the predecessor to your prayer

the predecessor to your prayer | still from 1m 27s of digital video | 2020

During UK lockdown, I’ve made a contribution to Forced Collaboration, which brokers cross-disciplinary interactions between artists around the world and shares the results online.

I was asked to “Think about the idea of chaos” and given a long set of instructions. In response, I made a short video piece that draws heavily on Conway’s Game of Life. This is a game played with a 2D grid of square cells, each of which can be alive or dead. The player plots an initial configuration, after which every cell interacts with its neighbours according to a simple set of rules. Applied repeatedly over time, these interactions give rise to complexity.

Such cellular automata were integral to the development of chaos theory, and are used today in simulating the spread of infectious diseases. In a sad coincidence, the game’s inventor, John Horton Conway died this month aged 82 from complications related to Covid-19.

Bounded within a 1:1 (square) aspect ratio, my video contrasts regular grids and binary systems with natural forms and random video 'noise'. The film’s soundtrack draws on the quirks of modern dictation and text-to-voice software to deliver a torrent of increasingly panicked language in a steady electronic voice.

the predecessor to your prayer can be viewed on Vimeo and via the Forced Collaboration site.  My collaborator (who set the instructions) is Haddas Eshel.