Zoomscape: a zoetrope that turns your movement into breathing light-trees

An interactive night-time experience for Queen Square asking visitors to consider their relationship with the natural world, since moving through environments is intrinsically tied to CO2 production.

Visitors sculpted trees with light through their own movements, with the installation responding to the many speeds that define the modern city; the showcase ran 5–6 July 2023 at Queen Square under Playable City Sandbox, part of the MyWorld IDEAS programme funded by UK Research and Innovation's Strength in Places Fund.

No attendance figures in the source; the prototype extended Watershed's Playable City programme — begun in 2012 — into movement-responsive public art.

Zoomscape reimagines the classic zoetrope — the spinning drum that animates static images — to translate the many ways we move through cities into an interactive visual experience. Created by London-based artist Jack Wates, whose practice centres on 'performative' installations that evolve in response to interaction, and creative technologist Thomas Blackburn, his collaborator on Brighton Digital Festival and Light Night Liverpool commissions, the work invited visitors to Queen Square to sculpt trees with light through their own movements.

The installation responded to the many speeds of movement that define the modern city — pedestrians and scooters, cyclists and cars — bringing shape, colour and movement to the trees at night. The framing is ecological: movement through our environments is intrinsically tied to CO2 production, and here urban trees, 'the lungs of the city', could appear to breathe. Celebrating trees as living sculptures actively transformed by our movements, the work asks us to consider our relationship with the natural world.

Zoomscape was built inside Playable City Sandbox 2023, Watershed's creative R&D programme that gives participants three months of facilitated rapid development to turn an experimental idea into a working prototype. It formed part of the MyWorld IDEAS programme, funded by UK Research and Innovation's Strength in Places Fund to establish the West of England as a global centre of creative technology excellence — in Bristol, the UK's most playful place, where Playable City began in 2012.

The zoetrope is the right ancestor: a machine you power by moving, reborn as a machine that reacts to how the city moves.

Speed becomes the interface — walkers, scooters, cyclists and drivers each sculpt different light, so the artwork maps the street's real energy mix.

The ecological point stays playful: trees that visibly breathe under your motion make CO2 trade-offs tangible without a lecture.

Data-art works when the metaphor is earned: movement produces CO2, so movement animating the city's 'lungs' makes the trade-off visible.

Zoomscape was showcased on 5–6 July 2023 at Queen Square as a Sandbox prototype, with both creators continuing practices spanning public realm art, multi-sensory installation and creative technology.