Generative Art / Interactive Installation / 2026

Living Commons

A series of generative works that asks a fundamental question: what does it mean to share space in the digital age? Each piece runs live in a browser — no video, no recording, no fixed state. The work is computational and alive.

Two viewers watching simultaneously never see the same moment twice.
The commons is not a metaphor. It is the operating condition of the work itself.

Enter the Commons Live in browser · No download required

Live Work

Open Full Work →

↳ Hover to open · Best experienced with another person

∞

Unique States

Viewers to Complete

Fixed Outcomes

Years of Public Space Design

Process

Presence

The work begins when someone arrives. A single viewer sees possibility. The commons waits.

Dialogue

Two people create something neither could make alone. Light connects. Forms emerge from shared input.

Community

Four or more participants produce cooperative shapes. The system responds to density, not direction.

Accumulation

In installation form, the work learns over time — holding the traces of every encounter that came before.

Concept

This work grows from twenty years designing public spaces — museums, science centers, children's museums — with the Smithsonian Institution, the Children's Museum of Indianapolis, and institutions across three continents.

That work taught one thing above all: the most important thing a shared space can do is make people feel that their presence matters, that the space responds to them, that they are not visitors but participants.

"This is not work about community. It is work that only exists as community."

The visual logic of each piece — translucent layers, emergent structure, light behavior that cannot be predicted — is built on the same principles as the institutions I have spent my career designing: that a space held in common, shaped by those who inhabit it, produces something no single author could create alone.

As artificial intelligence accelerates the fragmentation of human attention and social connection, Living Commons proposes an alternative. A space that requires two people to begin. That produces something belonging to neither and both.

Objectives

01 Create a live, browser-based generative work that responds to co-presence — two viewers, two inputs, one emergent result that belongs to neither and both.
02 Establish a permanent or semi-permanent public installation where the work can learn from its users over time, accumulating the traces of thousands of encounters.
03 Run accessible workshops using Raspberry Pi and inexpensive touchscreen hardware — so visitors do not merely experience interactive art, they learn to build it. Under $100 of hardware. No specialized infrastructure required.

Technical

Software

P5.js — creative coding library
WebGL / GLSL shaders — real-time rendering
Web Audio API — sound synthesis
Supabase — installation data layer
Electron — kiosk deployment
Single-file architecture, no dependencies

Hardware

Standard web browser (primary)
Raspberry Pi 4 or 5 with touchscreen
~$80–$100 total workshop cost
Mac Mini for permanent installation
No specialized infrastructure needed

Mark Walhimer

Museum planner · Industrial designer · Generative artist

Mark Walhimer (1964) is a generative artist and museum designer with twenty years of experience creating interactive public spaces. Managing partner of Museum Planning LLC. Executive Director, Museum of Arts & Sciences (Macon, Georgia). Fulbright Specialist. Author of Museums 101 and Designing Museum Experiences (Bloomsbury). Former design consultant, Smithsonian Institution. Former project director, Children's Museum of Indianapolis. Faculty, Georgia Institute of Technology and Tec de Monterrey. Began in the studio of Judy Pfaff, 1985. Exhibited at MIRADAS TANGENTES, Madrid, 2026.