Max Cooper - Forgotten Places

Max Cooper: 'Forgotten Places' began as a feeling, chord progression and an idea to make an audio visual project about the lost places in our built environment and the beauty of nature starting to take hold again. For me these sorts of places have always been important for some time away from the city grind when there’s no time for escaping the city. There’s something special about unkept spaces and the form of complexity that emerges along with a reassuring feeling that nature will persist beyond us. I chatted to Kathrin about the ideas and she made an on the spot improvisation for the vocals in the way that only she can, full of expression. I then started looking for imagery of the idea and found Jonk’s amazing photographs of abandoned spaces. He was interested in experimenting with how we could use his work as the basis for a music video so the next challenge was how to turn stills into moving image. The next stage of the project happened with AI art specialist Xander Steenbrugge. In the era when there are often issues around ownership and crediting of AI generated art I was interested in how we could base a project on one artist as the source, Jonk. Xander created predictions of frames linked to the photographs so sometimes we see the spaces before they were abandoned or interpolations between them. Finally, I started chatting to Ukrainian artist Nick Motion about how we could take all of the stills and downstream generated video and combine it with his style of particle work and editing to yield the final audio-synced sequence. So overall it’s a collection of different human and machine approaches as an experiment, to hopefully celebrate the photography of Jonk and capture some of the feeling and merit of our forgotten places. Nick Motion: Every project is a journey. And Forgotten Places is such a special one. For me it was fun deep dive into new software, coding and mathematical concepts. I tried to unleash forces of randomness to create a memorable visual narrative. My main challenge was to create an empty container, interesting enough visually for viewers to interact with. Almost a simulation of a narrative. I believe in the ultimate power of abstraction and chaos. Because it enables the viewer to participate in an act of art. You can only see things you already know, feel, and experience. If you listen carefully you`ll find out — the whole world is a reflection of yourself, and it can't be different. This was my first experience working with AI closely. Thanks to the developers community I have access to useful AI models, without leaving a native work environment. This is amazing how far we can get in the simulation of reality. This gives the opportunity to discover interesting parallels between nature and manmade structures. both physical and abstract