stills:

Hell’s Prow - Heath Hanlin
Hell’s Prow is a data driven, synthesized complex system, visualized and auralized as a computer animation and audio composition. Digital Elevation Model (DEM) datasets from the United States Geological Survey (USGS), often used to derive and visualize terrain maps, are sampled and woven together to generate a unified matrix of motion. By stripping the datasets of their original context, computationally weaving them together, and streaming the processed data through time as a catalyst for the position and configuration of virtual 3D geometry, I am visualizing in a new way something that is well understood by all humans, but not necessarily consciously considered: the specific details of the lay of the land. These datasets, as much as possible, represent an Earth without biological component. I am interested in making interpolations of statistics from sources humans neither own nor control; in this case basic geographic features of the earth, creating an intimate relationship and exploring similarities and peculiarities that only exist when these particular sets of data are combined. What I found is a stream of order writhing through chaos. Unexpected convergences, impossible without the two datasets, crop up in an almost rhythmic way.

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