Tevere

Invisible Ecologies: Tevere translates more than a century of hydrological and ecological data into a generative audiovisual system, built for a 900×500cm LED wall. The installation was presented at Videocittà 2026, WATERCULT Special Edition, at Gazometro di Roma from July 10 to 12, 2026.

The work treats the Tiber as a living subject, not a backdrop for the city built around it. Fourteen chapters span the years 1900 to 2024, each one built from verified hydrological and water quality records: river levels, flow rates, chemical parameters, and ecological indicators drawn from historical archives, official environmental agencies, and citizen science monitoring.

A particle system in TouchDesigner responds directly to this data. Density, velocity, turbulence, and color shift chapter by chapter, following the real transformations of the river across the century. The color language follows Russell's Circumplex Model of Affect: ecosystem health and biological activation drive precise mathematical mappings of hue, giving every chapter a distinct emotional and chromatic signature grounded in measurable conditions rather than aesthetic choice alone.

Sound design by Corgiat extends the data into the audio domain, building a sonic layer that follows the same historical arc as the visuals.The project draws on hydrological studies by Bersani, ISPRA's Annali Idrologici, ARPA Lazio monitoring data, ACEA records, and the citizen science dossier "Giù al Tevere," alongside research from the Autorità di Bacino Distrettuale dell'Appennino Centrale. Every numerical value in the installation traces back to a documented source.

Invisible Ecologies: Tevere continues a research path centered on rivers as ecological subjects with their own history, chemistry, and biological life. The Tiber emerges here as an archive written in water, one that carries the memory of a city and the trace of its own transformation across 124 years.