Project: Three States / 2026
Three States
A generative world governed by bodily presence, velocity, and transition. Movement becomes input. Thresholds become events. The environment remembers.
Concept
Three States is a generative world system developed by Raik Studio that responds to bodily movement over time.
Rather than reacting to isolated gestures, the environment changes gradually based on how a body moves through the space—its position, speed, and persistence. Movement accumulates. As it does, the spatial behavior of the system shifts.
These changes are not instantaneous or easily reversible. Once the environment has been pushed far enough, it carries the effects of that movement forward, altering how it responds to subsequent actions.
The body functions less as a controller and more as a tuning presence, while the environment behaves as a system with memory—capable of resistance, saturation, and lasting change.
System Behavior
Three States examines how the speed, density, and duration of bodily movement influence the behavior of a spatial environment.
Slow, exploratory movement tends to organize the space, allowing coherent visual and sonic patterns to form. As movement becomes faster or more concentrated, the environment grows increasingly unstable—patterns fragment, noise accumulates, and responses become less predictable.
When movement persists beyond certain limits, the system begins to degrade. Changes are no longer easily undone. The environment carries the effects of what has already occurred, altering how it responds to future interaction.
Rather than resetting after each encounter, the world retains memory, embedding consequence directly into its behavior.
Method
Three States is driven by real-time bodily movement. Position, speed, and concentration of motion influence how the environment behaves over time.
Visual, sonic, and spatial responses are generated together, allowing changes in one domain to affect the others. Rather than responding continuously or instantly, the system shifts its behavior as movement accumulates, producing distinct modes of organization and instability.
Interaction is not treated as momentary. The system retains traces of what has occurred, allowing changes to persist, compound, or degrade rather than resetting after each encounter.
The work is developed through studio-scale spatial testing, using live walkthroughs to observe how different patterns of movement alter the environment’s behavior over extended durations.
Potential Applications
While developed as an exploratory system, 3 States is designed to operate across a range of spatial contexts, including:
Museum or festival installations that explore embodied perception, agency, and consequence
Architectural environments where movement actively reshapes spatial atmosphere
Performance contexts involving dance, sound, or collective choreography
Research collaborations focused on perception, interaction, or systems-based art practice
Status
Three States is an active research system.
The current phase focuses on studio-scale prototypes and behavioral observation.
Open for exhibition, spatial adaptation, or research-driven collaboration.
Tuning the three-state system through body movement.
Project: Orbital / 2025
Orbital: A Spatial Narrative System
A generative world that translates narrative rhythm and sound into spatial behavior.
Listening becomes embodied. Time becomes architecture.
Concept
Orbital is a spatial narrative system developed by Raik Studio exploring how sound, rhythm, and temporal structure can unfold as physical experience.
Rather than visualizing story content, the project focuses on structure—treating narrative cadence, repetition, and pause as forces that shape space, light, and sound in real time. The environment behaves like a living system, responding to narrative intensity rather than illustrating it.
Orbital proposes an alternative to cinematic adaptation: one where stories are inhabited, not watched.
Research Focus
Originally conceived in response to Orbital by Samantha Harvey for Audible, the project investigates how the structure of an audiobook might exist spatially—unfolding through motion, resonance, and gravitational rhythm rather than linear scenes.
Each chapter of the book follows astronauts circling Earth. Raik translated this orbital structure into a generative system where time, sound, and movement are choreographed as continuous spatial phenomena.
The focus is not representation, but translation—from narrative rhythm into environmental behavior.
Methodology
Data-driven simulation of orbital motion and sound resonance.
Dynamic lighting system responding to narrative cadence and emotional intensity.
Spatial sound sketching to test audience orientation and immersion.
Studio-scale prototyping using real-time rendering and multi-projection mapping.
Potential Applications
While developed as a self-initiated research project, Orbital proposes a new format for literary and cultural experience—one where listening becomes an embodied, spatial act.
The system is designed for adaptation as:
A museum or festival installation, integrating narrative rhythm with spatial choreography.
A cultural or brand-led immersive environment, where stories or conceptual worlds unfold as evolving, responsive space rather than linear content.
A performance framework for generative music, spoken word, or sound-led composition.
Orbital 14, descending. Generative and audio reactive visuals that captures one of the final chapters from the novel. Music by Nils Frahm.
For the artwork on the pyramid Raik created a custom system pulling in generative AI, and layering multiple images around a specific narrative.
Unique generative and traditional artwork (like the planet texturing) added a human dimension to a deep space theme that draws parallels with the narrative.
Chapter 3 Ascending. Dynamic audio reactive artwork, reads excerpts from the novel.
These portals capture the astronauts thoughts and ambient sounds as they look back towards earth. The last in a series of physical installations for the Orbital project.
Project: Memory Machine (Maria Hernandez) / 2025
Memory Machine: Translating Place into Identity
Research prototype, Maria Hernandez Park, Bushwick, NY
Concept
Memory Machine explores how a park can function as a communication system rather than a backdrop. Beginning with field recordings and photographs from Maria Hernandez Park, Raik Studio builds a generative framework where memory becomes material: audio textures, visual strata, and simple gestures cohere into an environment that expresses identity instead of merely signaling it.
Research Focus
Can everyday traces (audio, image, motion) become the raw material of an identity?
What happens when brand is defined by place + participation, not just marks and guidelines?
How might a living archive of neighborhood inputs evolve over time—reflecting change, not freezing it?
Experience
Visitors move through an immersive field of projection and sound.
Footsteps and proximity modulate rhythm and density.
Photographic textures abstract into patterns, revealing layers of civic memory.
Voices (collected with consent) ebb and return as shifting harmonics—identity as chorus rather than slogan.
The result is a worldbuilt identity: dynamic, participatory, rooted in the specific.
Methodology
Interactive video & generative systems: TouchDesigner pipelines translate sensor data and mobile inputs into fluid distortion, layering, and reveal.
Real-time compositing: A shader stack mimics refraction, interference, and turbidity to “pull up” deeper layers.
Immersive sound design: Parameterized stems respond to gesture density and dwell time, reinforcing the metaphor of memory as an elastic medium.
Site-responsive build: Projection, screens, and speaker layout adapt to architectural conditions; content can be localized to each neighborhood/venue.
Applications & Formats
Museum / festival installation: A participatory archive where communities “play” the city’s memory.
Public space activation: Lobby/atrium or cultural corridor; content packs can be customized to the site.
Brand & civic collaborations: Launches, placemaking, or heritage programs where audience contribution becomes authored content.
Commissioning Notes
Prototype ready: real-time system tested in-studio; adaptable to single- or multi-projection.
Scalable footprint: 8–20m projection or LED wall; 8–16 channel audio; optional sensors (ToF/LiDAR/vision).
Production model: 2–3 week discovery (localize content + site plan) → 4–6 week prototype → install & calibration (3–7 days).
Accessibility: Designed for continuous flow; no instructions required; clear affordances via light and sound.
Status
Research prototype complete. Open for co-commission, exhibition, or site-specific adaptation.
Generative artwork was created from a series of photographs from the location, as seen below.
The ‘memory’ was captured in a rapid series of photographs that were later distorted into controllable generative art.
Project: NY Tesseract / 2024
NY Tesseract : Public Installation (Research Prototype, 2024)
A responsive installation that treats New York’s collective memory like water: when touched, it ripples, revealing layered histories through motion, sound, and light.
Concept
NY Tesseract is a Raik Studio research project exploring how urban memory can be experienced as a living surface. Drawing on the poetic idea that water “holds” traces of what passes through it, the work turns interaction into revealed memory: gestures create ripples that expose fragments of the city’s people, places, and time.
Research Focus
How can touch, movement, and proximity become instruments that surface hidden narratives?
We study memory as a dynamic field—not a static archive—where audience input distorts, blends, and recomposes images and sound in real time.emory through fluid motion, immersive sound, and dynamic visuals.
Experience & Interaction
Visitors shape the piece through touch, body movement, and mobile input.
Surfaces warp and refract like disturbed water.
Visual strata layer and shear, surfacing archival textures and newly captured city traces.
Spatial audio swells and thins in response to collective activity, creating a chorus of place.
Methodology
Field-based data capture: location audio, ambient rhythms, ambient light/time-of-day photos.
AI-assisted abstraction: trained on site-specific imagery to derive palettes, textures, and motifs.
Generative graphics + real-time audio: TouchDesigner pipelines, custom GLSL; optional Unreal for spatial previews.
Interaction layer: camera/ToF/LiDAR for crowd flow; mobile web controls for community prompts.
System thinking: identity components (motion, texture, tone) codified as a brand grammar that can be licensed and extended.
Metrics: dwell time, repeat visitation, sentiment capture, UGC volume.
Ethics & Community
This work centers consent, attribution, and co-authorship. Data capture and voice participation are opt-in; prompts and credits surface contributors. The system avoids aestheticizing displacement—place-first, people-forward is the guiding constraint.
Status
Research prototype complete. Open for site-specific adaptation, co-commission, or civic partnership.
Credits / Tools
Raik Studio — concept, system, design.
TouchDesigner, custom GLSL, Unreal Engine preview, field recording kit, spatial audio toolchain.
(Music source material: original stems only; licensed works used only for internal tests.)