The exhibition entitled “Priests and Programmers”, inspired by a book of the same title by anthropologist J. Stephen Lansing about Bali and its Green Revolution, was presented at the First Sharjah Architecture Triennial, “Rights of Future Generations” in the United Arab Emirates from 9 November 2019 – 8 February 2020.

It was organized by ETH Zürich and Dr. Adam Jasper, and included a 3-part installation produced by Sorensen in collaboration with Lansing, featuring original computer animation, sound design and music by Sorensen, as well as a custom circular sand table for projection mapping. The sand table provided a tactile and malleable surface for extending the dynamic moving images into organic and shifting shapes that echoed the landscape of Bali, in particular, the Crater Lake of the volcano Mount Batur which provides water to the beautiful rice terraces below. An auspicious festival takes place there every year to honor the Goddess of the Lake, which was a focal point of the documentary.

The animation, sound design, music, and documentary are part of Sorensen’s on-going research project entitled Asian Conceptions of Space-Time in Digital Media Art that includes several works relating the arts to the cosmologies of the people of Southeast Asia through the use of digital media, including computer animation, computer music, and interactive installation technology. It includes sonification and visualization of the Balinese Calendar (the most complex calendar known to anthropology) and Gamelan Music. This research is providing a deeper understanding of the relationships between the calendrical systems and the natural environment, architecture, and music/performing arts, of several Southeast Asian cultures.