Pierre, feuille, papier, ciseaux: Cloud, clout and Sand

Watch it fade—what do you wish would stay?

Move the mouse in this 27-second p5.js animation to keep your footprints visible."

"Cloud, Clout and Sand" (CCS) is an interactive digital artwork that blends minimalist collage and p5.js animation to capture the fleeting nature of our presence and creations, both physical and virtual. Footprints on sand fade away in 27 seconds – the average time a visitor spends in front of an artwork, echoing a prior reflection I had on this piece (https://app.manifold.xyz/c/27) – giving way to pristine sand, symbolizing inevitable oblivion.

Yet, the viewer becomes an actor: by moving the mouse, they can make the traces reappear, resisting time and erasure, in a nod to our digital footprint online – those fragments of ourselves that slip beyond our control.

Framed within a Windows XP window, the piece roots this meditation in a retro digital aesthetic, also responding to the cursor on the screen that the viewer moves. Underscoring the fragility of data in a world where nothing is eternal, not even online. Through this interplay of disappearance and revival, "CCS" prompts reflection on what we leave behind, in the sand and in "the cloud."