372.5~River Thames at Space House by Kerrie O’Leary

Installed on the 15th floor of London’s iconic brutalist landmark, 372.5~River Thames unfolds as a quiet meditation on motion, time, and planetary rhythm. Created by Irish artist Kerrie O'Leary, the kinetic sculpture translates live tidal data from the River Thames into a choreography of weights, pulleys, and motorised movement. Presented ahead of Earth Day 2025, the work offers a mechanical echo of the river’s approximately six-hour tidal cycle, a system both precise and poetic.

From Space House’s panoramic 360-degree vantage point, the Thames meanders visibly through the cityscape below. The sculpture sits within sight of the very body of water it interprets, forming a direct dialogue between data and landscape. As sunlight arcs across the sky and the moon quietly asserts its gravitational pull, celestial forces become palpable. The tides are no longer abstract statistics; they are embodied, animated, made spatial.

Filmed over a continuous 24-hour period, 372.5~River Thames becomes a canvas for light. Shadows stretch and dissolve. Metallic components catch morning brightness and soften into evening glow. The sculpture does not simply move, it responds. The interaction between natural light and kinetic motion produces an evolving interplay of texture, density, and silhouette, mirroring the river’s own mutable surface.

O’Leary’s broader 372.5~ body of work examines the seemingly effortless distribution of water during a tidal cycle. Through code-driven systems and mechanical counterweights, she renders environmental data tangible. Her practice consistently merges computational techniques, mathematical algorithms, and machine learning to visualise bodies of water as living forms. Here, the invisible mathematics of gravitational pull becomes a physical balancing act, a slow negotiation between rise and fall.

At the heart of the project lies a philosophical inquiry: what might we learn from water? The Thames does not rush toward conclusion. It ebbs, it flows, it pauses, it returns. O’Leary asks whether humans might adopt a similar rhythm, slowing into natural cycles rather than forcing linear outcomes. What would it mean to meander rather than accelerate? To solve problems dynamically, patiently, fluidly?

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