A spatial sculpture of cardboard, light and computation
“Materie Vie” is a spatial sculpture built from corrugated cardboard, paper, light and computation. Its folded structure creates an organic, maze-like volume, with light and moving reaction-diffusion patterns contained within it.
A camera tracks the hands of visitors and uses their movement to disturb the evolving pattern. The sculpture therefore responds to the presence of the viewer, not through a predefined interface, but by altering the dynamics of the system itself.
The cardboard is not a support for the projection; it is the body of the work. Its geometry determines the space of the image, what can be seen and from where, and how light moves through the structure.
A sculpture rebuilt for each place
“Materie Vie” is assembled on site from locally available corrugated cardboard and paper, without glue. Its structure adapts to the architecture and materials of each location, so no two installations are physically identical.
The work can be dismantled, rebuilt and reused.
Generative system
The sculpture runs a real-time reaction-diffusion system developed in p5.js and GLSL on a Raspberry Pi 5. The visitor’s movement becomes a disturbance within the system, producing changes that propagate through the evolving pattern.
Snapshots from the code
Related projects
“Materie Vie” develops the physical and computational system first explored in Soliton.
Read more about Soliton Interactive Installation
