SXSW 2022: Environmental art

The award-winning creative studio ScanLAB Projects has created a haunting installation for SXSW’s Art Program that provides high-fidelity evidence of humanity’s impact on our fragile world.

FRAMERATE is a multi-screen experience that tells stories of landscapes via time lapse 3D LiDAR scans, taken over the course of two years at different locations across Britain.

As time flicks by, the scans reveal in precise detail the changes to our coastal, rural, and urban environments that normally go unnoticed: cliffs erode; plants burst into life and then decay; quarries are excavated; cows are relentlessly milked; and human traffic perpetually circulates like ghosts.

WEB FRAMERATE Pub03 4 K — Image courtesy of FRAMERATE.

The piece invites viewers to see time on many different scales, with the goal of shifting perspectives. Alongside the mesmeric visualisations, FRAMERATE also offers empirical evidence of humanity’s extractive and destructive impact on the world. So much so, that the data gathered for the project is already being used by researchers across academic institutions in the UK, including the British Geological Survey.

“We want our audiences to get lost inside these beautiful datasets, to be overwhelmed by the catastrophic retreat of an entire cliff in front of them, and to follow the movement of a single pebble on the beach beneath their feet”, said creator Matthew Shaw, co-founder of ScanLAB.

Premiered at COP26, the installation is a preview of a larger body of work entitled The Pulse of the Earth, scheduled to launch in 2022/2023.

Main image courtesy of FRAMERATE.