Salt Lines | Interactive VR Experience
Early AI Prototype
Early AI Prototype
Early AI Prototype
Early AI Prototype
Unity Prototype
Unity Prototype
Unity Prototype
Salt Lines is a real-time swarm performance that explores the threshold between organic phenomena and digital computation. Inspired by the vast horizons of the Moroccan desert and the starling "murmurations" captured by Danish artist Søren Solkær, the project began as a challenge: to build a massive, responsive swarm within Unity that feels truly alive.
Engineering a system of tens of thousands of autonomous moving elements presented a significant technical hurdle. We prioritized motion that remains believable and is entirely live. While our initial research explored the "no-download" potential of browser-based VR, the complexity of balancing high-fidelity swarming with the current constraints of WebGPU led us to a strategic pivot. For this iteration, we chose to prioritize native VR, ensuring the system could push to the very edge of its computational limits without compromising the fluidity of the experience.
In the accompanying tech talk, Isaac Hisey, lead programmer, shares project findings: what worked, what failed, and the key lessons learned.
This project marks our first deep dive into the concept of Emergence: the process whereby complex global patterns arise from a few simple, local rules. In biological systems, this phenomenon allows thousands of individual agents to coordinate into a unified, decentralized intelligence—a singular, shifting architecture that functions through self-organizing principles rather than centralized control.
By translating these biological algorithms into virtual environments, we examine how digital "displacement" can evoke the sublime unpredictability of natural systems. We are interested in how simple code, when scaled and layered, can transcend its logic to create something that feels profoundly atmospheric and alive.