concept
Inspired by the folktale about the king ruined by his lust for gold, we built an interactive experience highlighting how our planet has changed as humans have impacted the Earth's icecaps.
Two 10 ft. tall panels and a golden pyramid were set up on opposite ends of a dark room. Satellite footage of Greenland's icecaps was projected onto the panels and programmed to be controlled by anyone walking around the pyramid. Depending on your distance to the pyramid, the icecaps evolve to reflect human impact.
process
Aanvik and I wanted to create a projection piece that involved Touch Designer somehow. The concept kept evolving from a piece that changed based on camera movement to what we wound up creating, which was a statement on the environment.
While researching, we found satellite footage from Google that spanned from 1984-2021. Various parts of the world showed different levels of environmental change, but by far the one that drastically changed the most was Greenland’s footage. We compiled the imagery of each year to react to the input from the webcam on Touch Designer. Aanvik programmed a workflow on Touch Designer that made this possible, while I was responsible for thinking of the concept and creating the companion process video.
