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This was an AHRC-funded residency at the arts centre FACT in Liverpool, which took place between February and August 2018 as an extension to my PhD research project. As part of the residency, I got involved with shaping and creating content for the The Living of the Future ( a coproduction between FACT, Universities of Nottingham and Lancaster, and the BBC), as well as producing further Affective Sign films, and exhibiting the entire project to the public during a four-day multi-screen installation at FACT in August.
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AFFECTIVE CINEMA EXHIBITION, THE BOX, FACT
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The series of ten films was presented on six individual screens and one large cinema screen. Some screens showed multiple Affective Signs in a sequence, while others were dedicated to one film only.
Certain screens showed films with two distinct sound versions from different music composers/sound designers. One of the screens included a touch-screen tablet, which allowed visitors to select and play any of the ten Affective Sign films. The main cinema screen offered a visual collage from across all the films, accompanied by a poetic narration laying out some of the key ideas and concepts underpinning the research. Like the film work itself, the ambition (experiment) with the poetic narration is to present these ideas in a less rational format, combining with the feeling of meaning of the images, in order to enhance this affective meaning, perhaps giving it an additional dimension – rather than to merely explain the research and pin it down with rational efficacy. 
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THE LIVING ROOM OF THE FUTURE
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The Living Room of the Future is a research collaboration between FACT, BBC R&D, The British Council, and universities of Nottingham, Lancaster and York. It envisions the future of film consumption in a living room dominated by Object Based Media and the Internet of Things. The film content playing on the screen changes its duration and order based on data gathered about the viewer on the sofa, while the light and other objects in the room (such as an electric fan) complement the visual content. The viewers behaviour, such as picking up a glass of water or standing up also influences the media.
I was an integral part of the development team leading up to the completion of the project. Together with Ilija Tiricovski, I produced the audio-visual content for the Living Room, which consisted of bringing together visual material from his work and from my research. The split-screen format makes the two disparate film sources enter into affective, compositional correspondence, which results in a rich and complex, elusive yet engaging audio-visual content. I edited the work, and wrote and recorded poetic voice-over for the film with a pair of actors, Hannah Cecily and Theodor Spiridon, in my home studio. We also recorded narration to provide 'the voice of the living room', which communicated with the installation participant throughout the experience. The installation was first shown at FACT in Liverpool in May 2018, and was subsequently exhibited at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, and during the British Council's Play UK 2018 in Skopje, Macedonia. |
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Here is the main film I co-produced and edited for the Living Room of the Future:
Here are examples of the 'voice of the living room' providing guidance and explanation to the installation participants. The male (left) and female (right) versions, which I recorded with Theodor Spiridon and Hannah Cecily, were used interchangeably during the installation.
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And here is a little glimpse of the Living Room experience itself:
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