‘Inkscapes’ installation livestreams iPad drawings across a 120 foot display

“Inkscapes” is a sprawling installation that turns tablet doodling into something more profound. Created by Adrià Navarro and DI Shin, the system streams live iPad drawings across a giant, 120-foot-long display, located inside New York’s InterActive Corps building. The result is a hypnotic, undulating mural that’s equal parts painting and performance.

As Navarro explains, the piece’s contours are determined by three artists, each drawing simultaneously on an iPad. Their sketches are scaled up and streamed in real-time on the 11-foot high video wall in front of them, which is composed of 568 LED screens at a combined resolution of 11,520 x 580 pixels. At certain points, some of these screens flicker on and off, creating a glitchy aesthetic, while others fade into gray, distorting or gently swallowing the superimposed sketches.

Navarro, a student at NYU’s Interactive Telecommunication Program, says the entire system is driven by four OpenFrameworks-based applications running simultaneously, with animations and distortions executed through a control panel built with Processing software. The idea, he adds, is to create a sweeping narrative driven “by the dialog between performers and the system itself, which evolves and transforms the drawings over time.”