/Land Between Lakes is a collaborative XR experience by myself and James Wylie. The work explores a patchwork landscape formed through shared fieldwork, during which we collected photogrammetry scans of woodland. The scans are not just data but a record of time, of two people moving through a place together. These point-cloud scans are collaged into a new environment, alive with movement, waving and shifting as if breathing on its own. 

The landscape is vivid and alive until the viewer approaches, motion becomes stillness. This stillness is shaped by breath: a soft, pulsing circle matched to an audible inhale and exhale. Viewers are invited to breathe alongside it. Through this exchange, breath becomes an interface for change, slowing the environment and opening a space for pause, attention and reprieve. 

The title Land Between Lakes imagines a space suspended between two islands of thought: one rooted in technical languages and systems, the other in embodied, sensory exploration of the natural environment. The work exists in this in-between state where digital tools become a means of reconnecting with the land. For me that in-between is also where memory lives, in the overlap between what is felt and what is recorded, between being somewhere and carrying it with you afterward.

Built in TouchDesigner, the work exists as a live system that directly responds to viewer movement and interaction. Learning and developing TouchDesigner skills and programs together became part of our approach to collaboration, shaping both the process and its final form.