A Digital Swamp Coming to New York City’s MoMA Is 'Made to Envelop You' in Nature With the Help of Cutting-Edge Technology

A new-age swamp is bubbling up inside the lobby of New York City’s Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). Beginning next week, visitors will find themselves stepping through a colorful, pulsing digital ecosystem that may seem a world away from the city’s urbanity and frenetic pace. Opening on October 12, MoMA’s newest show is a futuristic, digital vision of nature.

It also opens a portal back to the mucky landscapes that major cities—including New York—were founded upon. The installation harnesses macro photogrammetry and game-engine software (the architecture behind video games) to simulate the movements, sounds and sights of a large-scale swamp. Wall-spanning screens display photographs and 3D scans of real-life wetlands.

Digitally altered field recordings of amphibians and susurrating riverine rhythms have been mixed with human vocals, including those from the Venezuelan musician Arca. They’re vocal.” A post shared by Jakob Kudsk Steensen (@jakob_kudsk_steensen) “Wetland” features just a single work of art: the simulated swamp installation known as Berl-Berl, which Kudsk Steensen has allowed to evolve since its creation in 2021. Both Berl-Berl’s form and name were inspired by the swamps surrounding Berlin, many of which have fallen victim to urban development.

The artist collaborated with Berlin’s natural history museum to devote months to studying the landscape. A combination of photography, sound recording, kayaking, swamp-slogging and archival research left Kudsk Steensen with a trove of material documenting humanity’s relationship with wetland habitats. The result was Berl-Berl, first installed in Berghain, a nightclub located in a sprawling decommissioned East German power plant.

At times, folklore plays a central role. Triglav, a three-headed god from Slavic folklore, makes an appearance at MoMA in the form of a giant tree. Although absent from the MoMA iteration, the shape-shifting water spirit Nøkken, who is said to appear to travelers as a handsome, music-playing young man, often appears in the digital swamp, too.

Cutting-edge tools help bring the artist closer to nature instead of dividing him from it. Christian Thorsberg is an environmental writer and photographer from Chicago. His work, which often centers on freshwater issues, climate change and subsistence, has appeared in Circle of Blue, Sierra magazine, Discover magazine and Alaska Sporting Journal.