Presence / Absence

An immersive data experience.

This installation transforms a space into a living, breathing canvas where data becomes art. Through real-time processing it captures a building's natural rhythm — its network pulses, physical movements and spatial flows — and translates them into an evolving atmosphere of light and shadow.

Inspired by contemporary light artists and cutting-edge AI technology, Presence/Absence renders invisible data streams visible through an abstract language of colour and motion. Golden halos blend with deep shadows while ethereal blues drift through the space, creating an ever-changing composition that responds to the building's actual usage patterns.

The installation processes multiple data streams:

• physical movement through reception areas
• network activity levels
• building access patterns
• WiFi connection density

Each data point influences the visual environment: warmer colours intensify with higher activity, motion blur responds to data flow rates, and shadowed forms shift with physical movement patterns. Yet the result is never literal — instead, it creates an atmospheric experience that transforms technical data into pure spatial energy.

The piece sits at the intersection of data visualization, ambient computing and contemporary art. It offers a way to experience a space's digital dimension while maintaining complete privacy and abstraction, and it can be scaled and customised to a specific space and its data.