Noticeboard at the End of the World, 2024
Noticeboard at the End of the World is a web-based fiction, which changes each time the text is loaded. Presented as an excuse left in the void of a dead world, its dynamically changing details suggest an author not to be trusted.
It can be accessed at: https://humanplanetsoftware.com/noticeboard
To regenerate the note, close the tab containing text and re-click on the noticeboard.
Chh Chh Chh, 2023
Performance in collaboration with Richard Whitby and Rebecca Wilcox
Video, audio, spoken word and automated instruments. Full video viewable here.
Created through a process of collaborative writing with Richard Whitby and Rebecca Wilcox, Chh Chh Chh imagines the inner thoughts of the periodic cicada, and reflects on the unique durational qualities of its lifespan. The Magicicada spends seventeen years underground in its nymph stage, only to emerge for a few weeks of adult life above ground. The performance / video is interspersed with intertitles, that at first inform but eventually degrade themselves into abstract and esoteric texts.
A Haunting, 2022
Real-time audio installation, duration variable (infinite loop)
Installation view at Dinner Party Gallery, London
A Haunting is an audio installation that takes the form of an endless journey through an ever-changing haunted house. Constructed with custom software to navigate through a multi-pathway branching narrative resembling a role-playing game, here the agency of choice is surrendered to a computer, resulting in countless mutations with exploration and encounters experienced in a meditative flow of narration. The listener becomes ghost, haunting both architecture and narrative structure, floating in an endless limbo state, seeking closure that will never arrive.
Listen to extract here:
Featuring the voice of Roger Mason as the narrator.
Only Good Guys Go To Heaven, 2021
Multi-channel audio installation, paper, cardboard, watercolour.
Installation view at Southwark Park Galleries, London
Photos by Mischa Haller, Courtesy of the artist and Southwark Park Galleries
Listen here:
Only Good Guys Go to Heaven was conceived for an exhibition at Southwark Park Galleries that explored the contemporary resonance of Hideo Kojima’s video game Metal Gear Solid (1998). On revisiting the game in preparation for the exhibition, a line of dialogue spoken by Meryl, the female love interest of protagonist Snake, stood out in particular:
Snake:
I had no idea you were so feminine.
Meryl:
This is no time to try and hit on me, Snake. Besides, it’s a waste of time.
When I joined up they gave me psychotherapy to destroy my interest in men.
In an attempt to envisage what such therapy might involve, a series of recordings utilising linguistic devices derived from self-help manuals and neuro-linguistic programming play through PA speakers, examining the extent to which language can manipulate an audience (or player) in morality and choice making. The voice of an action-hero protagonist mocks and refutes these efforts of mental conditioning, as he moves around the sculpture – part labyrinth, part moldy air-ventilation system, within which he is seemingly trapped for eternity.
Read review by Martin Herbert in Art Monthly here.
Yuck Yuck Yuck, 2019
Contained in a space demarcated by a twisted and broken fence, a series of sculptures that define a maze-like pathway of partial rooms and implied architectural spaces each speak the thoughts of unnamed characters from speakers hidden within. The scattered monologues of a salaryman, utopian, naysayer and coward loop, layering upon one another in an endless cacophony. Animated by hidden mechanisms, the sculptures open and close blinds and curtains at their own will, and discarded bin bags and overgrowing patches of grass imply this world is a dying one.
Listen to excerpt here:
Putty Ball & Life Story, 2021
Digital animation & web-based software toy
Taking the format of an abstracted guided meditation, Putty Ball takes the viewer on a short journey through a liminal domestic space. Life Story is an interactive work that contemplates imaginary lives using randomised methods for character creation and world building, typically found in role-playing games. Both originally conceived as part of a workshop alongside solo presentation Yuck Yuck Yuck at Jerwood Arts, London.
Life Story can be ‘played’ here: http://humanplanetsoftware.com/Life/
The Experiment, 2019
Audio, 5 min 17 sec
Commissioned by BBC Arts and produced by the Institute of Contemporary Art, London.
Inspired by research into the Philadelphia Experiment, an alleged study in invisibility cloaking by the US military, The Experiment is a short drama in which contact with an unknown force is attempted through esoteric means. Largely considered a conspiracy theory, the mysterious and often conflicting story behind the Philadelphia Experiment tells of transporting a naval ship through space and time.
Some accounts of the story describe the horror of discovering that upon reappearing, the sailors on board had become fused with the walls of the ship, others with tales of the crew briefly entering another plane of existence, never to be the same again.
The Experiment takes this concept of human / object / planar fusion as its basis, using the form of audio drama to contrive a scenario where inter-dimensional communication might be possible.
Listen here:
Featuring the voice of Scott Fortney.
Sound editing and post-production by Tom Ensom, foley by Karolina Jedrzejczyk.
Life On Earth, 2018
Mixed media installation
Installation view at Dinner Party Gallery, London
A fragmented narrative is presented, through snippets of dialogue and instruction. In the installation, airbrushed foam floorboards create an uneasy footing, while the recurring motif of a plaster is repurposed as a method of hanging.
Spiders Web is a Stage for a Play, 2018
Mixed media installation
Details from installation at Turf Projects, Croydon. Photos by Tim Bowditch
Commissioned for Fungus Press with Turf Projects, Spiders Web is a Stage for a Play was presented in the gallery and across a series of billboards around Croydon, each with texts alluding to the characters, settings and action of an unknown (and unknowable) play.
Over several weeks the billboards were revisited, adding layers of dialogue, literally pasting new text on top of the old, ageing the paper with fake mould, and eventually boarded over with cartoonish wooden planks.
My Love (The Idol Woman), 2016
Mixed Media sculpture, silicone, microcontroller, perspex, custom hardware
My Love (The Idol Woman) presents a dissected body, seeking to reassert a position of power. The sculpture, like a disembodied hand from a silicone love doll, sits atop a clear acrylic plinth held together by a series of custom hardware pieces, fake plasters and cable ties. Fragmented texts from fictitious business documents, role playing prompts and messages from a transhuman higher power engraved into the acrylic present an esoteric narrative across the sculptures surfaces. The hand is animated by a mechanism within, and taps one finger impatiently, infinitely unfazed.
HUMANS UNITE, 2016
Stage 1.0 – Alpha, 2.0 – Beta, 2.5 – Enlightenment, 3.0 – Passivity & 4.0 – Return, 2016, Laser etched aluminium laminate
Etched across a series of five vents installed on walls and on top of other sculptural works, a speculative fiction is presented, taking the form of a timeline of events envisioning the potential fallout from an ambiguous technological breakthrough in the near future.
Installation views from HUMANS UNITE
Alongside the intervention of the vents, the acrylic surfaces of the sculptures are etched with text, sometimes written in a new language, derived from the digital displays often found in basic electronic devices, future relics from an imagined post-apocalyptic time in which modern languages have adapted to be displayable on scavenged retrograde technology.
A New Post Appears, etched acrylic, 3D printed custom hardware, plywood, dead flies, glue, lamp
A bright white light on the side of A New Post Appears draws attention to a message left by a confused entity, also attracting flies which are trapped when they land on the surface, which has been smeared with glue. One side of the large, clear plinth is broken, a large crack hastily is repaired with cartoon-like planks of wood.
Wheatfield, 2016
Realtime 3D environment, duration variable (looping)
Created in game engine Unity, Wheatfield is a computer program that infinitely generates passing clouds and naturalistic wind patterns that gently blow the stalks of wheat in a perpetual moment of calm. The idealised setting of the field, in its apparent purity and serenity, is at odds with a soundtrack of heavy breathing. It is unclear whether this is indeed a place of mindful retreat, or a place to hide.
Mr Nobody, 2016
Interactive virtual reality environment
Mr Nobody places the viewer in the body of a techno-stressed salary man, whose anxious inner monologue is continually interrupted by intrusive thoughts, daydreams and visions that take him away from the comfort/ prison of his desk space. Utilising hand-tracking technology the body of the viewer is partially present, but only useful in swatting away the house flies that proliferate in the virtual environment.
Everyone is Gone, 2016
Interactive virtual reality environment
Set in a speculative far future, Everyone is Gone presents the viewer with a virtual environment – an infinitely generated densely misty beach or desert, where no matter how far you walk in any direction it is impossible to reach an ocean. Crude objects between minimal monolithic sculptures and technological detritus are discovered half buried in the sand. An ethereal soundtrack loops softly in the background, yet an invisible entity emitting harsh, distorted euro-trance also roams around the space, its troubling presence only felt as it moves closer to you.
Excerpt from Everyone is Gone
Sound design by Tom Ensom.
Drag Me, 2016
Created in video game engine Unity, Drag Me depicts the disembodied limbs of a female protagonist, dragged in an endless loop by an unknown captor. Inspired by a fleeting shot in the 2016 remake of The Blair Witch Project, Drag Me subverts the conventional power dynamic of horror-movie victim and captor, replacing screams and cries for help with a wandering, lackadaisical monologue. The protagonist of Drag Me remains utterly unfazed.
Seeking, 2016
Interactive 3d environment
Installation view in Terraformers, Bonington Gallery, Nottingham
Made in game engine Unity, Seeking contains the user in a brutalist concrete tower, their only view coming from a small slit window at the top of a staircase. Outside of this window, a landscape illuminated by a rapid day/night cycle reveals a worshiper, who praises the sun by day, and mourns its loss at night in an infinite cycle of joy and grief.
Read review of Terraformers from Frieze Magazine here.
Alongside Seeking, a selection of countercultural materials from my archive were displayed, with design by Hugh Frost.
“The books in my collection largely relate to topics of alternative ways of living in various forms, from off-grid geodesic dome-homes, to genuine plans towards space colonisation. They proliferate ideas and information that range from the mundane yet practical (where to cheaply buy wholesale grains) to radical and and often politically charged activities. The people who employ and disseminate the ideas contained in these countercultural manuals, whether for social empowerment or purely for means of survival, actively work against forces that encourage consumption and apathy over agency.
These ideas are especially relevant today, particularly in regard to our increasingly controlled relationship with technology, where networks are thoroughly policed and devices are intentionally designed to stop us repairing, reusing or even understanding how they work. This attitude of “othering” technology alienates us from engaging with (or subverting) the systems that massively influence our lives. These books (and their contemporary, digital equivalents) fight against such deskilling – empowering their readers through practical knowledge sharing and open-sourced innovation to stay engaged and recognise the dominating forces that determine the way we live.”