Trail cams, created for research, have evolved into tools for entertainment. Once shared online, animals captured in their natural habitats are redefined, no longer just wildlife, but digital entities living within a virtual ecosystem.
The installation is built around two visual layers: a top screen displays over two hours of unedited trail cam footage with original sound; a lower screen shows metadata such as platform, upload time, and user. Behind them, a projection maps a live network of hashtags related to the featured animals, accompanied by an evolving soundscape generated from the videos.
The custom-built structure supports both front screens and conceals a Raspberry Pi and speaker system at the back, allowing for a fully self-contained and adaptable setup. The result is an installation that tracks the migration of animal presence from physical space to digital trace, forming a living archive of human-animal interaction online. [Team: Miguel Ernesto Amaya, Federico Gajo, Giacomo Garetto, Enrico Isidori, Francesco Scarfone]