until 4 March 2017
Commissioned as part of:
Tropical Hangover
Tenderpixel, London
(group show) Salvatore Arancio, Zuzanna Czebatul, Rowena Harris, Laure Prouvost, Suzanne Treister

After Attenborough, 2017
HD film, stereo sound, 4 mins
Camera: Orestis Lambrou
FX, Sound: The artist
Sound credit: Apple IOS Alarm ‘Birdsong’
Footage credit: The secret life of plants, 1995;
The Kingdom of Plants, 2012

After Attenborough, is an online film commissioned as part of the exhibition Tropical Hangover. It permanently overlays the exhibition page on the gallery website tenderpixel.com/exhibitions/tropical-hangover

The work functions in two parts: within the physical gallery/exhibition the floor was painted ‘chroma-key blue’, and then the use of this as a special effects screen in the film for a digitised, post-produced nature. The work is a response to a ‘digitally informed’ understanding of nature – a nature that, from a European perspective, is most likely only ever seen on film, and further stems from the prominence of Attenborough’s long-spanning documentaries. Here Harris’ interest is focused on two documentaries – one from 1995, and one from 2012, which feature the same plants, and where the inherent differences in colours, grain, shooting and lighting techniques between the two time periods, demonstrate how the perception of a ‘Tropical Nature’ alters through the advances and approaches in digital technology over time. Additionally the ‘nature sound’ within the film is borrowed from the alarm tone found on the inbuilt IOS 9 app ‘bedtime’ – a digital morning chorus.