Rashaad Newsome was commissioned by Google to create Somatic Landscapes, a new interactive digital artwork for Gradient Canopy, Google’s public art initiative exploring the intersections of technology, creativity, and the natural world.
Now featured on Google Arts & Culture, Somatic Landscapes is an immersive, responsive artwork that brings together dance, landscape, sound, artificial intelligence, and algorithmic abstraction. The work takes viewers through a shifting visual environment inspired by Northern California’s natural landmarks, including Big Sur, the Redwoods, Point Reyes, Mt. Tamalpais, and Mt. Shasta. As audiences move in front of the piece, the landscape responds in real time, activating layers of mist, light, foliage, and texture through motion data generated by human dancers.
At the center of the commission is Newsome’s ongoing investigation into the relationship between the body, technology, and the natural world. Drawing on fractal geometry—patterns found in coastlines, trees, clouds, and other living systems—Somatic Landscapes transforms embodied movement into a dynamic digital ecosystem. The result is a work that considers technology not as separate from nature, but as a tool for sensing, translating, and deepening our relationship to it.
The commission extends Newsome’s broader practice of combining performance, AI, animation, music, and social engagement to create new forms of immersive experience. Through Somatic Landscapes, he invites audiences to consider how bodies, landscapes, and algorithms might move together toward new ways of seeing and being in relation to the environment.