Refresh interactive collage, 2026

The Refresh interactive digital collage fosters a sense of renewal and hope by bringing the materiality of drawing and painting into the virtual realm of code. Participants activate the work with their movements in the gallery, exploring the garden as a transformative space, both physical and pictorial, that exists alongside our present reality. A potent mix of organic, human and technological touchpoints comes together in a hybrid work, a responsive installation that evolves in real time, while reflecting the world around it.

After many years working in the digital realm, I craved the immediacy of mark-making on paper. When I experimented with collaging together drawn and painted elements, exciting new visual combinations and disjunctures emerged from the torn edges. I was determined to bring this raw energy into my code-based artistic practice by introducing the unique characteristics of physical art media to the infinite possibilities offered by computing: interactivity, constant transformation, and the incorporation of chance. In an era of legitimate concern about the uses of code and technology, here they are harnessed for the creation of beauty, hope, and a connection to the handmade. AI (specifically, a machine learning library) is used for human pose estimation, enabling the work to respond to viewers’ presence and movements; the coded algorithms are designed to create lyrical visual juxtapositions, fueled by viewers’ actions.

Keenly observed scenes from my garden, each view captured in drawing, painting and photography, are never seen whole. Rather, they are fractured into collage pieces and recombined to form newly imagined reconstructions by mapping participants’ movements to reveal correlated areas of the images. These appear against a greyscale backdrop of the camera’s view of the room and anyone in it. Viewers are invited to become part of this creative act; in fact, it is their presence that brings the work to life. When no one is present, a few greyed collage fragments appear randomly onscreen over the mirrored view of the gallery; however, as soon as a person enters, colourful, lively imagery emerges and follows their movements. The camera’s visual incorporation of the surrounding public space provides a contrasting, site-specific context for the burgeoning, ephemeral creations.

The opposing forces of regeneration and deterioration are conveyed in the work by contrasting rich colours and desaturated tones, and by the appearance and eventual fading away of collaged shapes as imagery builds, decomposes and rebuilds anew in unique combinations each time. Once a composition has coalesced, it is framed and frozen for a brief moment of completion before desaturating and beginning to disappear, at which point a new scene of diverse pieces begins to develop. By creating unforeseen possibilities, an entirely new visual entity takes shape, integrating traditional media with generative work.

While offering a source of joy and solace, the garden as subject matter also speaks to mortality and the continuous cycles of birth and death, growth and decay, presence and absence, and the passing of time. Many parallels can be drawn between computational art and the act of gardening. Like the ongoing life cycle of the garden, computational artwork is generative, infinitely iterating and varying within a basic structure. Artist and gardener both employ ‘guided randomness’, aspiring to a dynamic balance between order and chaos, between intentional design and the excitement of unexpected metamorphosis. Building connections across fragmentation and disjunction seems an apt metaphor for what is needed and sadly missing in our fractured world today. This work imagines new directions growing out of our current time and place.

Software development: Dave Pagurek van Mossel