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Take an Audiovisual Journey into the Man/Machine Landscape

North of X's 'The Age of Digital / Analogue' looks at Britain's industrial past and present.

North of X (aka UK-based Chinese artist Sisi Lu) and his team spent a year and a half travelling the length and breadth of the UK to record, sonically and visually, the machinery, both analog and digital, that shapes the land along with the natural landscape that lies alongside it. From Britain's Industrial Revolution heritage to the industrial robotics of car manufacturing and the sublime scenery of Snowdonia and the Isle of Skye, the journey was made into an audiovisual piece called The Age of Digital / Analogue—a meditation on the relationship between man, machine, and landscape which recently premiered at the Sonica festival in Glasgow.

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"My decision to focus on print, textile, camera and car production, steam engines and power stations was part due to their place in history and impact on UK landscape, and part because I was particularly drawn to the personalities and design of these machines," Lu explains to The Creators Project. "For example, when I first saw a two-floor-high steam engine I felt like there was a huge monster standing in front of me, an old school style Transformer—it made my heart beat fast. Once I’d decided on the industries I wanted to highlight in this work, I then deep dived into their story and how they were designed."

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The ensuing performance sees Lu take the footage and sonics and Iive edit them into an audiovisual film, interlinking the sounds and images into a cadenced depiction of what he saw. It features around 450 clips—the machines, landscapes, industry spaces, animations, and archive material—along with 11 different soundtracks. The electronic soundtracks were informed by the rhythms and loops of the machines and the land. "Making this show is like building a machine," says Lu. "I am the engineer who creates and operates it. During the show, I am in the center of the stage, operating the computer system like the workers who operate machines in the factories. The machines are each actors in this project, they each have different parts to their personality and I highlight this by transforming them into many other shapes and linking these shapes with the shapes and patterns of the landscape."

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The behemoth machines, as well as being more than just emotionless infrastructure, also point to the country's past and the impact they've had on shaping the landscape and the cultures that exist around them. So for the film Lu and his DP Saimawn-Si Shen decided to shoot the natural landscape and the machines in the same way, to show how the two were intrinsically intertwined.

"I have always been fascinated by machines and what struck me was the sheer beauty of it," Lu notes in reference to his technological pilgrimage. "I was impressed by the boundless charm of the creativity of those who designed and built the machines. For our time, mechanization has a negative connotation to it—the cold enormous pile of steel. However, I want to distil some beauty and emotion from the seemingly cold monster. I want to piece together a poetic image for the audience. In the performance, as I start mixing old and new machines together, along with the landscape, I look ahead to the future and what the next relationship will be."

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The Age of Digital / Analogue will next by shown on February 5, 2016 at Kings Place, York Way, London, N1 9AG.

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