{"id":120201,"date":"2025-11-06T01:11:16","date_gmt":"2025-11-06T01:11:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/120201\/"},"modified":"2025-11-06T01:11:16","modified_gmt":"2025-11-06T01:11:16","slug":"framerate-desert-pulse-is-a-time-portrait-of-the-sonoran-desert","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/120201\/","title":{"rendered":"FRAMERATE: Desert Pulse is a Time Portrait of the Sonoran Desert"},"content":{"rendered":"

ScanLAB Projects transforms high-fidelity 3D data into a powerful, poetic body of art<\/p>\n

\"scanlabprojects_opening_presentechoes_sdw_6\"By Sebastiaan de With<\/p>\n

Now open and running through 10 May 2026, FRAMERATE: Desert Pulse<\/a> is the most ambitious project yet from the UK-based artist studio ScanLAB Projects<\/a>. Presented by the Desert Botanical Garden<\/a> (DBG) in Arizona, this multi-sensory exhibition is a living portrait of Phoenix and the Sonoran Desert, created through time-lapse 3D scanning. Based on data from 21 sites across the Salt River Valley, the work captures both wild and urban terrains and is presented through four monumental outdoor video installations and an immersive indoor experience in the new RAF Exhibit Gallery. It marks a milestone for DBG as the first commissioned exhibit that the garden has ever had.<\/p>\n

\"scanlab-matt-and-will-by-joshrubin\"By Josh Rubin<\/p>\n

Founded in 2010 by Matt Shaw and William Trossell, ScanLAB Projects<\/a> uses LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) and photogrammetry to record subtle, daily changes across landscapes over an extended period of time. Their process yields not photographs but a \u201cfinely crafted, millimetre-precise, pointcloud gaze that sees beyond the lens of a traditional camera or the naked eye.\u201d Shaw explains, \u201cWe believe 3D scanning is the future of photography.\u201d The duo developed this technique to help audiences \u201csee, understand and feel beyond the capabilities of our own eyes or traditional cameras.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"scanlabprojects_opening_gallery_3\"Courtesy of ScanLAB Projects<\/p>\n

FRAMERATE is ScanLAB\u2019s exploration of environmental and societal change at speeds and scales less visible to us. As Trossell puts it, \u201cit\u2019s our ongoing body of work exploring how landscapes evolve over time, but at speeds and scales beyond our human perception.\u201d The project asks, \u201cWhat if we could see time differently through our tools and artistry? What if we could witness vast landscapes moving at the detail of grains of sound?\u201d In Desert Pulse, the animation frame rates range between 17 and 25 days a second of real-world change. The result acts as both \u201cmirror and microscope.\u201d Viewers \u201cshrink to the scale of an insect\u201d or \u201cdrift like clouds,\u201d experiencing the Sonoran Desert as a vast, dynamic organism. Shaw notes that the work holds space for humanity\u2019s \u201cdevastating impact and wonderful creativity,\u201d and the \u201cresilience and ingenuity of the natural world.\u201d<\/p>\n

Courtesy of ScanLAB Projects<\/p>\n

With a delightfully eerie original score by composer Pascal Wyse that balances notes of technical intervention with elements of nature, Desert Pulse captures the tension between ecological fragility and human intensity. As Shaw observes, \u201cPhoenix stands at the crossroads of the climate crisis and astonishing ecological life\u2014a space where urgency and beauty coexist.\u201d <\/p>\n

\"scanlabprojects_opening_elsewhen_3\"Courtesy of ScanLAB Projects<\/p>\n

The exhibition reveals the \u201cintimate breath of cacti\u201d\u2014succulent forms that \u201cfold, expand, contract, and blossom in an exquisitely adapted response\u201d to the desert\u2019s rhythms. In the installation Elsewhen, Saguaros once measured by hand are seen through LiDAR point clouds to clearly understand how hydration impacts their form. One specimen is shown growing 8.26 inches at the apical meristem\u2014or crown\u2014over twelve months. <\/p>\n

\"scanlabprojects_opening_presentechoes_1\"Courtesy of ScanLAB Projects<\/p>\n

In Present Echoes, the Ottosen Entry Garden bursts into 4,117 opuntia flowers during the year of scanning. The desert\u2019s cycles of decay and renewal also appear in stark relief on screens set among cactus as if they\u2019re viewing their lives flashing before them. At The Butte, a saguaro skeleton decomposes. The 200-year-old giant fell mid-project; viewers, Shaw says, \u201cwill see the death of a giant Saguaro.\u201d Nearby, the Diamond Fire site shifts from \u201ccatastrophic charcoal to promising green and quickly tinder brown again.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"scanlabprojects_opening_gallery_5\"Courtesy of ScanLAB Projects<\/p>\n

Desert Pulse also documents human presence across the Salt River Valley where Phoenix resides. At Trilogy at Rio Verde\u2014a community of 1,385 homes built around a golf course adjacent to the Tonto National Forest\u2014the artists regard each new plot as \u201ca piece of the desert lost.\u201d And the data visualize consumption at scale. At LM Hancock Farm, 125 acres of alfalfa grown to feed dairy cattle demand 1,116,322 gallons of water each time the irrigation arm circles. At the other end of that continuum the Lucky Boy Burger Joint becomes a data point, serving about 322 burgers a day\u2014roughly one cow\u2019s worth of meat a week.<\/p>\n

\"scanlabprojects_opening_horizon_2\"Courtesy of ScanLAB Projects<\/p>\n

Car culture appears as topography: The Pavilions at Talking Stick mall include 6,184 parking spaces, part of the metro area\u2019s 12.2 million total. The Johnson Stewart Landfill completes the loop, filled with debris from the same city it helped build. Even the authorized ATV trails of Bulldog Canyon remind us that \u201cdelicate desert soils may take more than a century to recover from off-road traffic.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"scanlabprojects_opening_calyx_2\"Courtesy of ScanLAB Projects<\/p>\n

The exhibition unfolds across DBG\u2019s landscape as four outdoor video works and a large-scale indoor installation, plus Making Desert Pulse, a behind-the-scenes gallery. Wandering the gardens to experience the work visitors will also see clever \u201cfact poetry\u201d that highlights complimentary data points from the project to help paint a fuller picture of its undertaking. The three-year project relied on close collaboration with scientists like Dr. Kim McCue and Raul Puente-Martinez, and on the endurance of five Phoenix-based photographers who scanned daily from October 2023 to October 2024. They carried 70 pounds of gear through desert heat exceeding 110 degrees on more than 70 of the scanning days. The team thanked Rivian<\/a> for enabling fieldwork on the power of batteries, reducing the project\u2019s carbon footprint. ScanLAB and DBG meticulously tracked their own impact and had it independently audited; the project\u2019s 140.64 tCO2e of emissions will be fully offset, making it a Carbon Neutral exhibition.<\/p>\n

Courtesy of ScanLAB Projects<\/p>\n

Elaine McGinn, DBG\u2019s Chief Experience Officer and the lead champion of the project, describes Desert Pulse as an invitation to reconsider what deserts symbolize: \u201cresilience, transformation and the unseen networks that sustain life.\u201d After years of immersion, Trossell reflects that \u201cthe desert has taught us about adaptation, resilience and the beauty that emerges from harsh conditions.\u201d He calls the work \u201can invitation to see through different eyes, to feel different rhythms, to join a conversation about how we live on this extraordinary Earth.\u201d Shaw offers with urgency and hope: \u201cWe need to cherish this planet. We need to take care of it together.\u201d His final appeal is simple yet profound: \u201cJoin us to contemplate change, and the pace of change. To pause, to think, to hope.\u201d<\/p>\n

FRAMERATE: Desert Pulse<\/a> is open through 11 May 2026 at Phoenix\u2019s Desert Botanical Gardens.<\/p>\n

FRAMERATE: Desert Pulse is a Time Portrait of the Sonoran Desert<\/p>\n

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