Ronen Tanchum's Human Atmospheres

Ronen Tanchum, Human Atmospheres, 2026, installation at World Economic Forum, Davos, Switzerland

By VICTOR SLEDGE March 9, 2026

Artist Ronen Tanchum has one underlying goal in his work: to make you feel something. “If the artwork makes you feel something, it’s probably good art. I don’t have much more of a definition for art than that,” he says.

From interactive digital art influenced by the way someone moves to grand weather simulations influenced by music performed live by Jon Batiste, Tanchum has created a technological art practice that’s intimately connected to the most human parts of us. 

Coming from a background in film visual effects, Tanchum has always had to use technology to create life. “My job used to be to create anything that’s natural. Clouds, rain, fire, things like that. I had to study nature to recreate it synthetically,” he explains.

Working on blockbuster films like Deadpool, The Great Gatsby and The Amazing Spider-Man 2, he’s developed a craft out of turning the synthetic into something that feels alive. Tanchum eventually took that craft into more real-time, interactive work through opportunities like installation work. 

You’ll notice a large part of Tanchum’s catalogue explores and depicts nature, staying in line with his earlier work in film. And it’s an element that may seem difficult to sustain if he’s constantly working with technology, something we often think of as distant from the natural world. But Tanchum’s work aims to bridge that gap.

Ronen Tanchum, Human Atmospheres, 2026, installation at World Economic Forum, Davos, Switzerland

“In my practice, I love using nature as a symbol for how fragile these technologies are and where their boundaries and limitations exist. But I also want to connect people back to the source, to life itself,” he says.

With Tanchum’s work, technology becomes less of a tool and more of a mirror. To experience his art is to be tied to whatever digital tool is in a given piece and to find the hidden ways we can all relate to it. 

For example, in his recent work in Davos, Switzerland, Tanchum literally brought the stage to life with his immersive installation Human Atmospheres. Presented at the World Economic Forum’s Annual Meeting in February, the installation was a living, breathing weather system that reacted to the presence of passersby. 

As people interacted with the work, it responded with light and motion, asking a question all too relevant to the natural systems Tanchum contemplates in his work: How does our presence impact whatever living system we encounter, be it digital or organic? 

He took that same concept and expanded it in his work during the annual meeting’s opening ceremony, creating a weather system that reacted to live music from Batiste, a Grammy-winning artist known for his colorful, flowing improvisations. 

Ronen Tanchum, Human Atmospheres, 2026, opening ceremony installation at World Economic Forum, Davos, Switzerland

“The goal was to make all these world leaders in the crowd come up and dance. So I was on board right away because it was an impactful moment I could help deliver,” says Tanchum. 

As the weather system Tanchum created seemed to emote with the sounds of Batiste as well as the Mahler Chamber Orchestra and world-renowned violinist Renaud Capuçon, it became a clear example of just how vivacious and emotive technology can become within a piece of art. 

“It was very experimental and the real-time visuals were alive to the point where we rehearsed that show five times, but each time, they were unique,” he remembers. “I love that aspect of digital art. It allows me to make artworks that are spontaneous and alive.”

Tanchum has often used sound in his work to create moments similar to Human Atmospheres. For him, it offers the audience an immersive experience that allows them to rest further into the other elements of the work. 

“Most of my artworks have sound where you can affect the music with your movements. I really like the connection between physicality, music, and the visual,” he says. “When you hear the music, it amplifies the entire experience. And when you see the visuals, it marries together.”

Ronen Tanchum, Human Atmospheres, 2026, opening ceremony installation at World Economic Forum, Davos, Switzerland

There is a dialogue Tanchum drives with his work, where the audience is ushered into a conversation between themselves, the artwork and the parts of real life it’s emulating. It’s a dialogue that Tanchum seems to explore for himself as well. “Why am I doing this, making this footprint that I want to leave?” he asks himself.

As someone walking the line between nature and technology, often using AI for his work, Tanchum is aware of how these are often opposing entities within our world. As generative AI rapidly reshapes creative industries, Tanchum asks how artists can rethink their relationship with the technology.

“My main interest is futurism and how I can affect the future,” he says. “We as a civilization will have to decide where AI will go. I really believe the people who developed the technology should think about this critically and make it more efficient.”

Tanchum has done other installations such as In Bloom to make his viewers think further about humanity, our digital tools and the world we inhabit. In the installation, flowers responded to a power grid, helping them bloom with surges of power. It was a way to show people how the energy that people are vying for to fuel these technologies we’ve grown so accustomed to can impact the real life that has sustained long before the digital age. 

Ronen Tanchum, IN BLOOM, 2025,  installation view at Museum Of Art Tel Aviv

“My work is meant to inspire people toward a greener future, a more ecological future, a future where technology develops in a mutually respectful way to the environment it exists in,” he says. “Digital art has the power to have an important dialogue with people.”

As an artist who’s always had technology as an integral part to his work, Tanchum is focused on moving toward a world where artists can find sustainable ways to use it to make a real impact on humanity. Because, for him, even with tools as inanimate as the cords and cogs that make up this tech, the work he makes with them has its own heartbeat.

“Everything is energy and waves. So in my work, I try to make people not only see, but also feel,” he explains. “I’m a programmer. When people ask me what I do, I tell them I program art. But when I create, I’m feeling the work more than I’m working on the work.”

Ronen Tanchum, Human Atmospheres (still), 2026

That honest, human experience Tanchum has with art is what he hopes for both his audience and his peers creating in the digital age. For him, it’s not about typing  simple prompts into a computer, it’s about developing a real practice, a technological, artistic discipline in the digital age that gives technology what it can’t give itself. 

“How do you make it yours? What’s your taste, because technology can do many things, but it doesn’t have a taste,” he says. 

To learn more about Tanchum, you can visit his website at ronentanchum.art and follow him on Instagram @ronentanchum.art