THE CHIME TRAVELLER (2023)
The Chime Traveller premiered at the RCA graduating designer show at The Truman Brewery, and was free to try out as a prototype in Cutler’s ANTHROPOCENEMA installation. Projections were all on a tailored double (front and rear projection) screen of silver organza and black sparkled chiffon. Click on images above/below for full views.
THE NATURE DOCUMENTARY IS DEAD, LONG LIVE THE NATURE DOCUMENTARY!!!
What does it mean to tell the story of a world - which isn't re-runnable - in a medium which is? THE NATURE DOCUMENTARY IS DEAD, LONG LIVE THE NATURE DOCUMENTARY!!! picks up live nature broadcasts over-the-air around the world and resurrects them as real time video ghosts.
The projections are a real-time synthesis of archival VHS materials, live broadcasts, and AI attempts to reconstruct the nature documentary. They are triggered by The Chime Traveller, an audio-reactive input instrument inspired by the history of colour organs as well as live foley. This includes two reactive glitch processors custom-built by Liam at Glitch Video.
To manipulate the video channels, the user can hit, scrape, or gently touch any of the metal chimes with the two watchmaker mallets or to spin the spinning tops. These Westminster, grandfather and spiral chimes are rescued from deconstructed clocks and are used to create live scores connected to species time and ways of outliving it. Here the instrument is not controlling the soundtrack, but the visual journey through video archives, stable diffusion data, and predictive modelling / frame interpolation.
This work is a behind-the-scenes tool from the live production Species Piracy, created by Cutler in collaboration with de-extinction researchers, performers, and biologists at the Leverhulme Centre for Anthropocene Biodiversity in York. The live cinema performances are projected onto a large fog screen with 16mm projectionists, improvising choirs, tape loopers, video scratchers, scientists, costumed ushers, and other performers involved in the rituals of re-mediation, hacking, "live" resurrection, and cultures of bringing species back to life.
