The Living Shore

This Living Shore is an immersive, 360-degree interactive installation commissioned by Godrej Design Lab for Conscious Collective 3.0, a global climate change conference that took place in Mumbai during December 2025.

The curators of the event wanted a centerpiece installation that will both engage attendees and prime them for the rest of the symposium, which was focused on the fragile coastal ecosystems of Mumbai and the damage they are suffering from a warming Indian Ocean. Climate change discourse tends to focus on large-scale environmental trends, using sweeping statements that tend to somehow mask the urgency of the matter while also obscuring the role of the individual. I wanted to directly counter this tendency in The Living Shore, and tie each viewer to their own roles and environmental impacts (both positive and negative).

To properly understand and capture the environment, I found a local wildlife photographer, Sarang Naik, who was willing to collaborate with me on this project. Using his photographs of coastal regions, tide pools and their inhabitants as source materials, I created a three-act interactive experience taking viewers on a journey of increasing urgency over the course of 30 minutes.

Each scene integrates the same tactile interaction in a different way, and as the scenes change, participants see that what first looks like a straightforward cause-and-effect relationship in one context (scene) might have unintended, and at first unseen, impacts elsewhere in the connected environment.

Three scenes p

The Living Shore also features interactive audio responding to viewers and the changing visual elements. Built from field recordings captured with hydrophones and contact mics placed in littoral zones, the procedural audio is rendered in real time via Ableton Live. Additionally, ultrasonic frequencies from the recordings are are digitally altered to translate them into the audible frequency range for humans, revealing parts of a sonic landscape ordinarily inaccessible to us.

Granulation, noise, and distortion are progressively introduced as audience interacts with the work and 'damages' the scene. More interaction leads to a more destabilized visual, which is matched by a growing tension in the soundscape. This leads to an unsettling feeling that is at times hard to place, an anxiety that reflects the trepidation and impending catastrophe that seems to be the emotional signature of the 2020s.

Videography and edits by @eyeamsid. Timelapse edit of installation setup: https://vimeo.com/1150846570