Presented at KRAMA festival 2022, Entropic Garden was a temporary sound installation that juxtaposed organic decay with industrial rigidity. A chaotic garden of plant waste intertwined with monolithic steel speakers, forming a landscape where uncontrolled natural growth collided with precise, human-made structures. More than a visual contrast, this composition disrupted the conventional perception of nature—no longer ornamental or passive, but invasive, unpredictable, and self-propagating.
At the core of the installation was a custom-built algorithm that acted as a bridge between literature and kinetic expression. The movements of the plant fragments were not random; they were data-driven translations of Chapter XVII – "Spring" from Henry David Thoreau’s Walden. Using a computational system, the text was first converted into numerical values, encoding the rhythm, density, and structure of Thoreau’s words. These values were then mapped to control physical motion, executed through an Arduino-powered mechanism, which dictated the dynamic behavior of the organic elements—subtle shifts, oscillations, and organic sways that mirrored the cadence of the text itself.
The auditory layer of Entropic Garden deepened this relationship between movement and meaning. The same passage from Walden resonated through the steel speakers, interwoven with field recordings by Chris Watson and Francisco López, capturing the raw, unfiltered sonics of natural landscapes. These recordings, alongside compositions by Morton Feldman and BJ Nilsen, created an evolving soundscape where the organic and digital coexisted, reinforcing the installation’s conceptual framework.
By transforming language into motion, Entropic Garden became an autonomous ecosystem—a space where text, code, and nature intertwined, unfolding through an algorithmic choreography that blurred the lines between the artificial and the organic, the structured and the wild.