The Sands of Time - Evolution:

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

The Sands of Time: Evolution is a hybrid, interactive art installation that explores the city as a living, breathing system—one that is shaped by artificial intelligence, environmental forces, and the data we all generate every day. Imagine a city that 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 city 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. 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—linking the digital and physical worlds. Around the space, chains clink and motors spin, triggered by live data in real time. Some of these devices resemble windmills, glowing with light as they turn. The entire system feels alive, connected, and aware.

This isn’t just a sculpture. It’s a digital twin of a future city—an avatar version of urban life as interpreted by AI. Using advanced custom software and unsupervised machine learning, the work builds real-time neural networks from live data streams, imagining what a self-aware city might look, sound, and feel like. It even uses generative AI to reinterpret images and text from live news feeds, constantly asking new questions about the future of the urban landscape.

Through this piece, artist Stanza explores a key idea: agency—our ability to understand, influence, and shape the digital systems we live within. While governments and corporations often dominate conversations around data, this work suggests a more open, democratic vision: one where artists can play an active role in shaping the future.

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 surveillance, 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 city not as dystopia or utopia, but as a speculative body—alive, alert, and asking: can a city remember? Can it respond? Can it feel us thinking inside it?

Why This Matters

In an age where data is everywhere, this installation invites you to stop and think:

• What are we feeding into the system?

• How is it shaping the places we live?

• And what kind of future do we want to build?

This artwork doesn’t just show a smart city—it asks if the city itself might one day become smart enough to think, decide, and even govern on its own. 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.

Rethinking Data: The Artwork as Living Medium

This artwork starts with a powerful 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. It reclaims it.

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. It turns digital exhaust into artistic expression. 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.At its core is a deep concern with agency: Who controls the systems that define our reality? Can we rewire them from the inside out? The artwork embodies this tension—between visibility and opacity, control and surrender, surveillance and participation.

Rather than presenting data as abstract or analytical, the work makes it 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?

MATERIAL. Made of sand, oil, glass, computer parts, 40 LEDS, 3 RAS PI, 20 Motors, 3 ethernet cables, 2 power adapters, 10 fans,  3 custom power supplies, PCB boards, 5 laser, Lights, Custom projection and software systems. ( NODE js, Three JS, Xojo. Make.com)

DATA. THE MATERIAL OF THE AGE

DATA 3 metres diameter or larger to suit space. This show projection frome above. Projection can also be to the sides.....

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, shokhaibٍ, 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)

91 towns and cities across Saudi Arabia. Including longitude , latitude, temperature, temp nin 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 manipluted 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 the 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, it is not simply an artwork, but 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.

Alternatives of Sands of Time 3d renders.... to inspire the 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

MATERIAL NEEDED: NOTES

Short throw projectors ceiling mounted. Decent PC connected to internet can be supplied . PCB remade to be round.

Projector used. EPSOM PU1007B WUXGA 3LCDLaser Projector with 4KEnhancement EP-PUL007B.

Installation is variable in size and components.

Is would be great to reamke the PCB round, add lasers, use more sand, model more strucures for inside and print the renders to compliment the exhibition.