The Sands of Time - Evolution: V1

An Interactive Artwork. Created in situ at Diriyah Art Futures, Riyadh.
Artificial Ecologies: Reimagining the Environment Through Data

The Sands of Time: Evolution is a hybrid, interactive art installation that explores the environment as a living, breathing system; one that is shaped by artificial intelligence and the data we all generate every day. This environment responds in real time to its people, its weather, its news, its pollution; where the invisible networks that surround us come to life. In this artwork, data becomes the material. The machine becomes a collaborator, and the environment becomes a kind of sentient being.

At the heart of the installation is a large, sculptural pile of sand; alive with movement, light, and sound. Tiny motors and LEDs respond to live data flowing in from across Saudi Arabia focused on the city of Riyadh in the middle. Pollution levels, weather patterns, and news headlines are collected and transformed into real time visual projections, and mechanical motions.

Buried in the sand are natural elements; dishes of oil and water, growing plants; rare earth material, computer componants, linking the digital and physical worlds. Around the space, chains clink and motors spin, triggered by real time data inputs. The entire system feels alive, connected, and aware.

The artwork becomes a digital twin an avatar version of life as interpreted by AI, using custom software and unsupervised machine learning. The artwork builds real-time neural networks from live data streams, imagining what a self-aware city might look, sound, and feel like. Additionally it uses a generative AI to reinterpret images and text from live news feeds, constantly asking new questions about the future of the environment. ( An optioanal feature allows the people in the city to be tracked and this data is also incorporated inside the artwork)

This artwork explores our ability to understand, influence, and shape the digital systems we live within. The Sands of Time: Evolution: is part of Stanza’s ongoing body of work exploring what he calls panoptic aesthetics—art that makes visible the hidden systems of observation, data collection, and machine logic that now shape our cybernetic world. This is not a simulation. It is a breathing structure, a sensorium tuned to the rhythms of a world in flux. The Sands Of Time offers a vision of the autonomous world —alive, alert, and asking: can the environment remember? Can it respond?

Development. This is the test prototype version for the data and projectors. The next version will have round pcb's, more lasers, use more sand, model more structures for inside, print the body renders, lay down some extra cables, to compliment the exhibition. It will also include more plants have a new custom controlled element. The data projections will be placed around the installtion on the walls. Funding needed to make version 2.

Why This Matters. SOS.

This artwork asks if the environment itself might one day become smart enough to think, decide. It demonstrates how we are all now connected through systems of systems which enable us to form new interactive and collaborative environments. Sand of Time has become a System of Systems (SoS) where each part combines to create a new emergent system where everything is connected to everythinbg else. SOS also means save our souls.....a cry for help ...---... in morse code. The universal standard distress signal. Is time running out or can we re-activate.

Rethinking Data: The Artwork as Living Medium

This artwork starts with the premise: data is not just information—it’s the medium of our time. It surrounds us, shapes us, and reflects us. Yet, it’s often invisible, controlled by systems too complex or distant to touch. This piece makes data tangible, perceptible, and emotional. In a world where data is usually harvested, stored, and exploited—this work invites audiences to see data differently: as a raw material for reimagination. Every visual, sound, or movement is connected to real-time data flows—whether from the environment, human behavior, or networks—making the piece both reactive and alive.

The artwork makes data sensory. It transforms information into something you can feel, hear, see—and respond to. It invites the public to engage, question, and interact, turning passive data subjects into active creators. In this way, the artwork asks: What happens when data becomes art—and we become its co-authors?

EXPERIENCE. Version 1 is shown with projection from above as a 3 metres diameter or larger to suit space. Projection can also be to the sides..... which will be the next version.

MATERIAL. Made of sand, oil, glass, plants, rare earth element (gold, silver, copper, lead, iron, steel, plastics ), computer parts, 40 custom made LEDS, 3 RAS PI, 20 custom made motors, 3 ethernet cables, 2 power adapters, 10 custom made fans,  3 custom power supplies, 3 custom made PCB boards, 5 laser lights, Custom projection and custom made data software systems. ( NODE js, Three JS, Xojo. Make.com) . 3 d printed figures.

DATA. THE MATERIAL OF THE AGE.

LIST OF CITIES POLLUTION

Jeddah - Al-Rawda Municipality, Jeddah US Embassy, Jubail - 1672, Qassim, the stadium, Tabuk, Amalj Station, Mecca, Otaibi, Al - Ahsa, Mecca Taif,  Tabuk Facial station, Asir Region,Jazan - King Abdullah International Airport, Rabigh - 5476, Saudi Arabia, Qassim, Zahi Park, Eastern Province, Dammam Corniche. Dhahran US Embassy, Mecca, Aziziyah.

Including longitude, latitude, Air Quality, Hazardous air pollutant, Nitogn dioxide, Ozone, Sulphur Dioxide, Water,

LIST OF CITIES  WEATHER

As Sulaymānīyah, Al Madīnah al Munawwarah, Tanūmah, Najrān, Mulayjah, Aţ Ţaraf, Turabah, Tamrah, Khamis Mushait, Duba, Yanbu, Al Baţţālīyah, Julayjilah, Abqaiq, Bisha, Ad Darb, Al Arţāwīyah, Al Fāḑilī, Tumayr, Madīnat Yanbu, Raḩīmah, As Sulayyil, Abhā, Qurayyat, Uşayfirāt, Nimrān, Abū ‘Arīsh, Al Qārah, Makkah Province, Şāmitah, Al ‘Aqīq, Hafar Al-Batin, Al Fayşalīyah, Al-Qassim, Al Quraynah, Naghbī, Badr Ḩunayn, Ha'il, Sīdī Ḩamzah, Marāt, Riyadh, Northern Borders, Al Muţayrifī, Tabuk, Birzayn, Qaisumah, Wej, Sakakah, Raḑwān, Tabuk, Al Fuwayliq, Ash Shubramīyah, Al Munayzilah,  Al Mikhlāf, Mizhirah, Arar, Al Ghaţghaţ, Al Jawf, Turaif, Al Majāridah, As Sahbā’, Khushaybī al Ḩaḑar, Ţubarjal, Dammam, Az Zulfī, Al Awjām, Makkah al Mukarramah, Qārā, Medina, Buraidah, Ash Shurayf, Afif, Al Mindak, Al Kharj, Şafwá, Sulţānah, Al Qurayn, Shokhaib, Eastern Province, Sidīs, Al Ābār, Farasān, Al Muwayh, Ras Tanura, Khobar, Al Jubayl, Asir, Al Jafr, Masjid Ibn Rashīd, Al Khālidīyah, Hai’l Region, As Saffānīyah, Al Mubarraz, Ash Shu‘aybah

NEURAL NET

Using ART 2 (active resonance theory running server side unsupervised machine learning in real time)

91 towns and cities across Saudi Arabia. Including longitude , latitude, temperature, temp min and max, pressure, humidity, visibility, wind speed, winds direction, gust overseen by machine learning ART2 server side unsupervused machine learning.

LIVE NEWS IMAGES
From feeds across the country manipulated by AI to create predictive news fifty years from now. ( build into STANZA API)

LIVE NEWS TEXT
From feeds across the country manipluted by AI to create predictive news stories fifty years from now. ( build into STANZA API)

SOUNDS (Optional)

Speaks the code of the generating neural nets.

GPS (Optional) ...can be integrated via a phone app as performative work. GPS position in real time of people walking in your city...

EXHIBITION.

Made at DAF Diriyah Arts Futures Riyadh. While artist in Residence. 2025

Keywords. AI, CITY, DATA, REAL TIME, GENERATIVE, ART

From an ecological perspective, this artwork operates as a site of convergence between the atmospheric and the cognitive. Pollution data becomes not just a measure of air quality but a symptom of human activity—a trace of industrial metabolism, uneven geographies, and environmental injustice. Weather becomes more than a backdrop; it becomes a dynamic agent, reflecting the volatility of both natural systems and social conditions. In parallel, newsfeeds—traditionally understood as textual and narrative—are reframed as cultural weather: storms of meaning, emotion, and ideology that ripple across the national psyche.

By combining these disparate data flows through unsupervised machine learning, the installation stages a dialogue between the organic and the artificial, the empirical and the affective. Neural networks act not as tools of prediction but as aesthetic collaborators—revealing associative, non-linear patterns in how a nation thinks, feels, and breathes. This signals a shift from rationalist, extractive relationships with data toward more poetic, ecological engagements—what might be called a form of algorithmic environmentalism.

The project thus raises fundamental questions: What does it mean to listen to the land through machines? How does information itself shape the biosphere? Can a nation remember through air, data, and code?

Rather than seeking answers, the artwork invites attunement. It proposes a new ecological imaginary—one in which the climate, the network, and the neural net are not separate domains, but interwoven threads in the ongoing pattern of life. In this sense the artwork becomes an atmospheric thinking-machine—a gesture toward a future in which environmental consciousness is not only biological or political, but computational as well.

BELOW: Alternatives of Sands of Time 3d renders.... to inspire the next version.

Sands of Time 3d ... next version...

If you want to exhibit this artwork please get in touch...

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Data format examples.

  "id": 12939,

      "name": "Jeddah - Al-Rawda Municipality, Saudi Arabia ( جدة - بلدية الروضة )",   "latitude": 21.5573,  "longitude": 39.1455,  "timezone": "+03:00",  "updated": "2022-02-27 11:18:00",  "aqi": 46, Air Quality  "timestamp": 1745153623320,  "dew": 15,  Dew   "h": 50,  Hazardous air pollutant,  "no2": 7, Nitrogen dioxide.,    "o3": 46, Ozone,  "p": 1014,   "pm10": 23, Particulate matter,   "so2": 8, Sulphur Dioxide,  "t": 26,   "w": 3.6, water    "wg": 13.8 Nitrogen dioxide.     

or

    "timestamp": 1745138256586,   "latitude": 27.9708,   "longitude": 48.73,  "temp": 27.55,  "feels_like": 26.62,  "temp_min": 27.55,   "temp_max": 27.55   "pressure": 1013,   "humidity": 26,   "visibility": 10000,   "wind_speed": 3.95,   "wind_direction": 26,

The City Dreams In Data

V2 NOTES:

Short throw projectors ceiling mounted. Good PC connected to internet can also be supplied. Projector used. EPSOM PU1007B WUXGA 3LCDLaser Projector with 4K Enhancement EP-PUL007B.

Installation is variable in size and components.

It would be great to remake in the PCB round, add lasers, use more sand, model more structures for inside and print the renders to compliment the exhibition.

The bext veraion will include robots, lasers , customs controlled wifi modules amd 3 d figures...the data projections will be placed around the installtion on the walls.