Artist/ Producer
- Far Away from Far Away
- Seven Deadly Digital Sins
- Bear 71
- Devil’s Toy Redux
- This Land
- Charity
- Corpus
- Interactive
- Short Film
- Current Projects
About
Bear 71
Originally launched in 2012, Bear 71 is an acclaimed interactive multi-user online experience told from the point of view of an omniscient female grizzly bear―dubbed “Bear 71” by the park rangers who track her. Created by Jeremy Mendes, Leanne Allison and the NFB, Bear 71 explores how we coexist with wildlife in the age of networks, surveillance, and digital information.
Leanne Allison discovered the story while sifting through thousands of trail camera images used by park rangers to observe wildlife within the park boundaries. She paired with artist Jeremy Mendes who was struck by how much they looked like the surveillance photos taken of us everyday at bank machines and 7-11 stores, and wasn’t it odd that we were looking at nature through the same lens?
Bear 71 is the true story of a female grizzly bear monitored by the wildlife conservation offices from 2001 – 2009.
She lived her life under near constant surveillance and was continually stressed by the interactions with the human world. She was tracked and logged as data, highlighting how our growing dependence on technology divorces us from nature. 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.
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.”
- Gold Cyber Lion - Cannes 2012
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Art Directors Club Canada 2012
- Digi Award Best Web Series Fiction December 2012
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Communications Arts Annual 2013
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Webby Award - Best Netart 2013
- FWA Site of the Year 2012