Interactive spatial media installation Generative visual system

Nespresso New York

Nespresso’s New York flagship required a video wall that could connect its retail and experience zones through one continuous visual language. Commissioned by Commersive Solutions, Refractiv developed the generative artwork and interactive system, then defined its technical configuration, implementation and calibration.

Project Details

  • Year:2025

  • End client:Nespresso USA

  • Commissioner:Commersive Solutions

  • Location:New York, USA

  • Spatial context:Nespresso flagship store

  • Media layer:Generative video wall

  • Input:Discreet sensing layer combining spatial information from multiple sensors

  • Refractiv role:Creative direction, generative visual design, interactive-system design, software development, sensor and hardware specification, implementation and calibration

  • Collaborators:Bartolini/Lanzi Architects; Stingray; Commersive Solutions

Brief and site condition

The Nespresso flagship in New York required an interactive installation that felt continuous and distinct, responded to visitor presence without becoming a gamified interface, and avoided canned video loops. In a retail setting where people linger, return and spend time near the wall, the content needed to remain alive across long opening hours while staying calm, premium and materially aligned with the brand.

Computer vision for retail interaction

A discreet sensing layer tracks how people move through the space and translates that choreography into subtle forces within a generative fluid simulation. Because the system is generative, the content never resolves into a fixed sequence with a visible reset point.

As visitors draw closer, their presence gains weight inside the simulation, allowing them to steer the liquid motion nearby. Ripples, drifting trails and soft wake patterns linger briefly before merging back into the whole. Coffee and cream form a slow visual language that continuously emerges and dissolves: a digital painting in motion, shaped by the people in the store.

The interaction is deliberately restrained. The wall stays quiet as an interface, registering the room and letting presence alter the behaviour of the visual field, so that density, proximity and movement leave traces inside one coherent brand language while remaining controlled, discreet and operationally appropriate for a flagship retail environment.

Wide view of the generative coffee-and-cream video wall in the Nespresso New York flagship

Credits

Refractiv
Creative direction, generative visual design, interactive-system design, software development, sensor and hardware specification, implementation and calibration.


Commersive Solutions
Commissioning, project lead and AV integration.


Stingray
Initial concept and pitch.


Bartolini/Lanzi Architects
Architecture and interior design.


Photography courtesy of Nespresso USA.

Generative coffee-and-cream visuals across the video wall at the Nespresso New York flagship
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