Output details

ATOM TOWN: life after technology. (Digital Film Installation). ‘Kassel Documentary Film Festival’, Kassel, Germany (2011); Forårsudstillingen, Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Copenhagen (2012); ISEA2012 Albuquerque: Machine Wilderness.

Funded by a Creative Scotland film and video award, this research investigated the heyday and decline of Dounreay nuclear research establishment in Northern Scotland. The visual output is a twin-screen projection environment where archive material, current footage, and sonic material interweave simultaneously. Unprecedented access to the Dounreay site, to former and current members of staff at all levels, and the nuclear visual archive at Harwell was negotiated. The mix of interview, archive material, contemporary footage and sound allows for the viewer to enter an active role of interrogating the gaps and contradictions of the experiment, and of the nuclear politics of the time. Dunlop developed techniques with the enthusiastic participation of site staff and affected communities to work with the memories and physicality of such spaces for the future.

Current thinking in nuclear decommissioning is tending towards the complete removal of all structures associated with the UK nuclear state. This project offers a prototype for larger-scale investigations into the cultures and archives of major technological imperatives, which can inform current and future debate on national and international infrastructural priorities. Methodologies employed in this project enable the dissemination of information on local, national and international responses to changing technologies in society, their presence as recorded at the time of use, and the changing understandings of technology in their declining phase.

Unique interview material, use of montage editing, and a sense of play in the edit are seen as evolving tools in a new site investigation method. The project necessitated an active questioning of the role of contemporary philosophies in constructing a multi-layered sense of place- in particular the thinking of Paul Virilio.

Dissemination strategies have ranged from community screening and discussion events to international film festivals and academic contexts.

2 digital projections: 3m by 7m (Kassel), large HDTV screen Charlottenborg