Photography, machine learning & sound · 2024–2025
Landscapes
in Motion
One garden. One year.
More than 300,000 images tracing the rhythms of growth, decay and regeneration.
A year in the garden
For a year, four cameras observed a garden in Groningen, capturing images every few minutes, day and night, across all seasons.
Working with photography and machine learning, Drake transformed this archive of more than 300,000 images into a time-lapse film. Light, colour, shape and rhythm reveal the garden’s cycles of growth, decay and regeneration.
The garden appears as a living ecosystem, continually responding to weather, seasonal change and the shifting northern light.
Four perspectives
Explore each camera’s view of the garden, from the same year of observation.
The photographic archive
Four cameras, one garden
Explore 8,000 observations of the garden. Follow the changing light, slow the movement, or move through the archive at your own pace.
The first 2,000 available images from each camera, ordered by their recorded filenames. Each row follows its own capture sequence; matching positions do not necessarily represent the same moment. Temporal flow samples the nearest available capture at intervals of at least one minute, hour, day, week or calendar month. Shorter sequences show fewer images at larger intervals. Seasonal interweave blends the clock centre with an optical-flow study made from 16 original spring, summer, autumn and winter photographs. The camera rows retain their archive sequence. Move the speed slider to Still to study a frame.
Observing the garden
Together with developer Aart Jan van der Linden, Drake built a custom array of four Canon 5D Mark III cameras with 17–40 mm lenses, each connected to a Raspberry Pi 5. Aart Jan programmed the image capture protocols, allowing the cameras to work autonomously throughout the year.
With ecologist and data analyst Mohamed Z. Hatim (Zakaria), PhD, Drake processed the images through a machine learning pipeline to create a new representation of the garden’s temporal ecological rhythms.
Listening to the garden
The soundscape draws on recordings made in the garden with Albert Ort. An ASF-1 MKII hydrophone, geophones and a stereo pair of Sennheiser MKH 8040 condenser microphones brought different scales of the environment into focus, from vibrations within the landscape to its surrounding ambience.
Listen to the garden ambience and four complete field recordings. Headphones bring out the quieter details.
Outcomes
Film premiere and installation views.
Credits & thanks
- Art, photography & film
- Gus Drake
- Camera system & capture programming
- Aart Jan van der Linden
- Ecology, data analysis & machine learning
- Mohamed Z. Hatim (Zakaria), PhD
- Field recordings
- Gus Drake & Albert Ort
- With thanks to
- Thank you Dirk Jan Visser for your cooperation in this experiment
Made possible with the support of the Mondriaan Fonds.