Drowning Currents
Drowning Currents is one part of Vertigo, FH JOANNEUM's student installation at Klanglicht 2025, Graz's annual festival of light and sound, which celebrated its 10th anniversary under the theme RAUSCH. As the team behind Drowning Currents, we designed a piece that moves visitors through emotional and sensory states, creating a physical experience rather than a visual one.
YEAR: 2025
TYPE: Sound & Light Installation
TOOLS: After Effects
ROLE: Concept, animation
COLLABORATORS: Jessica Karkheck, Leila Orynbayeva, Alina Volkova (Sound Design), Sara Waldenberger
"Pulled Under"
We built the piece around the sensation of being caught in moving water — the feeling of being moved by something larger than yourself, without warning, without an exit that feels easy. The structure moves through three emotional states: stillness, overwhelm, and the strange peace of drifting somewhere deep. Each phase is distinct, but they bleed into one another the way real experience does.
Construction & Animation Tests
Across the class, coordinating construction meant finding windows where everyone could work on structure, animation, and sound simultaneously. Within my team, we divided the soundtrack equally among the four of us, each working on a separate animation segment before merging them into one seamless sequence. What followed was a long back-and-forth of exports, checks, and small corrections until the transitions finally held.
25,000 visitors
Over the four nights of the festival, the piece ran on a continuous loop. Visitors moved through it, stayed for multiple cycles, and responded to it in a way that was visible without needing to be measured.
