stop it. I don’t need to control it. And, strangely, the more I let go of trying to control the storm, the calmer it becomes. Maybe that’s the trick? I find the following texts helpful, which I am constantly revising and adding to.

Practice