1275K

A permanent generative media installation in the lobby of 1275K in Washington DC, running continuously since 2022. Nine audiovisual artworks rotate on a 1536 × 1750 portrait LED wall with camera-tracked interaction and realtime generative audio, managed by a self-recovering control system.

2022 · Washington DC, USA

Realtime Graphics · Generative Systems · Computer Vision · TouchDesigner · SuperCollider

Year
2022
Role
Generative art, system design and development
Location
Washington DC, USA
Tools
Realtime Graphics, Generative Systems, Computer Vision, TouchDesigner, SuperCollider

Updated 4 October 2026

1275K Washington DC — Third Nature on the portrait LED wall in the building lobby, mirrored walls extending the generative garden
Input Camera feed from the lobby (visitor positions and movement), time of day, and a weekly schedule defining which artworks play when
Perception Computer vision tracks people moving through the lobby and converts them into spatial data — position, size, velocity — that drives interactive scenes. A scheduling layer reads time and date to select the active artwork autonomously.
Generative System / Model A single TouchDesigner project holding nine self-contained generative artworks (terrain synthesis, particle swarms, slime-mold simulation, procedural architecture, fluid dynamics), each running at 50 fps on the GPU, plus four generative audio engines in SuperCollider
Behavior The system runs autonomously on a daily rhythm — switching artworks on schedule, falling into a composite night state at dusk, and recovering from failures via a watchdog that relaunches the show automatically. A web-based control panel allows manual override.
Output Nine rotating audiovisual artworks on a high-resolution portrait LED wall (1536 × 1750) in the building lobby, running continuously since 2022 with generative audio

1275K is a permanent generative media installation in the lobby of the 1275K building in Washington DC, running continuously since 2022. A single TouchDesigner system plays nine audiovisual artworks on a portrait LED wall (1536 × 1750), switching between them autonomously on a daily rhythm, generating its own soundtrack in realtime, and keeping itself alive with a self-recovering control layer.

The work is not a playlist of rendered videos but a set of living systems. Each artwork is a self-contained generative scene — the GPU renders exactly one at a time at full frame rate, while the others park at zero cost. There is no pre-rendered content; everything on the wall is computed live.

The artworks

Nine generative works rotate on the wall, including a composite night state the system enters at dusk:

  • Scape — generative terrain: mountainous landscapes that are constantly regenerated, presenting new geology as the system evolves.
  • Third Nature — a virtual forest garden of digitally rendered plants that sway gently, simulating a natural setting within the lobby.
  • Emergence — the interactive piece: a camera detects people in the lobby and portrays them as digital brushes that emit multicolored particles, turning visitors into co-authors of the composition.
  • Hypertecture — an ongoing digital construction of virtual architecture: abstract sculptures forming within a constantly changing environment.
  • Physarum — a slime-mold agent simulation: thousands of agents deposit and follow trails, growing electric filament rosettes out of the black.
  • Blobtracker — the room becomes the input: tracked bodies push through the composition, and each tracked person gets a voice in the soundtrack — height maps to pitch, position to pan, size to tone.
  • Fluid, Particlecloud, Nightshow — curl-noise fluid dynamics, flocking particle fields, and the composite night state.

Autonomy and control

The installation is designed to run unattended. A scheduling layer selects artworks on a weekly rhythm and moves to a night state at dusk. A watchdog monitors the render process with a heartbeat — if the show crashes, it is relaunched automatically and the previous scene is restored. A web-based control panel allows manual override from any device on the network, with an interlock so two operators can never conflict.

The entire system is built around a single principle: state, not code. The active artwork is one value; any component — the scheduler, the panel, the dusk timer — can write it, and the wall state is always readable. This makes the system transparent, recoverable, and extensible: new artworks can be added without touching the switching logic.

System Diagrams

System architecture diagram — operators, web-control service, TouchDesigner show, generative audio and outputs
System architecture — one PC running TouchDesigner (the show), a Python control service (schedule, watchdog, preview), and SuperCollider (generative audio), meeting at two narrow interfaces
Audio routing diagram — file soundtracks, SuperCollider engines, OSC control, and the TouchDesigner audio chain
Audio routing — file-based soundtracks for scenes 1–4, live generative SuperCollider engines for scenes 6–9, and the switch selection acting as the audio gate

Images

Third Nature — dense synthetic foliage in blues, teals and orange filling the 1275K LED wall
Third Nature — a virtual forest garden of digitally rendered plants
Scape — ice-blue generative terrain on the 1275K LED wall, reflected in the polished lobby floor
Scape — constantly regenerated mountainous terrain
Emergence — vivid pink and blue painterly composition on the 1275K LED wall, mirrored walls reflecting the artwork
Emergence — camera-tracked visitors become particle-emitting brushes
Hypertecture — abstract virtual architecture taking shape on the 1275K LED wall in the building lobby
Hypertecture — ongoing construction of abstract virtual architecture
Scape — magenta and gold karst mountains regenerated as generative terrain
Scape — karst ridgelines and valleys from the constantly regenerated terrain
Scape — deep blue generative landscape on the 1275K LED wall, reflected across the dark lobby floor
Scape — detail of the evolving terrain in deep blue

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