
Between Worlds

"Between Worlds" is a collaborative installation by Tessa Garland and Dylan Ricards that explores the shifting space between earthly terrain and celestial expanse. The work takes the form of a miniature, imagined world—a hybrid diorama where landscapes, technologies, and timelines collide.
Using satellite imagery from Google Earth, the artists stitch together footage from a number of locations—Mars, the Kern Oil Fields, and Joshua Tree, California—creating a scorched, otherworldly environment that feels both real and speculative. A model train loops through this terrain, navigating across a landscape of horizontal monitors that display a layered digital collage of dry earth, deep space, and manmade markings. Cast resin cacti rise from the glowing screens as if absorbing energy from artificial sunspots and pixelated constellations. Microphones are fixed to the train track, capturing the sound of its motion and sending subtle, shifting sounds through an amplifier, grounding the piece in the present.
The installation plays with scale, time, and perception—proposing a fragile world where planetary memory and digital imagination intersect. It draws attention to both the ecological precarity of real environments and the allure of speculative futures shaped by technology.