The Listening Field
Exolore more about Listening Field here.
In August 2026, Open Flame co-founders Dominik Vinko and Ella Shaw helped develop the concept and creative execution of The Listening Field’s installation at the Digital Bloom Festival in Houghton, Michigan, working alongside our family non-profit, The Manas Collective, and its collaborators.
The installation transformed part of the Carnegie Museum of the Keweenaw into an immersive journey built around a simple sunflower seed.
Watch this video to get a better feel for Listening Field experience in Michigan.
Visitors moved through a series of spaces combining film, projection and immersive interactive technology. Beginning with a physical seed placed in their hand, participants were gradually invited into an experience that explored the relationship between the digital world, the body, and the natural environment.
At the center of the installation was an interactive space where movement became part of the artwork. Participants planted their physical seed into the earth before watching a digital seed appear on screen and grow in response to the movement of their bodies. Every seed planted equals a sunflower on a real field in Wisconsin, and contributes not only to personal healing, but to land regeneration and collective regeneration through this work.
Dominik and Ella contributed across the creative development and execution of the experience, helping shape the visual direction, films, physical environment, installation, and overall journey through the space.
The project brought together many of the things we care about at Open Flame: visual storytelling, immersive art, nature, human connection, and using technology in ways that invite people to become more present rather than more distracted.
For us, it was also a chance to work closely with our family non-profit, The Manas Collective and a collaborative creative studio, Ayahi Create and help turn an ambitious idea into something people could physically step inside, participate in, and experience for themselves.
