Responses by Bruno Arizio, designer and project director; Marcelo Baldin, composer and sound designer, Combustion Studio; Victor Luis Costa, developer; Roger Mac, photographer; and Érika Moreira, writer.

Background: Photographed by Roger Mac and written by Érika Moreira, Impermanence is a digital journey where visitors can pause for a few minutes throughout their busy day and ride along with Mac and Moreira into the ambiguity of life, stripping bare the artichoke petals of the resistance of time.

Larger picture: “Impermanence was created [to] confront the reality of the impermanence of everything in this universe, and bring consciousness to and acceptance of this inevitable ephemerality,” says Roger Mac. “The transient condition of our existence is the most frightening concept we need to confront in life. [With this project,] I found [a way] to deal with all the abstract feelings around this subject and the sensations and thoughts it causes. The photographs are motionless but still depict a constant state of change—and the contemplation of it.”

“Writing for Impermanence was like self-relief during these crazy times that we’re passing through,” says Érika Moreira. “With everything that’s happening, everybody feels like a stranger at a party that only you were invited to, and somehow [you have] to start a new way to face yourself, your life and the world. These photographic experiments inspired me and worked as a perfect synthesis of this ephemerality caused by COVID. With this in my hands and heart, writing a poem was easy.”

Design core: “Combining the different disciplines of this immensely creative team was a challenge and a joyful experience at the same time,” says Bruno Arizio. “Our goal with the project was making the viewer feel immersed in the atmospheric environment of the exhibition. The soundtrack and the beautiful poem written by Érika were both key elements in setting the right mood for the experience. With the textures and piano arrays explored by Marcelo, we could drive the viewers afloat to this universe of contemplation. The design had to be toned down to a minimum; we didn’t want to attract attention to the graphic design but instead to the visual story being told.”

Sound design: “Composing the soundtrack for Impermanence was a delight,” says Marcelo Baldin. “The fact that I could personally explore textures and melodies within a minimalistic approach turned out to be challenging, but also a good way to express my interpretation of the subject. The use of specific reverbs and piano tones and ‘unfinished sentences’ reflects how existence is fragile, yet pulsing, but vanishing and aiming for something sublime.”

Technology: “The website was built completely from scratch without any CMS, preprocessing or framework,” says Victor Luis Costa. “Therefore, there is no back end, but there is a good effort to provide users with the best experience possible, aligning the site with good performance on both visual and technical sides. To achieve this, it was necessary to spend hours preparing the images and staggering lazy loading on most of the content.”

Special details: “As a developer, I would like to highlight the microinteractions on the Menu and Gallery Modal pages,” says Luis Costa. “These increase the user experience and help users to navigate and better consume all the content displayed on the project. [Also,] the infinity scroll on Gallery Modal and the zoom feature are techniques that require complex and comprehensive calculations, especially when we used these interactions with LERP smooth scrolling.”