P I K O
A 360° VR immersive experience by Christopher Kahunahana, Lanakila Mangauil and Nicole Naone.
PIKO was on display in the Artists of Hawai’i NOW exhibition at the Honolulu Museum of Art in 2021. The piece is presented as a fully immersive experience projected in a geodesic dome with Virtual Reality.
PIKO (2021) immerses viewers in the cultural and natural context of Maunakea, contrasting Indigenous knowledge with the reductive gaze of telescopic development. The installation begins inside a telescope-shaped dome, where a simple projection of the stars replicates the view from Maunakea telescopes. Viewers then don a virtual reality headset to experience a 12-minute timelapse capturing a full 24 hours on Maunakea.
The immersive 360° experience reveals the interconnectedness of the mountain with its surrounding peaks, weather, and sounds, accompanied by cultural chants describing the landscape in real-time. These chants, used in the protests to protect Maunakea from desecration, underscore the depth of ancestral knowledge—more expansive and precise than the telescopes’ singular, skyward focus.
The work confronts the cost of the telescopes’ narrow view - the desecration of our sacred spaces.
Shot over the course of two years at 8,000 ft above sea level on island of Hawaiʻi at Puʻukoli, this is the first time Maunakea, Maunaloa and Hualalai have been filmed simultaneously in 360° presented in time-lapse, in both Virtual Reality and projection.
PIKO features four oli (chants) recited by Lanakila Mangauil. They are the first sixteen lines of the Kumulipo, ʻO Hānau Ka Mauna, He Mele No Kāne, and Maunakea Kuahiwi.