Private Project

Datacosm

At the dawn of the Datacosm, data is planted, harvested, transported, stored and processed as data-feed for consumption by the data eaters. The infiltration of the data storage facility by a hacker leads to contamination by a thought virus which alters the Datacosm forever.

Set in a puppet theatre, data scientists (as puppeteers) control puppets, objects and analogue data to create the narrative on the stage above. Code scrolls between the ‘real’ world of the puppeteers and the micro dramas enacted by the puppets.

The film was derived from an original collaborative version of Datacosm which combined artificial intelligence and animation and presented as a live performance.

  • Jo Lawrence
    Director
    Glow, Glover, Barnet Fair, Ylem, The Land of Lace, The Woman who owns the sun
  • Jo Lawrence
    Writer
    Glow, Glover, Barnet Fair, Ylem, The Land of Lace, The Woman who owns the sun
  • Produced by Collusion /Simon Poulter /Rachel Drury /Rich Hall
    Producer
  • Jo Lawrence
    Producer
  • Greg Arundell
    Key Cast
    "Data engineer / puppeteer"
  • Chip Colquhoun
    Key Cast
    "Data engineer / puppeteer"
  • Marie Fortune
    Key Cast
    "Data engineer / puppeteer"
  • Ariadna Fatjo-Vilas
    Editor
    Glow
  • Catherine Ashenden
    Cinematographer
  • Ruanth Chrisley Thyssen
    Sound designer
  • Fabio Amurri
    Composer
  • Jo Lawrence
    Design, props, puppets, artwork
    Glow, Glover, Barnet Fair, Ylem, The Land of Lace, The Woman who owns the sun
  • Yael Biran
    animator
  • Jo Lawrence
    animator
    Glow, Glover, Barnet Fair, Ylem, The Land of Lace, The Woman who owns the sun
  • Project Type:
    Animation, Experimental, Short
  • Runtime:
    9 minutes 1 second
  • Completion Date:
    November 8, 2019
  • Production Budget:
    10,000 GBP
  • Country of Origin:
    United Kingdom
  • Country of Filming:
    United Kingdom
  • Language:
    English
  • Shooting Format:
    Digital
  • Aspect Ratio:
    16:9
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    No
  • Student Project:
    No
Director Biography - Jo Lawrence

Jo Lawrence’s films integrate stop motion animation, puppetry and mixed media. She has received commissions from Channel 4, Tate Britain (Tate Late), Animate Projects, and Mahogany Opera. Residencies include Digital Media Artist at the V&A and Animator in residence at The National Media Museum, Bradford. Themes explored include genetics, fashion, apocalypse, and a hair circus. Films include Glow, Glover, Ylem, Barnet Fair, The Land of Lace and The woman who owns the sun.
Films have been broadcast and screened widely at international film festivals. Jo’s recent collaboration with Collusion and Cambridge Consultants combining animation and artificial intelligence has formed the basis of her most recent film, Datacosm.
Currently, Jo is one of two artists in residence at Lightworks, Blackpool and is also completing a film installation (Llygad y Lleuad ( The eye of the moon)) for Pontio Gallery, Bangor, Wales. The film is based on One Moonlit Night by Caradog Pritchard.

Add Director Biography
Director Statement

Datacosm was derived from an animated multi-layered version created to respond to Cambridge Consultants artificial intelligence project, ‘The Aficionado’. This iteration is presented as a single channel film for festival consumption.

Within the framework of a puppet theatre and puppeteers, Datacosm's narrative explores the digital world of data and the liminal spaces between humans and computers.

The notion that we are all entirely dependent on code and data engineers for the manifestation of the digital world struck me after a chance pasting of an email into a Word document. Pages and pages of code suddenly appeared, full of random poetry.
The existence of this intangible 'other world', this shared mental space has parallels with imagination and dreams. As a scheme it corresponds to the tiered layers of a puppet theatre with puppeteers and events on stage.

The film integrates stop motion animation, puppetry, pixillation, live action, photography and collage.