Terra Nullius/Nobody’s Land: Excavation from Image 3.0
Serendipity Arts Festival, Goa

DONATIEN AUBERT
Cybernetics, the Living and the City, 2021

The 30-minute animated film draws upon the mid-twentieth-century interest in the science of 3D animation as well on the impact of envisioned, networked ecosystems. This work focuses on how our relationship to the urban can be eco-friendlier through the use of computational technologies. These issues are revisited within a more general reflection on the reification of ‘nature’ in the history of gardens. It addresses the role of computer science within the development of scientific ecologies and the predicament of current environmental regulation techniques. The film is made via computer-generated imagery, augmented with several videos broadcast by eight holographic propellers. They diffuse animated 3D models, enriching the film’s scenes that present models of plant species that have disappeared since the advent of the Industrial Revolution; views of plant cultivation systems; and various architectural projects. The film ends by invoking speculative scenarios drawn from contemporary ecological interventions.