NOW WE'RE HERE

Now We're Here is an interactive audio-visual experience inspired by the texture, sound and development of the Abu Dhabi desert terrain. This playful piece invites the user to connect with the natural environment in both a rhythmic and digital way. 

For this project I collaborated with artist and technologist Craig Protzel.

Installation, NYU Abu Dhabi Arts Center Gallery, November 2015

To experience the project online please follow this LINK

THE MAKING OF NOW WE'RE HERE

Concept:

The idea for the piece was to digitally simulate the pouring out of sand as if it was a water tap. The digital "sand" would accumulate, making a pile and fill up a space until it reached an absolute limit before resetting. While the sand poured out of the tap, we created opportunities for interactive play emulating a digital sandbox. Each of the opportunities to play with the piece would incorporate themes we wanted to explore such as development, construction, and artificial versus natural.

Technical:

Content:

We wanted to create a piece that would incorporate the natural environment, sights and sounds of the desert and the abundance of sand as a natural resource. We collected local images and sounds of rocks, sand and gravel.

The project was made using p5 javascript programming. There were many late nights spent writing the code. Talk about some of the issues with the code here?

The project was installed in the gallery space. We installed a pipe that exactly matched the existing pipe so that it blended seemlessly into the room. The pipe was meant to represent a tap into the sand as a natural resource.

MORE HERE

We had a lot of issues with the code in particular getting the sand to drop onto the image in a way that made it look like it was growing. We went through numerous iterations of the sand pile before settling on one that we felt worked best.