Toxicity. Driven Breathless.

This artwork visualises the invisible forces shaping our urban environments. Using a custom-built electronic system, it scans real-time pollution data from 120 cities worldwide. An embedded AI, trained through machine learning, interprets these data streams to reveal patterns of toxicity—rendered visually as dense, traffic-like flows. Toxicity. Driven Breathless makes visible the often-overlooked infrastructure of environmental damage. It translates the silent noise of pollution and digital networks into a tangible, aesthetic experience, confronting viewers with the hidden systems we live within. The piece explores the monitored city, where every breath, behaviour, and signal is data—mapped, stored, and reflected back through code.

Exhibiton Formats: Either wall based or exhibited on the floor as a pair. There are now two separate panels each size 120 cm by 100 cm. Sometimes I exhibit them together on the floor in which case its 120cm by 200cm.

Global Reach: Exhibited internationally at venues including Living In Tech– Palau Robert Barcelona, the Deutsches Museum (Nuremberg), Heinz Nixdorf Museum (Paderborn), Museum of the Future (Netherlands), La Filature (France), Järvenpää Art Museum (Finland), and Museum of Cryptography (Moscow).

Toxicity. Driven Breathless translates the silent noise of pollution and digital networks into a tangible, aesthetic experience, confronting viewers with the hidden systems we live within.

The formal language of the piece draws upon the geometric clarity of Piet Mondrian. Just as Mondrian’s grids captured the pulse of the modern city in abstract form, Toxicity. Driven Breathless channels the rhythm of urbanisation into a living, generative composition. The rectilinear forms echo city blocks, road systems, and data grids, yet they are unstable, shifting with the flows of pollution data. The result is an evolving “toxic modernism”—a dynamic grid where the purity of abstraction collides with the messy realities of environmental collapse.

The work situates itself within the broader discourse on technology and mass urbanisation. Cities are engines of growth and innovation, but also sites of immense environmental strain. Here, the invisible infrastructures of air quality, carbon emissions, and digital surveillance are revealed as central forces shaping daily life. The artwork acts as a mirror: it shows not only what the city is, but also what it is becoming under the weight of technology-driven expansion.

By turning real-time data into a visual experience, Toxicity. Driven Breathless exposes the feedback loops between humanity, urbanisation, and machine intelligence. Every breath becomes data, every behaviour a signal, every pollutant a mark on the evolving canvas. It is a portrait of the contemporary city: beautiful, overwhelming, and suffused with the toxicity that sustains and endangers it.

Exhibitions.

Living In Tech– Palau Robert Barcelona. Spain. 2025
Deutsches Museum. Nuremberg. Germany. 2023
Heinz Nixforf Museum. Paderborn. Germany 2023
Museum Of the Future. Enschede. Netherlands 2022
La Filature, Scene Nationale. Mulhouse. France 2021
Jarvenpaa Art Museum. Finland 2021
Museum Of Cyptography. Moscow. Russia 2021

 Toxicity on the floor. 100cm by 240 cm. Shown here at Heinz Nixdorf Paderborn. 2024. Toxicity. Driven Breathless is a striking exploration of how pollution, data, and AI converge in our urban landscapes. It invites contemplation of our complicity in these systems and their tangible impact—making visible the unseen and urgent struggles of the contemporary city.

Toxicity. Hung on wall 100 cm by 120cm The artwork questions the reality of how we are polluting our cities and our environment. As we increasingly pollute the air with our behaviors, other systems and networks become evident. This artwork uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to create a landscape governed by AI. The cities we inhabit disclose our behaviour in these systems.

Shown here in Barcelona at Palau Robert Simbiòpolis: a journey in three stages  The exhibition proposes an immersive journey in three phases, in which technology interrelates with the concepts of city, nature and person, showing how these elements coexist. Throughout the journey, you can experience the different technological and artistic proposals related to the three concepts.

 (c) Stanza made in 2020 (AKA Steve Tanza)