GEV II : Grid-Lock Generator (v)

The second generative installation of the God's Eye View series offering an abstracted view of urban traffic modelling.

Three projections exploring facets of the symbolic order imposed on human experience of the world, God’s Eye View both celebrates and questions the wisdom of attempting prediction.

Enlisting the aid of the Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis, these works offer up the mechanisms employed for the visual mapping of the virtually invisible for consideration. Struck by the inadvertent beauty of systems created to ease understanding of a complex world, Cotterrell here replicates the language of predictive modelling to highlight what is lost (and gained) through the process of translation.

Traffic flow around an urban centre and its inevitable gridlock as more and more vehicles are introduced into the equation mimics video games like SimCity and Populous. At times, the audience is reminded of the behaviour of flocking birds or lemmings as we see human choice and naturally occurring patterns reduced to game-like conditions. The quest for God-like status is brought down to earth by the limitations imposed by humanity’s collective imagination: prediction machines are only capable of replicating identified trends. Our inability to witness all of the convolutions of existence is reduced to an abstraction: a translation or ‘Beginner’s Guide’ to this shared existence.