Locust Projects presents a newly commissioned immersive kinetic sound installation by Alba Triana, an internationally recognized Miami-based intermedia artist who investigates the intersection of art, science, and technology to reveal the inseparable relationship between our surroundings and the imperceptible forces that govern the natural world.

Dialogue with the Primordial Sea at Locust Projects is an expansion of the artist’s ongoing Delirious Fields Series, exploring the complex interplay between the tangible and intangible, the individual and the collective, chance and organization, and self-organizing processes in nature. By engaging with these phenomena on a large scale, the installation unveils and immerses the viewer in the unseen underlying dynamics that shape humanity.

The site-specific installation features a series of magnetic spheres that alternately levitate or pendulate as they interact with invisible magnetic fields. Each system consists of a magnetic sphere and two coils. When a coil emits a magnetic field, the sphere levitates near it, manifesting the field’s intangible presence. When the field dissipates, the sphere pendulates freely, propelled by gravity. As a whole, the installation behaves like a collective—an organism composed of interrelated parts that function together tracing ephemeral lines of movement across the walls of the space. Controlled by a probabilistic code, the spheres exhibit both individual and collective behaviors. Amidst the randomness, moments of synchronized stillness and synchronized activity emerge, evoking a living entity that constantly self-generates.

Commissioned by Locust Projects as part of the Knight Digital Commission series, this site-specific work offers Alba Triana an exceptional opportunity to scale her previous explorations into a large-scale, immersive installation. Transforming the Project Room into a space that embodies intangible yet powerful forces and relationships, Triana pushes the limits of her practice, deepening her exploration of the ethereal realms from which everything—including humans and their creations—emerges.

Dialogue with the Primordial Sea was a ‘Curator’s Pick,’ selected by Executive Director Lorie Mertes from artist applications to the 2024 Knight Digital Commissions open calls.

About the Artist

Alba Triana  is a Miami-based, Colombian-born sound and intermedia artist. Through immersive installations, sound and light sculptures, and vibrational objects, Triana’s work explores the relationship between the natural world and our human condition. Exploring vibration, energy, interconnectedness, and nature’s self-organization, Triana’s oeuvre examines how the vitality of everything—both alive and inert—shapes who we are and what emerges from within us.

Triana has been recognized with several prestigious awards, including The Ellies x Oolite Arts Creator Award, Miami (2019); the Prix Ars Electronica Award of Distinction, Austria (2022); the CIFO Grants and Commissions Award, Miami (2023); and the ArtFields Grand Prize (2024). In her native Colombia, she has also earned numerous accolades, such as the National Electroacoustic Music Contest (1995), the IDCT National Composition Contest (1997), the “Otto de Greiff” National Contest (1998), and the Alliance Française Best Exhibition Award (2009).

Triana has participated in various commissions and residencies with renowned institutions, including Kronos Quartet; Oolite Arts, Miami; Groupe de musique électroacoustique de Bourges (GMEB), France; the Civitella Ranieri Fellowship, Italy (2018); the South Arts Fellowship for Florida (2020); and the Ministry of Culture, Colombia. From 2018 to 2021, with support from Pro Helvetia—Swiss Arts Council, she conducted research on vibration and interconnectedness at a particle level, collaborating with thought-leading research institutions including European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL), and the University of Geneva in Switzerland.

Triana’s work has been exhibited internationally at Ars Electronica Festival, Lentos Kunstmuseum, Austria; Biennale des Arts Numériques, Centquatre-Paris, France, Museo de Arte Moderno de Bogotá, Colombia; and ISEA—International Symposium on Electronic Arts. Her work has been featured at the Subtropics Experimental Sound and Intermedia Festival, Miami, and Sónar+D Festival, Barcelona, and is included in collections across Europe, Latin America, and the United States, including Colección SOLO and Otazu Foundation Collection, Spain; Banco de la República de Colombia, and the Museum of Modern Art of Bogotá, Colombia.