Energy Share — ARCO 2018

An interactive installation created for ARCO 2018 that recreates the aurora borealis through body movement, while showing live weather data from the parts of the world where the phenomenon actually occurs.

The point was to bring together two things that rarely share the same room: an image that reacts to the visitor and a layer of data that reminds you the same sky is happening thousands of kilometres away right now. When someone walked into the space, their silhouette pushed the bands of light around, as if they were moving the aurora with their hands. Alongside, coordinates and temperatures from Arctic Circle weather stations shifted in real time.

Under the hood it's a TouchDesigner pipeline. The aurora is drawn procedurally — no pre-recorded animations — from two inputs: the silhouette read by computer vision and live meteorological data. Neither input ever repeats, so every visit was a slightly different version of the piece, conditioned by the person in the room and by whatever the air was doing up north.