Automated Landscape is a generative and responsive video work that explores how machines see. The work is inspired by the tracking systems used in technologies such as self driving vehicles - part of an ongoing research collaboration with Richard Pearce.

The work generates a constantly evolving landscape based on pre-captured environmental photogrammetry data. The system continuously samples elements from multiple datasets and injects them into the sequence, creating an evolving landscape in motion.

As visitors enter and move through the space, their proximity and motion causes fluid disturbances that interrupt and affect the landscape. Constructive interference between multiple viewers creates unexpected compositions with complexity far beyond the initial dataset.

The aesthetic of the work was inspired by a trip to the Engadin valley in Switzerland, a landscape that inspired Gerard Richter’s overpainting and palette knife techniques. Automated Landscape re-interprets these methods in a realtime, digital space, to produce hybrid compositions that alternate between definition and diffuse impressions.


Credits

Commission by: World of Volvo, Gothenburg, Sweden
Ben Kreukniet: Artist
Richard Pearce: Architect
Valtteri Laihanen: Executive Producer
Louis Mustill: Technical Director
Andy Woortman: Producer
David Li: Visual Programming
Willem Kempers: Creative Technologist
Vincent de Belleval: Lidar Implementation
Fabienne Sommer: Assistant Architect
Ben Lee: Graphic Design
Steven McInerney: Sound Design
With special thanks to Dionne Griffith