www.peopleaslandscape.net

People as landscape  is a real-time 3d landscape on the internet.

A seemingly endless algorithmic landscape/ground is generated in this digital space. A video loop of a ground filmed somewhere on earth is broadcasted on this mathematical ground. A set of 9 audio loops created by sound artists are played endlessly on an orthogonal grid that is drawn through this landscape. The user can choose different sets of audio loops or different videos of grounds in a library when entering this landscape.

The Internet user, walking through this space, leaves a trace behind him : a geolocalization icon, his pseudonym and the date of his passage. His chat messages are then inscribed like trunks shaping the landscape. Leaving this space, the avatar generates a black monolith, architecture of departure. The Internet user, leaving a lasting mark in this virtual world, is a space creator as well as a hunted creature .

We then watch the confrontation of a seemingly endless digital world, and pieces of scenery (videos and sound textures) that are finished and alive. The utopia of the “new virtual worlds” engorged with freedom, rubs today with the reality of bodies, the movements of the actors, and all the first concrete components of life.

This virtual world is multi-user, and a chat allows to communicate with other participants. Internet users, according to their choice of ground texture and sound environments, can chat with other avatars who have simultaneously a different perception of the same field.

Therefore the aim is to question the theoretical limits of virtual worlds confronted with the limits of perception of these spaces and of our physical environments and to reveal the traces we leave on cyber territories and their impact on our identities and behaviors. It is also one experimentation that is generating a collection of viewpoints, routes, and crystallizing them into a digital space.