時の河 : TOKINOKAWA

Production company: The Light Surgeons
Client: The British Film Institute

This installation explores the rich cultural history of Japan through the concept of “a river in time”. It is a six-screen and multichannel audiovisual work that has been created by leading UK media artists The Light Surgeons, featuring new music by Japanese percussionist and composer Midori Takada.

The installation re-contextualizes a set of newly restored films from the BFI’s Japan on Film archive by re-tracing the themes and locations in these films with new material gathered by the artists across the country in gathered in 2020.

This film footage from the past and present is then analyzed in order to transport us into the near future. This is a future where archives are continually examined and mined by semi-autonomous programs that participate in an endless form of data archaeology. This memory retrieval and its “artificial gaze” is presented by an animated infographic layer in the work created using bespoke AI software tools.

This installation is part of the "TRACING THE CIRCLE" project commissioned by the BFI and is available for international exhibition.

Creative Direction: Christopher Thomas Allen & Tim Cowie
Musical Compositions: Midori Takada
Sound Design: Tim Cowie
Cinematography: Christopher Thomas Allen
Field Recordings: Christopher Thomas Allen & Youki Mikami
Editor: Christopher Thomas Allen
Assistant Editors: Ida Lundø Madsen & Louis Walters
Animation: Tim Cowie & Louis Walters
Post-Production Assistants: Pierre Bouvier Patron & Blanca Regina
Technical Consultants: Rahul Somani & Anton Marini at Synopsis Video
Software Development: Arron Smith at Artists & Engineers
Project Producers: Christopher Thomas Allen, Annie Jael Kwan, Youki Mikami
Installation Producers: Christopher Thomas Allen & Alice Ceresole