Today grief was heavy and intense. I am in Osaka, and one of the places I wanted to visit with Carlos was teamLab’s Botanical Garden experience. It is composed of a series of art installations that are only displayed at night, in a kind of a mystical forest vibe, and the kinds of visuals and experiences there were stuff that Carlos and I would talk a lot about, and plan our art installations to do similar things.
One of the art installations is a turbulent particle movement simulation, projected onto very large slabs in the middle of a lake. This immediately invoked memories of our explorations to conceptualize the last art installation that we collaborated together, Utopias: Sonhos Coletivos, which as of the writing of this post is still running in the Museum of Tomorrow, in Rio. We would trade experiments in Unity and p5.js to confirm each other’s understanding and hypotheses, and one of the experiments was indeed about turbulent movement. And the synchronicities did not stop there - the colour scheme in teamLab’s installation is eerily similar to Carlos’s sketch’s chosen colors.
That did shake me a little when I first saw it, but it was not all. Going into the other art installations in the experience, there was one that made an idea connect - an installation of simulation of particles that make a flame. Any visitor can also download an app to “take” the flame and keep it to spread between other users of the app, just by proximity, even if away from the art installation. And as flames also act like turbulent particle simulations, I already had an idea of what to make for today’s remix.
But right after that, there was an installation that also took place at the lake’s waterfront, as lighted buoys pulsated slowly before a tree in an island on the lake. There were benches, and one was empty, I sat down. And tears started rolling, out of sadness, anger, out of wanting to have finally brought him to see these installations, and if he wasn’t there, out of wanting to send him a video to show the place and the installations.
I sat there and tears rolled for many minutes. I think it was fortunate that the very dim lighting of the place and the time (it’s an experience that only runs after the sun sets) made the grief more contained, more like it could happen without causing any alarm.
My remix, taking turbulent movement and making it light a flame:
Carlos’s original sketch of turbulent movement:
A video from teamLab showing the art installations in Botanical Garden: