Pool Portals is a playful, immersive interactive video installation inspired by thinking about what it may look and feel like to be transported through a portal. It was created for the Lumen Festival, which took place inside an empty Olympic sized swimming pool on Staten Island, New York City.
Pools are transformative spaces and typically entering into one means a fairly dramatic change in one’s immediate surroundings. We like to “get our feet wet” and “take the plunge”—idioms that refer both to water and different ways we can navigate through unfamiliar territory. Generally when we’re in a pool, our body movements and the way we transport ourselves through space take on a character all its own.
This project takes the ideas and experiences that normally accompany being in water—particularly those that revolve around movement and change of surroundings—and moves several steps beyond the normal pool experience towards a new type of transportation experience.
Pool Portals runs for 20 minutes on loop and measures 12’ x 12’ x 15’. It was created with custom software written by the artist in Open Frameworks.