Cascade Ephemera
Immersive projection installation | MAM Media Art Museum, Rome | HyperMedia, October 2026 to May 2027
In the room
The same material behaves differently depending on where it appears. Across the walls, fragments accumulate in layers, gradually covering and dissolving into one another. On the floor, they sink, stretch and smear into feedback, as though being absorbed by a different material. The continuous canvas therefore becomes more than a projection surface: it behaves as an environment governed by different physical conditions.
Despite the density and constant movement of imagery throughout the space, the work maintains a sense of calm. Fragments emerge and disappear through slow cycles of accumulation and dissolution, transforming an archive of disconnected objects and memories into a continuously changing composition. Materials gathered at different moments and in different places temporarily coexist before being absorbed back into the system.
The system
The work extends a generative system developed by Moncada following recognition at the 2024 Live Performers Meeting mapping competition in Morocco. A subsequent version of the system was presented later that year in New York City as Mirrored Movement, an immersive installation. For HyperMedia, the process expands across the architecture of the immersive room, allowing accumulated fragments, personal archives and traces collected in Rome to circulate within a single generative environment.
Medium: TouchDesigner and collage materials. One 8038 x 5798 pixel canvas across 27 Epson projectors, walls and floor.
The work is a generative immersive installation developed from an archive of hundreds of collected ephemera fragments. Found in flea markets, on city streets, in personal archives and among recurring motifs from Moncada's artistic practice, these materials form a continuously evolving visual field that extends across the walls and floor of the immersive space. Some of the physical materials incorporated into the work were collected by the artist in Rome during visits over the years, introducing traces of the city into the installation itself.
The materials
Every cutout that falls in the room, laid out below. Click any piece to see it larger.
In the catalogue
Cascade Ephemera has its own spread in the HyperMedia exhibition catalogue, which covers every work in MAM's opening show. The image here is a rendering of that spread.
Credits
Concept, design, and TouchDesigner system: Gregory Moncada / Bad Pedestrian
Music: Vesa
Curator: Gianluca Del Gobbo
Venue: MAM Media Art Museum, Corso d'Italia 37/d, Rome
Exhibition: HyperMedia, October 2026 to May 2027
Related
Cascade Ephemera video (YouTube) | HyperMedia program at MAM | Mirrored Movement (2024) | YOU WERE HERE | Bad Pedestrian studio
In italiano
Cascade Ephemera รจ un'installazione immersiva di videoproiezione di Gregory Moncada al MAM Media Art Museum di Roma, nella mostra HyperMedia, da ottobre 2026 a maggio 2027. Ritagli di collage cadono a ritmo di musica su un'unica superficie proiettata da 27 proiettori Epson, poi affondano e si dissolvono sul pavimento.
Gregory Moncada is a New York artist. Bad Pedestrian is his studio, started in 2007.