Overview

Perpetual Unknowns is an automated installation that stages a speculative, reciprocal dialogue between geology and urbanization. Conceived as a dual system—one physical, one digital—it reflects the entanglement between natural formations and human settlements, and how they continuously reshape each other.

At its core, the project unfolds as a live, protocol-driven performance. On a horizontal surface, fans move across a bed of sand, creating constantly evolving dune formations. Simultaneously, a generative architectural drawing is projected onto a vertical canvas, responding in real time to the changing terrain. If the wind reshapes the sand, the drawing reorganizes urban forms to adapt. Inversely, if the digital city reaches certain density thresholds, the system intervenes physically, altering the sandscape. This establishes a closed feedback loop where geology and urbanism co-evolve—each informing the other continuously.

Rather than a static installation, Perpetual Unknowns operates as an open system governed by protocols: environmental, spatial, and algorithmic. The outcome is never final—only temporarily stabilized within an ongoing negotiation between matter and code, wind and wall, city and terrain.

This perpetual motion embodies the idea that we no longer act outside nature, but as active agents of geological change. Environmental forces—climate, speculation, pollution, migration—become spatial protocols, driving how territory is formed, inhabited, and ultimately, redefined.