Hag/Gwrach is an artist-led research and development project exploring how immersive technologies can deepen our relationship with ancient woodland environments. Developed through a cross-Celtic collaboration between artists Hannah McPake, Mydd Pharo and Joshua Pharo across Wales and Cornwall, the work investigates how augmented reality, spatial audio and responsive light can be woven into living landscapes to reveal hidden layers of myth, ecology and erased knowledge. The project is supported through Immersive Arts’ Experiment funding.
Inspired by Celtic rainforest ecologies and stories of women and healers whose knowledge was suppressed during the witch trials, the project centres on the figure of the Hag/Gwrach — a mythic presence connected to land, memory and forgotten forms of care. Through this lens, folklore, landscape and emerging technology intersect to create new forms of immersive storytelling.
Hag/Gwrach
She calls you into the woods. A sentient landscape alive with ancient memory, where fungi sing, trees breathe, and knowledge buried by witch-hunts flickers back to life.
This phase focuses on experimentation rather than a finished performance. We are prototyping woodland encounters where audiences follow a trail through the forest, discovering fragments of sound, projection and augmented reality embedded in the landscape. Technologies respond to movement and presence — transforming fungal signals into sound, revealing hidden histories, and allowing the forest itself to feel responsive and alive.
Through this process, we are exploring how immersive technologies can sit gently within fragile ecosystems, and how audiences respond when they become active seekers within the landscape. This research will inform the development of a future large-scale immersive work bringing together myth, ecology and technology.
“The Hag/Gwrach calls you into the woods – a landscape alive with memory.”
