When A Tyrant
Eats Itself

The work follows a laborious and complex trail of human and competer interaction. A computer Initatially generates random geographic co-ordinates to be visited (within the UK); sites at which audio can then be gathered. The field recordings taken are translated and printed out as a sound graph, representing the variation of noise over its duration. The form of the graph is then translated (by hand on a lathe) into a 3-dimensional object; painted and turned on end, this is filmed rotating in order to mimic photogrammatery techniques. 

This film–depicting the sculptural relic of an oblique data gathering process-is then loaded into a specially coded program that deconstructs the film sequence into individual frames. One of these frames is selected at random and a propotion of its code removed, creating a glitch in that frame. The selected frame is also then ‘read’ and re-converted into audio. All the frames are then compiled back into the original film sequence and the sound added; when this process is complete the film automatically plays for a select duration.

The frames are then processed and ‘hacked’ through the same sequence again and again, to a point at which the film reduces itself to black and becomes unreadbale. The work ends when the film has been completely destoyed and all that remains is the sealed, black box of the microcomputer.