The piece consists of an architectural model of a soil-remediation process (developed by Gregory Rubin for his master's thesis in architecture) augmented with responsive video and sound. A time-lapse video was created of cleansing and drying experiments over the period of a month and is projected down onto the model itself, giving the effect that the model is evolving on a time-scale faster than our own. Synchretic, synaesthetic, sound was composed to follow the ebb and flow of the time-lapse video and is looped in sync. Movement, captured from a camera above, causes local responses including simultaneous timbral and temporal shifting and blurring in both the video and sound. The model is periodically filled with water, which forms small streams and pools as it flows through sand and around clay foundations. Visitors manipulate not just the computational media, but the physical model itself. Like playing with mud puddles on a dirt road in the rain, they can add material (sand) and shape the flows. The virtual and the real are thus phenomenologically fused to form a hybrid computational-physical material.
Time-Sand: Responsive Microcosm from Morgan Sutherland on Vimeo.
Exhibitions
- There is No Soundtrack, CART356B final show, Concordia EV-6.720, April 9, 2009
- Computation Arts Graduate Certificate show, Concordia EV-6.720, April 30, 2009
- Exposed 2009: Social Body, Art Mur, May 12-23, 2009
Credits
Time-Sand is a collaboration between Morgan Sutherland (concept, responsive video), Gregory Beck Rubin (concept, model), and Aaron Munson (responsive sound). Time-Sand uses software developed by Jean-Sébastien Rousseau, Michael Fortin, and Yoichiro Serita at the Topological Media Lab.
Support came from the Topological Media Lab, FASA Concordia, and Hexagram Concordia. Thanks to Sha Xin Wei, Chris Salter, Jean-Sébastien Rousseau, and Harry Smoak for guidance.
Alternative documentation can be found at the Topological Media Lab calligraphic video research page.
