Live Systems
Live Systems gathers works built not from captured or archival material, but from data streams that never stop moving: encyclopedic edits, flight paths, seismic readings, orbital positions. Each piece functions as a live instrument rather than a finished image: what appears on screen is the world’s current state, refreshed continuously rather than composed once.
These projects ask what changes when the artist relinquishes control over content to an external, ongoing process. Composition becomes a set of rules for organizing whatever the world happens to be doing right now, the image is never finished because the data it depends on never stops arriving.
Research Questions
- What happens when a system’s material is a live, uninterrupted stream rather than fixed data?
- Can a feed of collective or planetary activity be read as composition rather than surveillance?
- How does continuous refresh change the viewer’s relationship to the image, from encounter to duration?
- What authorship remains when content is generated by the world’s ongoing activity rather than the artist’s selection?
Methods & Tools
Real-time data APIs (Wikipedia EventStreams, NASA, USGS, OpenSky Network, global AIS ship-tracking), browser-native rendering, generative typography, and live cartographic systems built for continuous refresh rather than static output.
