Waterfly Effect

Video installation ready for a live performance.
An iPad is used as an interface for manipulating a shader representing a digital fluid. An ocean.
Gestures are mapped for creating the sound and digital shape changing in real time, thanks to the connection between a sensor and the custom software.



With the arrival of the code, humans now can explore, analyse and recreate some of the most complex shapes and structures in the nature. This nature always has been from the very beginning of the creativity activity, one of the points in the artistical research.

Code, algorithm, shaders, textures and vertex behavior, are the bases to create this effects, from fractals to rendered images or from vectors to real time animations.

Exploring the code is like exploring the very inside of the things, its nature, origin and composition.

“Waterfly Effect”, takes the name from the well known expresion, “Butterfly Effect”, where an effect that occurs in one side creates a reflective effect in the other side. Some kind of wave that is expanding it influencial ratio.

With this artwork, Solimán López, continue working with the idea of digital art files and it´s structure, natural data and its interpretation in real time with interesting interfaces that creates the skin of what is behind everything right now, the technology.

The installation, also only in web version, reacts in real time with the ocean information, using this data as a trigger and input for a virtual sea, putting the shapes, colours and movements at the disposal of nature but with a correspondence in the virtual-digital world.

This interface, is created with an algorithm that simulates the waves of a sea, a virtual fluid. The values of liquid are altered thanks to the real time information obtained from different website that are collecting the data from oceans and seas in the world. The result is the alteration of the natural shapes, getting a new aesthetic thanks to the conversion of this information.

The installation shows in real time this conversions with a big videoprojection and a collection of small screens with particular values already set (presets).

The project also includes a live performance where the artist is manipulating the real data from the sea to get extreme visual effect, with associated sounds, creating an experience of what is real and unreal in the digital era.