Babel Fiche

I worked as the designer and art director for the animated title sequence for the final film working closely with project creator Dave Griffiths.

Launched in March 2011, Babel Fiche is a web-based film production commissioned by Film and Video Umbrella, with support from MIRIAD, North West Film Archive at Manchester Metropolitan University, and Castlefield Gallery, Manchester.

Babel Fiche is an imaginary media archive for future anthropologists. It questions the behaviours, objects, traditions and conflicts that we communicate to a future world through our online silos of everyday video clips. Today’s human cultures, physique and technology will inevitably develop out of all recognition and through potential crises. So how might a future species translate our current times? Members of the public were invited via the project blog during 2011 to gather and select a set of amateur video fragments were transformed into a set of colour microfiche films – a photographic medium capable of lasting 500 years and simply requiring light and a lens to expand its contents. This analogue throwback might even outlast our current reliance on fragile digital storage.

Babel Fiche animates and remixes the microfiche contents as a new short film. Other contributors include pioneering musician/composer Graham Massey, poet Gaia Holmes and philosopher Dr Stefan Skrimshire (Leeds University). As essay 'Unwritten History' by Dr Nancy Roth (Falmouth University) analyses Babel Fiche's themes of photography and history from a Flusserian perspective.

2012/13

http://www.babelfiche.net