Client: Broward County Arts
Location: Fort Lauderdale, FL, United States
Completion date: 2022
Project Team
Artwork Concept and Production
Susan Narduli
Narduli Studio
Fabrication, Mapping
MAD Arts
Sound Design
Paris Young
Overview
States of Matter is an immersive video and sound environment that makes visible the complex phenomena of matter, as it invites us to find our place within.
The concept for the installation was inspired by emerging research in quantum physics.
Our understanding of matter has evolved from the four states that we observe in everyday life. We now know that there are intermediate states that don’t practice the same rules and exist beyond what we can perceive. Some of these exotic states have never been seen. New states are being discovered all the time. States of Matter is a poetic imagining of those states as a virtual experience.
States of Matter was commissioned by Broward Arts for IGNITE, its annual Light and Art Experience in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. The project was produced and shown at MAD Arts.
Goals
We created States of Matter as a multi sensory journey in which the viewer would be transported into a world of quarks, data and subatomic particles. The immersive video and sound experience envelops you within a virtual universe inspired by the beauty and complexities of our physical world. The experience is a seamless connection of space, viewer and content.
Process
Using the latest advancements in new media technologies, States of Matter is a generative construct, fueled by physics and informed by aesthetics. We created custom algorithms to produce simulations based on observable and unobservable states of matter. Technologically, the artwork was generated through a physics-based logic using gravity, wind, tension, combustion and particle and fluid dynamics.
The digitally constructed audio track was conceived in a 3 dimensional sound structure made up of layers that weave together. The first layer is ephemeral - as is the viewer is suspended in the void. The second layer is constructed of individual unique sounds inspired by the movement of the visuals. The third layer is the glue that creates smooth transitions.
Together, the visual and sound environment creates a poetic expression of the thought revolution that has been happening in physics, reconceptualized as a virtual experience.