Index

The Pond is a multimedia installation that seeks to reimagine and provide an alternate version to the diorama often seen in natural history museums. Fusing mimicry and speculative fiction, the exhibition explores and exposes the various nuanced artificial elements often concealed in the traditional presentation of dioramas, making commentary on the exploitative notions that the diorama unintentionally conveys. Using augmented reality, large scale video projection, multi-screen video, immersive sound, a holographic display, and inkjet prints, The Pond mirrors the complex multi-layered artifice inherent in traditional dioramas in order to create the illusion of a pond ecosystem, populated with hybrid creatures, inviting viewers to explore the intricate interplay between human-made environments and the natural world while challenging our understanding of nature.

Supported by MOMENTA Biennale de l’image and RBC Foundation’s Emerging Artist Grant. The Pond premiered at the 18th edition of MOMENTA Biennale de l’image.

Description from the artist’s website: The Pond [2023] – Bianca Shonee Arroyo

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2022

002

2022

Lagunas

Laura Colmenares Guerra

#3Dart

#Adaptation

#Anthropocene

#dystopia

#installation

2022

Lagunas is a fictional & interactive installation, a triptych between memory, death, and water. Prehistoric landscapes are the scenario for the chronicles of a drowning man, disclosing the rarity of water on Planet Earth.

Lagunas is dark, still, and somber. Silent landscapes, dying fish, the water of a thick dark lake, seaweed and mud cover the depths. Below the surface, a man drowns. From the abyss, archaic rocks are attracted by magnetic forces. Drilling machines emerge, turning between the cliffs, intercepting the stones in levitation and destroying the rocks, which fall back into the water. The abandoned body of the man, receives the impacts of the stones, wakes up, strives to save his life, and loses consciousness…

The drilling machines embody the hydraulic fracturing techniques used to extract fossils fuels from the shale rock of the Earth. The water contamination process consequence of the hydraulic rupture is visualized from close-up animations to larger-scale images where the fracking fluid travels through the pipelines reaching the groundwater. High-pressure impulsions cause the nearby shale rock to crack, creating fissures where fuels flow into the surface of the Earth, while rests of toxic fluids contaminate the water of the subsoil of the Earth.

Three water valves are used in Lagunas as interactive devices. When the water valves are rotated, image and sound are activated. Further than interacting with image and sound events, the level/amount of interaction of the participants is continuously analyzed. An interactive scenario adapts to the behavior of the spectators, allowing variations and deviations on the fictional order. The water tabs are used all along the experience as triggers & controllers for the interactive scenario of the installation.

The lakes and mountain landscapes have been shoot in Colombia, in the “Chingaza Natural National Park”, a natural reserve located in the Eastern Cordillera of the Andes, in the northeast of Bogotá. The underwater images were filmed in a lake in the Netherlands, using a high-speed cinema camera (Phantom-Flex) and shoot at 300fps. The landscapes & underwater images are composited with 3D (CGI) generated images.

Description from the artist’s website: Lagunas | Laura Colmenares Guerra (ulara.org)

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2018

003

2018

Meandering River

Onformative Studio

#alghoritm

#Artistic research

#installation

#rivers

#sonification

2018

“Meandering River” is an audiovisual installation comprised of real-time visuals generated by an algorithm and music composed by an A.I. This digital artwork makes change perceivable by creating a unique awareness of time. Spanning over multiple screens, the piece reinterprets the shifting behaviours of rivers by visualizing and sonifying their impact on the surface of the earth.

The audiovisual installation creates a bird’s eye view of a landscape. This orientation conceptualizes a new human perspective on space and time, in an attempt to decipher the unpredictable patterns. By experiencing it from an influential perspective, the real-time visuals demonstrate what is happening on a larger scale.

Based on a bespoke algorithm, the rippling and oscillating movement inherent in the generated imagery, provides a vantage point that transforms an understanding of progress, to examine the rhythm of natural forces. As the evolving patterns of “Meandering River” emerge, the viewer is left with a humbling sense of the unpredictability of change and the beauty of nature.

Over decades, flowing river structures shift as water erodes the ground, forms a riverbed, and carries soil deposits with it to other locations. The effect of depositing and eroding the landscape changes colour formations depending on the shade and quality of the ground.

By investigating academic and scientific research that examine this natural phenomenon, different algorithms were developed to authentically simulate the unpredictable movements of rivers and reinterpret their organic structures, rhythmic fluctuations and visual materiality.

During the visual research and development process, a bespoke rendering pipeline was created, allowing an iterative visual exploration and composition. Various shaders and algorithms were applied in real-time as graphical layers to simulate natural appearances such as hydraulic and thermal erosion, oxbow lakes and meander scars. Additional post-processing passes like surface materiality, vegetation and lighting enabled the final landscape compositions to reach the visual granularity and quality intended for the work.

Description from the artist’s website: onformative — Meandering River

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2009

004

2009

Mississippi River Oxygen

Breakfast Studio

#datavisualisation

#installation

#interactive

#kinetic

#Mississippi

2009

Mississippi River Oxygen is a kinetic artwork that showcases
the real-time data visualization of the oxygen levels in the iconic
Mississippi waterway, which is lowering due to climate change.
The artwork displays more or fewer bubbles, dynamically
changing in size and quantity, depending on the current oxygen
content in the water.

In addition to the data visualization, when you approach the
artwork, you see your reflection in the piece, making you part of
the story and art. This interactive feature enhances the
artwork’s ability to engage its audience and inspire action
towards environmental preservation.

Description from the artist’s website: Mississippi River Oxygen by BREAKFAST (breakfaststudio.com)

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