Personal Project

Escalation

Escalation
Video installation
Duration: ca. 17 Minutes

A human lifetime is on a vastly different scale to earth's deep geologic history. Epochs of evolution have created our complex ecosphere but we are now witnessing its collapse. The escalation of human activity is creating ecological breakdown yet, in our age of acceleration, it is rare to slow down long enough to see what is happening before our eyes and within our grasp. In a city like London, the pace of consumption is the same as in a busy gallery where it becomes difficult to engage with what is happening to our planet. Amidst a growing number of storms, the system in front of you is collapsing, whether you decide to witness it is up to you.

The visuals are designed around 24 datastreams from global ecological and geopolitical phenomena (e.g. CO2 ppm in the atmosphere, average mass of glaciers, world population, GDP, Micro-plastics in the ocean, military spending, ozone depleting substance emissions, global meat production). This data is fed into the system until it takes over and rips itself apart.

The artwork was shown in the exhibition Mars & Beyond in the Bargehouse Gallery, London, UK from 22 Feb to 15 Mar 2020 - just as the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic started to grind the economy and life as we knew it to a halt.

Technical Details:
The artwork was created in Maxon Cinema 4D using the X-Particles Plugin, rendered in Redshift, postprocessed in Blackmagic Fusion and Adobe After Effects