Listen To The Sound
Of Water Gently
Flowing
by Will Pappenheimer
www.willpap-projects.com
Installation, custom AR app
2025
Motion Capture recorded during a residency at
Oboro in Montréal, July 2018
Listen To The Sound of Water Flowing, 2025, screen capture documentation of AR, installation
“Listen To The Sound Of Water Gently Flowing” is an AR (augmented reality) installation work first shown at the Pace University Art Gallery exhibition, “Flux,” February 7- March 22nd, 2025. The work features the appearance of an avatar who calmly guides the viewer through the preparations for ecological catastrophe. The address takes the form of the widespread YouTube genre, ASMR (Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response) which has various goals of relaxation, stress release and even tingling sensations for it’s audience. These videocasts are usually conducted by a practitioner who creates a calming narrative or role play and accompanies it with various binaural audio effects and hand gestures. In this work a virtual avatar conducts a sessions addressing for preparations for a flood, a terminal ecological event or another possible worldwide calamity. The practitioner/avatar materializes on a small table in a prototypical domestic apartment or room, which could possibly be already vacated by its inhabitant and appears to be underwater. As in many video sessions in this genre the work combines paradoxical emotions of foreboding events with a positive soothing message in a tone that seems appropriate for our times.
Motion capture for the work comes from a collaboration with intermedia and performance artist, Freya Björg Olafson, who reenacted these movements from various ASMR YouTube videos. The monologue was generated by an AI search for an ASMR monologue reedited by the artist here for the subject of this virtual performance.
Left Video: Installation View, Pace University Gallery, Listen To The Sound of Water Flowing
ANGSty pool
part of the Warrior Series
by Will Pappenheimer
www.willpap-projects.com
2018
Motion Capture recorded during a residency at
Oboro in Montréal, July 2018
iPad Screen Video of 'Angsty Pool' an AR work in Collaboration with Michael Rees and Freya Björg Olafson at Grounds for Sculpture, NJ 2018-2019
warriors is a series of works in progress featuring video game character modifications engaged in introspection, preparation, search and defense maneuvers. The figures perform choreographed movements as well as scripted gameplay actions in slow-motion and in strange sequences. At times they address the viewer telepathically. Text and speech is selected and altered from online "ASMR" YouTube videos, which aim to stimulate tingling body sensations and calm audience of followers in utilizing hypnotic methods. warrior characters encounter visible or described challenging surrounding conditions such as being submerged suggest current social or ecological situations which need to be overcome or survived. Thus the external need for resistance or combat. Conflicting emotions, defiance and uncertainty, fear and contemplation outline very a human presence instantiated in a mixture of technological and physical space.
pool Scratch
part of the Warrior Series
by Will Pappenheimer
www.willpap-projects.com
2018
Motion Capture recorded during the AR/VR Artist Research Residency Pilot organized by Oregon Story Board, Eyebeam and Upfor Gallery in Portland
Pool Scratch, screenshot video of augmented reality, instantiated at the Guggenheim Museum, 2018, featured through the moble exhibition: ACTIVATAR
Pool Scratch, Will Pappenheimer and Freya Björg Olafson, screenshot of augmented reality, instantiated at the Guggenheim Museum, 2018, featured through the moble exhibition: ACTIVATAR
Pool Scratch is a collaborative work by Will Pappenheimer and Intermedia/dance artist Freya Björg Olafson. The work translates Olafson's spontaneous choreography, through motion capture, to a ready-made early medieval warrior searching endlessly downwards in a contemporary swimming pool. The work, instantiated in a viewer's environment, is meant to pose a strange mixture of realities, identity crossings and mysterious activities.
Freya acknowledges the generous support of the Manitoba Arts Council and Canada Council for the Arts, the AR/VR Artist Research Residency Pilot organized by Oregon Story Board, Eyebeam and Upfor Gallery in Portland as well as the 13th Annual Montréal Choreographic Workshop. In 2017 this work was developed through the CounterPulse (San Francisco) ‘Artist Residency Commissioning Program’ with the support of the National Endowment for the Arts, the Zellerbach Family Foundation, and the Ken Hempel Fund for the Arts.
iPad Screen Video of 'Repairs' Will's at Alpha Gallery, Boston 2021
Repairs, 2021-21 (installation view)
mixed reality with IOS app on iPad, motion capture performances by Freya Björg Olafson, domestic objects, shelving unit, and formica 28”w x 40”d x 59”h
Motion Capture recorded during Olafson's residency at Oboro in Montreal, 2018
REPAIRS
part of the Home Remedies Series
by Will Pappenheimer