SECOND ATMOSPHERE
go to live sitesee the gallery versionsee the first version
ABOUT
Second Atmosphere is an evolving digital visualisation driven by real-time data streams. The work transforms constantly changing global information into a dynamic field of colour and sound. Rather than representing individual events, it imagines a collective psychological field in which hope, fear, curiosity and wonder continually reshape a responsive audiovisual environment.
THE VERSIONS
The current version (October 2026), playing above, draws every fifteen minutes on GDELT’s record of world events, then travels back through the same moment in every year since 1979, with the year shown at the lower left. The archive itself becomes part of the image: in the early years, when GDELT holds only a thousand or so events a day, the field breaks into a grid with gaps where nothing was recorded, and it fills as the record grows. After returning to the present, the field runs on into five years that have not yet happened, its trends carried forward with growing uncertainty, until it comes apart. Visitors can leave one word for the day, which joins the field as a warm sixth light, a second archive kept by people rather than machines. The sound moves around the listener.
The gallery version is the same work as it would be shown in an exhibition space. A QR code on screen lets people in the room leave their word from their phones. In the space itself, the sound is spread across a ring of speakers, and a thermal printer prints a line for every year the field passes through, so that the paper accumulates on the floor over the course of the exhibition.
The first version is the work as it first appeared: the colour field and its sound responding to the live record of world events alone, without the journey through the archive.