Will Muir Llia
Sea of Segments (2022) shows water cascading across seven-segment displays. By devising a visually striking means of mapping pixels to segments, Will has created a huge seven-segment display, reimagining a medium commonly known for its prevalence in alarm clocks and calculators. Replicated 1536 times, the segments flicker on and off. Each segment relinquishes its traditional binary on/off state to become part of a nuanced moving image.
Footage of flowing streams, crashing seas and glistening lakes wash over the screen. Varying levels of brightness convey rich, tonal variation and detail in the frothing, swirling water. Reflecting the sky, the water looks refreshing and effervescent. Rich tonal variation contrasts with the harsh simplicity of the display, where complexity of nature is simply translated in its raw, unedited form.
The display encapsulates the essence of the digital age, both in the sense that it displays numbers and also in its brutal distillation of the numerical digits to be rendered in only seven lines. Through a computational mapping process and then its electronics, this highly technological display provides a window into the natural world.
Will Muir Llia (1988) is an artist and engineer who writes software and designs hardware. From large scale kinetic sculptures to lower power wearables, he has experience across the whole computing and electronics domain. His programming won a Gold Lion at Cannes Lions, and has been on show works at venues as diverse as the Barbican, the Eden project, SIGGRAPH and Pacha in Ibiza. He holds degrees from Goldsmiths and Imperial and has taught courses at the Bartlett and the Institute of Creative Computing.