PROTOTYP
Back in 2022 the world was at a tipping point. Culture wars, governments folding into chaos and AI was beginning to infiltrate the mainstream. I used some of this as material for a large scale triptych AV installation in the reservoirs of Zluty Kopec in Brno, Czechia for Prototyp Festival.
"The Ministry of Delirium" was one of the first artworks to be shown in this historic underground location after being closed for many years.
You can see some more images of the installation in context here On this page, I'll show some more of the background work and imagery used in the project.
The underground reservoir tunnels were full of atmosphere and water needed to be drained from the floors to make it safe for visitors and use as a public space. Due to the nature of the building, only a specified number of people were allowed on site at any one time.
I chose to make the work about secret networks and systems of control hidden from sight. I had fun building some of the dark materials, such as this infernal machine which operates from the bowels of the tunnels. I animated using Touchdesigner with realtime compositing algorithms.
Using Touchdesigner the material was generated and manipulated and then split across three very large projections onto the old underground brickwork.
This image represented another infernal underground machine.
This photo below is from pre-1900 and shows the construction of the reservoir.
Here are some more proposal images which showed my intentions of exploring the structural parts of the arches and brickwork. It was challenging creating a tryptych for a site without being being able to visit first, I already had experience with an underground factory location to have an idea as to the conditions and visibility was a concern. luckily they gave me details of the projection system which had a good output strength designed for this. But these frames were to create a sense of atmosphere, so after the work was confirmed as a commission and more details of the specifications became available I could start to focus on the actual work itself.
Further updates with more material tbc...
