> ## Content Index
> Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.killscreen.com/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further.

# When it rains in Manhattan, it rains in Santa Fe
- URL: https://www.killscreen.com/zurkow-schmitz-river-is-a-circle-thoma/
- Published: 2026-01-07T22:44:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-07T21:44:29.000Z
- Description: Marina Zurkow and James Schmitz's The River is a Circle regenerates the Hudson from live weather, tides and ship traffic — now at the Thoma Collection.
- Author: Kill Screen Staff
- Tags: Marina Zurkow, James Schmitz, The River is a Circle, Generative Art, ecology, simulation, Thoma Foundation, new media, #radar-item

The Hudson in *The River is a Circle* is split horizontally — history above the waterline, ecology below — and none of it is footage. Marina Zurkow and James Schmitz's generative animation redraws itself continuously from algorithmic probability and live data: real-time weather, light cycles, tides and the marine traffic actually moving past Manhattan's Meatpacking District. When a front rolls over the Hudson, the artwork clouds over with it. [The clip the Thoma Foundation posted](https://www.instagram.com/p/DcJa-DSReSE/?ref=killscreen.com) catches its toylike drift, barges and fish stacked like a living cross-section diagram.

0:00 

/0:36 

1× 

**The River is a Circle* at the Whitney’s Hyundai Terrace (excerpt, muted). [Full documentation on Vimeo](https://vimeo.com/1086922924?ref=killscreen.com).

Above the surface, [six chosen inflection points](https://www.bitforms.art/artwork/the-river-is-a-circle?ref=killscreen.com) of the district's history flow together: Lenape presence before 1609, Dutch colonization, nineteenth-century industry, the queer nightlife that filled the hollowed-out district from 1970 to 1990, post-2001 gentrification, and two speculative futures. Below, a database of 2025 Hudson ecology drives fish that school, keep diurnal schedules and shift with the seasons, swimming past oyster-reef restoration and the occasional diver. [The credits run deep](https://o-matic.com/work/the-river-is-a-circle/?ref=killscreen.com): animation by Ewan Creed, research by David Guzman.

Commissioned in 2025 for [the Whitney's Hyundai Terrace](https://whitney.org/exhibitions/marina-zurkow?ref=killscreen.com), where it ran through today, then blown across the screens of Times Square as a Midnight Moment last September, the work is now on view in [Deconstructing Landscape](https://www.bitforms.art/exhibition/deconstructing-landscape?ref=killscreen.com) at the Thoma Collection in Santa Fe's Railyard Arts District.

What Killscreen sees here is the procedural machinery of games — weather systems, spawn tables, day-night cycles — pointed at history instead of play: a persistent world that runs whether or not anyone is watching. Zurkow has said that “animation has freedom from verisimilitude, and warrants the fantastic,” and the fantastic here is rigorous. We watched a game wire itself to live weather back in 2015 with [*Lovely Weather We're Having*](https://www.killscreen.com/lovely-weather-were-having-pleasant-its-name-implies/). Zurkow and Schmitz complete the thought: simulation as a landscape painting that never repeats itself.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/25/84/2584b75d-4bd6-4cce-8259-f1d1c65abbb5/content/images/2026/09/river-is-a-circle-1.jpg)

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/25/84/2584b75d-4bd6-4cce-8259-f1d1c65abbb5/content/images/2026/09/river-is-a-circle-2.jpg)

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/25/84/2584b75d-4bd6-4cce-8259-f1d1c65abbb5/content/images/2026/09/river-is-a-circle-3.jpg)

**The River is a Circle* installed at the Whitney, 2025\. Courtesy the artists and bitforms gallery.

Simulation as art is a beat we’ve worked for a decade, from live-weather games to generative rivers. The free newsletter follows the world-builders working outside the game industry.

[Get the free newsletter ](https://www.killscreen.com/start/?ref=radar-cta)