Cold Flux, 2021
Three-channel video installation
Cold Flux is a three-channel AI generated video installation created from footage Williams filmed of the Larsen-B Ice shelf whilst on an expedition to Antarctica with polar explorer Robert Swan. The ice shelf splintered off from the Antarctic peninsula in 2002 and has been disintegrating since. The footage was used to train machine learning algorithms to generate the video landscapes which visually seemingly exist within a state of melting and freezing, forming and un-forming. The resulting video is strange and uncanny, a familiar yet distant landscape, a prediction or a recording with echoes of the sublime. Cut into this video landscape is AI generated video of the surface of the sun; synthetic and uncertain. The work presents to us the new digital materiality that is starting to exist alongside our own, while exploring its relationship to the natural. Accompanying the video is a haunting audio track by musician Gaika. The track is delicate, yet strong, digital but also human. A slow tracking shot shows the sides of the icebergs, while the vast blocks of ice also move within the shots themselves. The imagery moves from the recognisable to the indistinguishable, flowing and morphing within the steady frame. The camera looking at the sun is static, with the sun continually rotating within the frame, something seemingly impossible. The work maps the complex network between technology, environmental change and our understanding of the world.
