Synthetic Sea
marcus • July 5th, 2007
On a screen hanging in space a green lazer draws a breathing image of a sea. Created from multiple undulating waveforms (that reduce in perpective) this is not, however, an illustration of a sea but in fact an artificial sea in itself. If the weather outside the building is stormy the onscreen ‘sea’ becomes violently agitated, if there is no wind the image becomes a series of only slightly shimmering straight lines. As the tide rises in the ‘real’ sea, the automaton sea will also rise higher filling the screen with its ghostly line drawn waves.
Beneath the screen, various read-outs and displays show weather data that is collected from various weather gauges outside the building. As the wind-speed (shown on a numeric display) increases the wave forms will become more agitated, as the wind direction changes, the shape of the wave forms responds, as the pressure drops one wave form will enter a new state. One numeric display shows the current position of the moon, another reads meters plus and minus – the current level of the tide.
