"Earth A.D." plan 1 (FACT)

Like Earth AD 1, it is based around the image of the bipedal robot, a continual thread through the endless timeline of a community, however context and tone have shifted, previous works are presented anew, new works are added.

The most significant thematic shift is the location. Earth AD 1 was set in a flooded crypt. Earth AD 2 is set in an impossibly high bell tower. It represents the mid-point in a narrative, the ringing of a bell marking the bifurcation of what happened before and what happens after (dawn, noon, dusk, birth, death, correnation, marriage, etc). The top of the bell curve, the highest point and the beginning of a fall.

If there is one thing that this exhibition is, it is an "archive of gifts".

• Skazz writing style (the oral writing form, where mistakes and corrections exist in the same text rather than beening removed. previous attempts are present)
• Following from the above, the concept of "trying again", always being able to make another attempt. Always having another life.
• The term "Low Estate", used frequently in the new testiment as a synonym of "humanity", its a poetic image that ive fallen in love with, and has become the behind the scenes subtitle of this iteration of Earth AD. It makes me think of multiple overlapping things: A literal piece of achitecture such as aristocratic estate, subsided into the ground. Bataille's "base Materialism" and the spirituality of the death and the "low". An additional, secret "estate of the Realm", the community of the lumpen. Following from this, it could be a translation of La Bas, or "down there". The relative position from the bell tower, making everything else "low".
• The tv adaptation of Todd Grimson's novel "Brand New Cherry Flavour"
• Specifically from the above, the image of a bath of milk in which all injury is healed
• overlapping with the above, the image from Evangellion where mech pilots or placed in a milk like fluid while in their machines, an that this fluid might disolve them like a twin devoured in the womb.
• Milk blood of androids in the Alien universe
• The character of Lambert from Alien, one of the most significant transgender characters in science fiction
• Joris-Karl Huysman's novel "Là-Bas", translated as Down There or The Damned. Published in 1891, less than a decade after the death of Marx, class analysis and labour theory run through what is on its surface a novel about an art historian attempting to write his own novel about the history of satanism in france.
• In the above, the extensive discussion of bell towers, and the structure of bells being alegorical for the priest's relationship to the church.
• Mike Flannagan's beatiful mini series "midnight mass"
• Jordan Peele's beuatiful film "Nope" which similar to the above, deals with the incomprehensible otherness of an angel/
• The impossible architecture of Lebbeus Woods, particualry the concept art for the wooden planet in the original treatment of Alien3.
• Blast Beach near my home in Gateshead, where the opening shot of Alien3 was filmed.
• Castlevania, its complex appropriation and distortion of Dracular, its cocreation of the "metroidvania" genre, which is built around the principle that you must go back on yourself rather than just going forward, and particulary the entry in the series entitled "symphony of the night" where half way through the game the protaganist reaches the highest point on the map, only for it to flip, positioning them at teh bottom of an inverted map.
• Black Masses
• herbs in resident evil
• the attic room in Gormonghst where the gifts of the peasant class of the Bright Carvers are kept to gather dust
• VIDEO GAME SAVE ROOMS, WHERE CALM MUSIC PLAYS, BOTTOMLESS LUGGAGE CONTAIN ALL WE HAVE COLLCTED, AND WE MIGHT COLLECT OURSELVES AND REVIEW THE MAP

Game

I'm making the web game (almost certainly titled Earth AD: Low Estate) for this leg of Earth AD in Adventure Game Studio (AGS). AGS is what I made Animal Agency in (as FACT Together Fellow back in 2020), its a point and click engine, and with its new update is now able to build for web (!!!!!), rather than needing to be downloaded to play on PC on linux. I'm very excited about this, and will be making a first person point and click, in part based on the french 1990 Amstrad game La Sect Noir (iamge above). to allow it to run smoothly this game will be made with pixel art rather than the image heavy scanned animation of Animal Agency. The story will be strongly informed by occult film noir.

Install : FACT

At the very top of this document is a rough drawing of how im approaching the installation of the existing works in this iteration. CONTRARY TO PREVIOUS DISCUSSION, COFFINS FROM EARTH AD 1 ARE TO STILL BE SHOWN AS COFFINS, RATHER THAN BEING REASSEMBLED AS A GANTRY SYSTEM. (I spent a very long time with that idea, and realised it was incorrect. The coffins have a function and they need to perform it). In Earth AD 2, coffins are treated with less care than previously, they will be bunched up, at least one will have its upper tray removed and used to form a second layer bridging two other coffins, with the trayless frame now leaning against the central collumn in the gallery, strapped in place. Coffins will still be used to hold relics and drawings and soil, though the exact configuration will be decided insitu.

The corricle will be hung from the ceiling, but angled up so it can be fitted close to a wall, it is being stored rather than being displayed

The large scaffolding frame holding projections will be shown as before, presenting a kind of airlock into the gallery.

the large number of laser cut steel shapes that were not used previously will be layed out to fill one wall.

The small game with speaker and contorller will now be mounted from the central column in the gallery. The other animations that were previously shown on monitors may not be shown in this instance of the show, or may exist elsewhere in FACT is possible.

hollogram LED fans are presented as before, up high in the gallery.

small perspex scaffold frame will be installed in a similar position to EARTH AD 1 so that is provides a view of the sholw gallery, and will be drawn on with new annotations.

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New Works

The largest new work is a bell, made of still and mounted on scaffolding in the space between the central pillals. there are a couple of varients for design, but my preferences it to make it in the leftover rebar mesh, bound in cord at the corners. the headstock will be laser cut from thick ply (multiple sheets, glued), and while it wont be rung in the show, it will have a basic mechanism so that in theory it could be by pulling a long cord that will snake across the ceiling. The holes in teh rebar mesh will hold what i am calling "plates". see below. I would also like to see if its possble to trigger vibration in the bell, so the plates rattle periodicially. possible methods would be a solonoid on a timer. And alterntive bell design would be to simply make it in steel. While the rebar bell is meant to look a bit like a jibbit, the cut steel bell is to look more like the enty plug from Evangellion or a pill capsure.

The plates for the bell will eather be a repeated simple design laser cut in steel or a more complex relief design cast in jesmonite from a 3d printed orignal that is in turn adapted from an image already in the show in as one of the laser cut steel designs..

Beneith the bell will be the Milk Bath, this is a flat work which depicts a face from a surface of something like a puddle of liquid. This might just be a drawing, or it might be laser cut steel. Id like to incorporate a vaporiser to a light vapour surrounds it

The Trunk is a simple cuboid made of cord bound rebar, with hanging plates the same as the bell. It has a top made of thick layered ply, and some hand made latches roughyl modelled in a polymer.

The Horizon Spot light is a projector mounted from the ceiling on a motorized rotating gimble so it can track across the room back and forth. the projector will show an animation that tracks across a sillouetted horizon line in pixel art. the projector and animation are synced so it is as if the projector is illuminating an image on the walls..

A new hologram LED Fan work shows a pixelart animation of a candle, similar to those in castlevania. this is on a very long loop, and once every two hours it will brielfy transform into a spirit, before returning to the candle animation.

A new large print (either a digital print on mesh, or a relief print made from a set of lino cuts (I'll make a handfull of varients, so they can be used in combination to make corridors that branch, go stright, etc) shows a huge map on the wall, based on the map of draculas castle from castlevania sympony of the night

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