Charlie Behrens/FMP 2012
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Image by Sebastian Onufszak
con·vert·er [kuhn-vur-ter]
/Definitions 1. A person or thing that converts. 2. (Physics / General Physics) a. a device for converting AC to DC or vice versa b. a device for converting a signal from one frequency to another or from analogue to digital forms 3. (Engineering / Metallurgy) a vessel in which molten metal is refined, using a blast of air or oxygen See also Bessemer converter, L-D converter 4. (Physics / Nuclear Physics) short for converter reactor 5. (Electronics & Computer Science / Computer Science) Computing a device for converting one form of coded information to another, such as an analogueto-digital converter
/Etymology (circa 1300) from Latin convertere “turn around, transform,” from com“together” (see com-) + vertere “to turn”. Originally in the religious sense.
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Contents
The Digital Switchover
4
All The Poor Televisions
6
The Central Office of Information
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Defining the Target Audience using VALS
8
Who would Personify the Audience?
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Apple Have Fallen from Grace
10
From California to Shenzhen
11
The Target Audience on Apple
12
Glitch – The “Aesthetic of Failure”
13
Testing the Static Glitch
14
The Glitch Codec Tutorial
15
“Those Algorithms Which Govern Our Lives”
16
Concept-Moshing
18
The New Aesthetic
19
Concept & Testing – Algo-Architecture
20
Collaboration
21
Digital fuses with Actual via Skype Call
22
Machine Vision (Considering the Variables)
23
Merging the Concepts Collaboratively?
24
Algo-Architecture (Considering the Variables)
26
Algorithmic Architecture – Testing
27
Learning Outcomes & Thanks
28
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The Digital Switchover /Remote Control @ The ICA
With the analogue signal being switched off in London in April 2012, the remainder of the public still using analogue TV were forced to convert to digital. My natural interest in video art and analogue technology made this a natural first step in this project, which was complimented by a fascinating exhibition of switchover-related video and installation art at The ICA.
/Richard Serra — Television Delivers People (1973)
Produced in 1973, “Television Delivers People” is a seminal work in the now well-established critique of popular media as an instrument of social control that asserts itself subtly on the populace through “entertainments,” for the benefit of those in power – the corporations that mantain and profit from the status quo. Television emerges as little more than a insidious sponsor for the corporate engines of the world.” Synopsis from ICA website.
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/Ferdinant Kriwet — Apollo Vision (1969 — 2005)
Referring to this piece as a sound-picture collage, Ferdinand Kriwet made this striking work for broadcast whilst working in the US at the the time of the Apollo 11 space flight in 1969. It uses bold flashes of text to illustrate the wider political climate of the time, with references to psychedia, Nixon and the Vietnam war. A large proportion of the 13 minute piece is made from still images. In it’s entirety it is a giddying assault of sound and vision – quite ahead of it’s time...
/Hannah Perry — Sublimate Bass (2011) “The day Johnny Rotten goes back on the words he writes in his songs will be the day he dies and I know that for a fact – so it’s a ridiculous question to ask.”
Hannah Perry uses VHS to make mashed up video pieces and installations using combinations of old news footage, nineties music videos and her own personal video work. Although abstract, satire can be gleaned from the work – e.g. by her use of sound bites which show up as things that became disproved – the above quote possibly referencing John Lydon’s recent reality TV appearances.
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All the Poor Televisions /First Test
This was a test to see how a stop-motion film could work using CRT TVs. This is a playful approach to try and encourage people to see the charm in their clunky old TV sets – the thought of so many of these things ending up in landfill beggars belief. The eyes belong to Åsa Elmehed, the mouth to Carla Houston – the footage was burnt to DVD and played through each telly... Stop-Motion genius Henry Butcher helped animate the cables. The footage on the right hand TV is from an early 1980s public information film about the dangers of rising damp. This prompted an exploration of British public information films.
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Central Office of Information /Various films from the BFI’s COI DVD series
The films in question have a hefty, grainy 16mm aesthetic and hard-hitting messages, narrated by datedly posh men. In the case of the top left film Growing Up, sex education is tackled with surprising frankness. The graphic language is one of clear sansserifs which jerk under the poor telecine-ing of these films to DVD. To apply this language to the concept on the left could be fun. But it didn’t feel deep enough.
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Defining the Target Audience using VALS The approach to defining my target audience was a pragmatic one. I wanted to aim the work at the type of people who would be interested in attending a university degree show specialising in graphic design, seeing as the show is what triggered the electricity-based word concept – so I know that I am mainly aiming my work at creatives. I devised a survey based around the VALS demographic system which I circulated amongst my peers at the college and amongst the wide network of people I connect with via Facebook. Those who work/study in creative industries tended to fall into these two categories.
experiencers +
innovators
=
target audience
“Experiencers are motivated by self-expression. Young, enthusiastic, and impulsive consumers, Experiencers quickly become enthusiastic about new possibilities but are equally quick to cool. They seek variety and excitement, savouring the new, the offbeat, and the risky. Their energy finds an outlet in exercise, sports, outdoor recreation, and social activities. They are very active consumers and will spend their income on music, books, events and social activities” “Innovators are successful, sophisticated, take-charge people with high self-esteem. They are change leaders and are the most receptive to new ideas and technologies.”
— Source: Strategic Business Insights website
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Who Would Personify the Audience? /Naomi was considered a bit of a “freak” at school, but when she reached 6th form college she was liked for her original ideas and slightly waspish sense of humour. She doesn’t like being photographed but loves taking pictures — because she’s a walking contradiction... Naomi is a fake amalgam of the nineteen real people from the VALS based survey Tell me about you who best fit the target audience for this project. Image created from 13 webcam photos of the contributors to the VALS survey
VALS Type: Experiencer/Innovator Education: Studying part time masters in visual communication Job: Graphic Designer & Film Maker Music: Eclectic and non-mainstream – Jeff Lewis, Deerhoof, Tiny Ruins, Lightning Bolt, Sbtrkt Films: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Black Cat White Cat, This is England, Broken Embraces Magazines: Graphic (Korean version), Esopus, creative Review, Sight & Sound, It’s All in the Delivery, Foam TV: The Mighty Boosh, The Thick of It, Mad Men Hobbies: Yoga, Cooking, Partying, Swimming Politics: Interested. Hates politicians but will vote left for the lesser evil Travel: An annual long-haul month off in South America or the Far East, occasional city breaks to visit friends in Berlin, Lisbon or stockholm Brands: Apple, Facebook, The Guardian (online), Tries to stick to fair trade & organic produce but will not be too hardcore about it – it’s harder to be principled when this busy.
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Apple have Fallen from Grace
/A forward thinking California-based garage startup becomes a global giant with a questionable human rights record which churns out cynical “upgrades” (releasing the first iPad without a camera springs to mind) Let’s look at the facts to see if there’s a concept in this. The above points which I had previously read about seemed like adequate ammunition for a concept. The above test involved a very lliteral idea of fake blood representing being eaten from the inside by Apple. Further research into the matter didn’t bring Apple out smelling of roses, but are they shocking enough to require a thorough debasing? The suicides at Foxconn’s Shenzhen factory, although troubling, were lower than the national Chinese (and US) Average – there are areound 300,000 employees at Foxconn, so, whilst concerning, 18 suicides in that number is not altogether that surprising. That said, in previous years Foxconn would normally
only have one or two suicides. Concerned at the events, Foxconn Shenzhen MD Terry Gou installed nets around all buildings to prevent people dying by jumping at least. It’s a complicated global issue – Staff at the Shenzhen factory are on a starting salary of $1.78 an hour – which doubles after a year – this is certainly poor pay, even by Chinese standards – yet Foxconn is apparantly the factory where the most young people wish to start out – because the facilities are so much better than others. Further investigation into the economics of this show that, based on the cost of producing an iPhone in China, Apple is making a 70%
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From California to Shenzhen...
Software testing in Apple’s factory in Fremont, California, circa 1984
iPad manufacturers at the Foxconn plant at Shenzhen slumped on the assemply line for a half hour snooze. This is made possible if they eat their lunch fast enough the Foxconn CEO says that this is not exhaustion – but “a traditional Chinese custom.”
profit. If they were to have kept their manufacturing facilities in California, and charged the same (very high) price for their consumer electronics, they would be looking at a 42% profit, which would still be an extraordinary margin. Would there be enough employees in the USA though? Currently there are over 2,000 young people from the provinces braying at Foxconn’s gates for a job each and every month. Foxconn will hire 80% of these people. Global demand
for Apple products is so high that they can’t make them fast enough. So Apple are pragmatic – they use the “least bad” contractor in China which also manufactures products for Dell, HP, Sony, Microsoft, Motorola, Nintentdo, Nokia, Samsung and Toshiba. So why single out Apple? As the leaders in innovation in consumer electronics, perhaps they should be setting a benchmark for other brands to follow? It is time to see how the target audience views the brand.
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The Target Audience on Apple /“How do you view Apple as a company?” “Until very recently I very much admired Mac as a seemingly benign leviathan. I am becoming unsure these days as the Orwellian creep of snooping technology has found its way into every shiny item of fashion/tech. Oh and this from a company with such an iconic 1984 themed advert? Paranoid maybe, but with the genius Jobs gone what will they become?” “AMAZING – Powerful & sexy” “Clever – not necessarily in a good way. I know my devices are killing people, literally. but they’re so Goddamn good – Facebook and Apple... We can have no morals while they are in control.... oghhhhhhhh!!!” “I was brought up in an “Apple family” from the 1980s, so it has been strange to see the company go from struggler to dominator to the extent it has. I feel no loyalty to Apple, but doubt they are any more or less evil than any other major company. Sometimes I buy their products and sometimes I buy those of their competitors.” “I know Apple have a questionable human rights record in relation to their Chinese manufacturing operations, but I’m a sucker for great design. Oh, and they fuck artists up the arse with iTunes (30% commission) but for what they offer, there aren’t many alternatives.” “Great products, terrible labour history and pathetic environmental performance. Love their design and branding approach, think it is inspiring and has changed the world of marketing. Guess I’m torn.” “Love the products, HATE the outsourcing of production in China.” “Excellent technological innovations and style/design, somewhat marred by excessive commercialism.” “As bad as any other?! Their marketing strategy is aggressive and effective, helped by some good products they make. Mostly overrated.” “top leading electronic brand”
The proof is in the pudding. The majority know Apple are questionable so the concept would be preaching to the converted. So it’s time to bin it. – 12 –
Glitch — “The Aesthetic of Failure”
Work using jpeg code hacking for The Social Network Original Soundtrack sleeve art. Nine Inch Nails’ designer Rob Sheridan was given freedom to corrupt director David Fincher’s promotional stills, which was done entirely in Textedit.
glĬch [gliCH]
/[A] definition A short lived bug in the system. A transient fault that corrects itself and is therefore difficult to troubleshoot. It is applied to all types of systems including human organizations and nature. In computing it frequently refers to an error which is not detected at the time it occurs but shows up later in data errors or incorrect human decisions.
/Etymology From German glitchen – to slip and Yiddish gletshn – to slide or skid)
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Testing the Static Glitch I have always been interested in the glitches which occur during codec conversion within digital and analogue video (and indeed audio). But how can this be turned into a concept which can propel an interesting outcome? The concept needs to be deep, and the tests below point to nothing beyond aesthetics – which we’ve seen all seen a million times before. We need to get to the bottom of what a glitch is...
Glitch tests using textedit to hack the code of jpegs
glitch
+ educate
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=
content?
The Glitch Codec Tutorial Nick Briz is a film school graduate, who embarked upon a mission to freely educate the public about how to create glitch video art. – or in other words – how to hack video codecs using his own version of Ubuntu – a linux based operating system – in order to deliberately create those accidental errors that we frequently see occuring on the web. His mission was sparked by his frustration at the fact that many of his tutors in film school were determined that their students emulate the aesthetic of film into their digital video projects. His OS can be freely downloaded from his website and burnt to bootable DVD. He uses Linux because both Windows and Mac OSX are not opensource, and therefore cannot be changed to enable codec manipulation at the source. Ubuntu and Linux, however, can be freely modified and shared by the users, which is perhaps why he encourages that any art made on the basis of his tutorials is freely shared, “copy-left.” So there’s a “how-to” for the aesthetic, but what about the concept?
/How does a glitch manifest itself in reality? “NPR reported this morning on a traffic jam in California caused by an algorithmic glitch “accidentally summon[ing] 1,200 people to jury duty on the same morning”. An excellent reminder of the tendency of algorithmic dysfunction to manifest as physical dysfunction, and (at a relatively small scale) of the potentially disproportionate impact of glitches when they are translated from dataspace into an infrastructural system. The glitch may be as simple as having accidentally swapped the 0 indicating “do not come in” for the 1 indicating “come in”, but the resulting jam is rendered in aluminum autobodies and on asphalt corridors where it is much more difficult to clear than it was to create.”
al·go·rithm [al-guh-rith-uhm]
Step-by-step procedure for caculations. Used for calculation, data-processing and automated reasoning. – 15 –
“Those Algorithms which Govern Our Lives” /“Buildings and cities are structurally changing around the needs of a bunch of algorithms that have no agenda that would be of much correlation to anything you may happen to be doing in that space. New York City is being optimised to run like a motherboard... It’s being smoothed into the performance characteristics of a microchip and you – all of you – are just loitering; because whatever it is you’re doing in that valuable space... couldn’t possibly be as valuable as what a computer can do in that same office space.”
Kevin Slavin’s talk at The Lift conference in Geneva in 2011 asks big questions about the implications of a world in which what we watch, eat and drink are determined by algorithms which can reason for themselves whilst making fundamental decisions about human lives. He covers a huge amount of ground in the 25 minute talk, including the implications of production and consumption all determined at an algorithmic level, in which there is no human input. In global financial institutions, the majorioty of stock-market trading takes place using algorithms (70% in Wall Street’s case). These algorithms are more effective (an therefore way more profitable) if they are closer to the internet, which is why buildings close to internet hubs such as New York’s Carrier Hotel, at 60 Hudson Street, are being bought up by financial institutions and reinforced to house vast servers that are far heavier than the people which used to work in them.
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Concept–Moshing
A quick cut-and-paste video was devised to test the various H263 hacks that I attempted to explore the potential of Nick Briz’s Glitch Codec operating system. It splices elements of the concepts examined thus far. As far as digital glitching goes, the results were quite bogstandard and I decided it would take too long to figure out hacks that would be outlandish enough to create something new and challenging.
/Concepts within the test video • Hannah Perry-inspired bad VHS • US News reports based on the Dow Jones Flash Crash of 2010 (caused by an algorithmic glitch) • Kevin Slavin’s talk • BBC Newsreaders making mistakes (human glitch) • Glitches in Austin’s 911 system leading to chaos as crimes go unresponded
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The New Aesthetic /“The New Aesthetic, is an investigation, project & tumblr looking at technologically-enabled novelty in the world” — James Bridle The images below weren’t found on the NA blog, but definitely tie into it’s ideas. It transpired that Carla Houston and Sara Kabiri had also been researching into these themes, so we began having meetings at the hotbed of ideas generation and procrastination that is the LCC library. This resulted in a temporary collaboration.
Carla pointed me to this visualisation by Adam Harvey of how the Viola Jones algorithm sees human faces with OpenCV facial recognition software. He used his research to develop fashionable ways of tricking the software into not recognising human faces.
Clement Valla travels through Google Earth to explore “the glitches that occur when the 2D satellite imagery and 3D terrain don’t line up quite right”
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Concept & Testing – Algo-Architecture Google Streetview footage from NYC’s financial district monochromed and then put through an RGB delay - so that there is a single frame of delay between each of the three screen colours. This highlights the moments when an image is partially buffered.
Time-lapse Old Street from above. With much appreciated help of Kelvin Ola-Ayoade, who allowed me to shoot from his balcony which is 14 floors above and 150 metres from Silicon Roundabout.
Building on Slavin’s observations about the structures of cities changing to suit the needs of their stockmarket’s algorithms, I found the same to be true of London, tieing in with the government’s huge Tech City plans. Virgin Media are currently boasting that they have managed to create the fastest internet in the world at Old Street’s “Silicon Roundabout” where they have managed a speed of 1.5GB/s. My initial idea was to juxtapose a recorded Google Streetview journey from The Carrier Hotel to Wall street with actual filmed footage of a stop-motioned London by night – a kind of virtual and actual collage.
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Collaboration
When Skype goes fuzzy - stills from early skype-based tests...
The collaborative phase lasted about a week. Carla was considering taking more of a back seat by feeding my film and her intended work on it into her research book in return for helping shoot it. Sara was more undecided and so was more hands-on on several shoots with me. At one point we talked about making a research book/DVD package as a group. The way it panned out was that we had so many ideas that we were trying to put together that it became confusing, and we resolved that our initial ideas had been strongest which were easily executable as solo projects. At one point we were going to have a Google-maps-with-spam-bot-comments-insteadof-locations-ethernet-cable-machine-eye-book-film! It was a positive thing though, and afterwards we worked alongside each other as consultants on each other’s outcomes with a plan towards creating a research book for the end of year show.
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Digital fuses with Actual via Skype call
Initial stop motion footage made on a DSLR looked too polished and clean. We decided later to animate purely using a webcam to give it that “skype” feel...
A Skype conversation is recorded between Charlie and Sara. Charlie is in NY, where it is daytime. His Skype footage would be fused with the digital Google Streetview footage of NY. Sara is in London at night. Her skype call is fused with actual footage of London (shot from Kelvin’s balcony). She realises she needs to send a text whilst on Skype, and while she is doing this she is swarmed by ethernet cables. She doesn’t react, allowing the cables to swim over her, because technology has become so embedded in her life that it is complete normality to her – she doesn’t notice. The same thing then happens to Charlie in the Skype call. The idea was abandoned because the results of two days of shooting, which included the help of soon-to-be FdA animation graduate Henry Butcher, were somewhat laughable. After the success of the TV test we had thought it would work better.
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Machine Vision (considering the variables)
/Content: How Facial Recognition Algorithms are increasingly governing our lives The Viola Jones algorithm is a simplistic algorithm in some senses in that it only uses rectangles to detect areas of contrast in faces. However, the fact that it works at a constant speed means that it is more efficient than it’s more sophisticated relatives. The film explores how these algorithms see and detect us – and in turn how used to seeing machine-based imagery we are.
/Format: Short Film The format suits the content because cameras – and by extension facial recognition software, track people in real time. It also reflects my ambitions within the design industry.
/Target Audience: Creatives (Experiencers/ Innovators) This target audience is more likely to engage with material which conveys it’s message in a non-linear and abstract fashion. If interested, they will dig a little deeper to find out more about the concept.
/Mode of Engagement: Educate This is a moving image piece. The film educates – in the broadest possible sense – by raising an awareness in the target audience of the way in which machines see them.
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Merging the Concepts collaboratively? /“What if, instead of designing computers and robots that relate to what we can see, we meet them half-way – covering our environment with markers, codes and RFIDs, making a robot-readable world” — Matt Jones, BERG
The Viola Jones algorithm replicated in After Effects. I was able to replicate it superficially, but could not get it to ramdomly generate the shapes, so they were on a repetitive cycle.
The Viola Jones effect applied on footage shot in Canary Wharf with Sara, this time with the shapes randomly generated, thanks to help from code-wizard Ed Giles.
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A digital display in Canary Wharf shows the stock market readings from the Dow Jones Index. It is photographed on different settings so that it’s information becomes blurred. This could be a metaphor for what happened in the Wall Street Flash Crash of 2010, when an algorithm encountered something it wasn’t supposed to and so didn’t know how to react.
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Algo-Architecture (considering the variables) /Content: How the needs of internet algorithms are structurally changing our cities A single quote was chosen from Kevin Slavin’s talk: “Cities are structurally changing around the needs of a bunch of algorithms that have no agenda that would be of much correlation to anything you may happen to be doing in that space.” To illustrate this, a journey through the nuances of Google Earth is used which shows how the buildings of global super-cities look when the application is navigated in unorthodox ways. The intention of the simple content is to encourage the audience to seek out Slavin’s talk online, which is why a prompt to Google his talk appears at the end of the film. (the full web address would be too lengthy for people to remember)
/Format: Short Film The film is in full HD and can be projected on a loop as an installation... It travels through New York, LA, London, São Paulo and Bangkok, although all street names are obscured by pixels. Google Earth is explored in real-time. This augments that time.
/Target Audience: Creatives (Experiencers/ Innovators) This target audience is receptive to material which is semiabstract in it’s nature. Many of them may not be aware of the talk which influenced this content but it would be excellent if the film encourages them to seek it out as it asks some really relevant questions. This audience has been selected as they will probably like this approach but really this information should interest many audiences – it is our contemporary reality.
/Mode of Engagement: Educate This is a moving image piece – which rules out the other potential modes of engagement. The film educates – in the broadest possible sense – by raising an awareness in the target audience of the way in which emotionless algorithms are making decisions about things which will affect them on a very human level – their pensions for example.
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Algorithmic Architecture — Testing
Many iterations were tested to do with the way the film flowed. Recording the desktop in full HD1080 whilst running Google Earth is incredibly RAM and processor intensive. For that reason the footage was exceptionally jerky, often with four-second pauses. Many frames had to be edited out to make it flow with the right amount of stop-start energy. Initially the type had been intended to be integrated with the film, but that proved to be too visually distracting from the wonderful architectural distortions taking place from Google’s machine-eye, so the decision was made to create a landscape based intro incorporating the quote, influenced by Clement Valla. OpenCV style tracking flashes were also employed and then binned for similar reasons.
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Learning Outcomes & Thanks This has been a highly participatory project, in spite of the fact that I created the final outcome alone. I got help, advice and feedback everywhere I could which was incredibly beneficial. I realise I was held back for a good while by a fear of stepping outside my comfort zone of pure process-driven experimentation. Actually researching something completely new – The New Aesthetic – was incredibly rewarding and made me see the world in a completely different way. Good video art cannot be made just from looking at other video art – which was where I started on this project. Another thing I have learned – if this can be called learning, is that we seem to be in a decade which will get used to the idea that the future is something to be celebrated – assuming we don’t instigate the apocolypse. Rather like the 1980s, which began drearily (in the UK) with the Falklands war and Thatcher’s horrific cuts, trends began to look towards the future in terms of music, fashion and art. The Human League, Kraftwerk and Apple’s iconic 1984 commercial were examples of this. I have had a feeling for a while that the vintage/retro bubble was about to burst and that people would get sick of trying to emulate the 1980s/70s/50s/20s. But then, perhaps, with all the garish, pixellated “internet art” knocking around, we could be entering another 1990s with our own “remix” of the Cult of the Ugly...
/Thanks to: Carla Houston Sara Kabiri Kelvin Ola-Ayoade Åsa Elmehed Ed Giles Amelie Behrens Louise Owen Colin Miller Hannah Perry Paul Bailey
Ken Kirton Sophie Demay Darren Raven Anselm Van Rood Mationesa Wade Veronika Kiryenko Vladislav Loveyko Simone Lindsay Tim Bastable Dave Haydon
Yue Huang Gintare Parulyte Leigh Davies Elena Manfredi Roisin McMullan Lan-Hsuan Hseih Hali Olalemi Izaskun Munoz Darryl Munroe Canary Wharf Security