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Invisible Airs

This short film was produced in collaboration with digital media artists YOHA (winners of the Berlin Transmediale), in a project commissioned by the Digital Cultures Research Centre and Bristol City Council to explore the nature of open data.

The film follows YOHA’s investigation into the relationship of computerised databases, expenditure and power, as they convert the pounds sterling of expenditure, into the pounds per square inch of pneumatic pressure, through the construction of a series of mechanical contraptions (eg a library book stabber, a potato cannon and an older people’s polishing machine) to be tested with members of the public.

The film provides context to YOHA’s contesting of the neutrality of data, particularly in this time of political conservatism and financial austerity, finding visual expression for YOHA’s site specific metaphorical investigations of the computerised database and bringing them to life to a wider audience. These explorations are part of a process of realising new perceptions about the role of data that YOHA claim are fundamental to the operation and distribution of power in contemporary society.

Accordingly, the film is an attempt to visualise these ‘invisible’ processes, not just through the documentation of YOHA’s installation performances, but also through the use of sound design, AfterEffects and tilt shift camera techniques to bring to life and make visible some of the processes which YOHA explore in their work. The use of analogue sound design in particular attempts to simulate YOHA’s use of deliberately engineered, mechanical contraptions by which to investigate the ethereal power of the database.

The film has been reviewed on the influential websites, humansinvent.com and creativeapplications.net, as well as being exhibited at a number of gallery spaces and screenings, including the Void Gallery in Derry, the Glasgow Centre for Contemporary Arts and the Furtherfield Gallery in Finsbury Park (March-July 2012).