Wavelength is a research-creation project investigating how technological systems participate in sensing, inscribing, and reinterpreting ecological environments. The project addresses the following research questions: How can robotic trace-making function as a method of ecological inquiry, and how does digital mediation transform the perception and recording of natural processes?
The project combines a robotic arm, tactile sand surfaces, and digitally manipulated audiovisual materials. The robot’s gestures in sand are treated as analytic processes rather than visual output, generating traces resembling wind patterns, tidal movement, and human or animal footprints, which reveal human–nonhuman–technological entanglement. Oceanic imagery and soundscapes, derived from field recordings and algorithmically generated audio, are digitally stretched and recomposed. These manipulations function as research strategies to examine how digital technologies recalibrate ecological temporality, scale, and affect.
Outcomes are evaluated through close analysis of the traces produced, their material interaction with environmental textures, and the interpretive patterns that emerge through iterative making and observation.
Analysis is conducted through iterative making, material observation, and reference to previous artworks such as Digital Orca and The Beach, situating findings within discussions of technological determinism, environmental disruption, and post-natural aesthetics. Through this process-based approach, the project explores how human, nonhuman, and machinelike agencies overlap.
Ultimately, Wavelength demonstrates how immersive, technologically mediated environments can generate ecological knowledge that cannot be fully expressed discursively. By foregrounding trace, mediation, and embodied interaction, the project contributes insights into ecological fragility, machinic agency, and the ethical implications of technological intervention in natural systems.

Authors:
Joel Ong, University of Victoria, Canada
Zhino Yousefi, York University, Canada
Mojde Kalantari, York University, Canada

About the Presenter(s)
Zhino Yousefi is currently a PhD candidate in Digital Media at York University, Toronto, Canada. She is interested in art history, VR/AR and AI generative art.

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