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]