Tread Softly

A New Media Techspressionist Architectures Collaboration

Tread Softly was created within New Media Techspressionist Architectures (NMTA), a curatorial framework led by Gustavo Rincon and Joshua Dickinson. This framework pairs artists, composers, and technologists to explore augmented and interactive spaces at the intersection of art, music, and technology. The project is also a collaboration with the Techspressionism community, the international movement defined by its use of technology to express emotional and embodied experience.

As part of this initiative, our team was formed, resulting in Tread Softly, an interactive installation.

Collaborating team members:

Lucy Boyd-Wilson – Artist, Technologist
Yuehao Gao – Composer
Stephen Paré – Composer

More about NMTA:

Tread Softly is an interactive work exploring our presence within living ecosystems. An Azure Kinect camera tracks viewers’ movements, triggering particles from projected forms – from abstract geometries through soil, roots, flowers and tree. Every movement leaves a trace. We are never outside nature; we are always moving through it.

The experience unfolds in two movements. The first is abstract – abstract geometries and organic structures respond to each gesture, evoking the invisible systems that underlie the visible world. The second becomes more representational, rising above ground from roots into flowers, trees and the familiar textures of the natural world. Original music composed by Stephen Paré and Yuehao Gao accompanies each movement respectively.

The work proposes that we are never separate from the environments we move through. Every step, every gesture – however small or unconscious – sends a ripple through the living systems around us. We tend to think of our impact as something large and deliberate. Tread Softly suggests otherwise: that presence itself is a form of contact, and that the land is always listening.

2026
Interactive experience using Kinect camera

Original Music Composed by:

Exhibitions & Talks

MoCA L.I.ghts 2026 – Projected Installations by PAC MOCA, Patchogue, NY – October 22-26, 2026
“Urban Digital Canvas Shanghai” – ACM SIGGRAPH Digital Arts Community, Changning District, Shanghai, China – September 25, 2026
“New Media Techspressionist Architectures” – DAC Sparks Presentation, Online / Zoom – September 25, 2026
“New Media Techspressionist Architectures” – ACM SIGGRAPH 365 Presentation, Angeles, CA – July 22, 2026
“New Media Techspressionist Architectures” – ACM SIGGRAPH DAC Exhibit, Los Angeles, CA – July 19-23, 2026
“Techspressionism 2026: Los Angeles & Beyond” – LACDA, Los Angeles, CA – July 9 to August 1, 2026