QUAD Mezzanine Screen
Ant Hamlyn
The Boost Project, 2015 (Timelapse) 44 Seconds, Looped.
Co- commissioned by FACT and Hope University through their Graduate Production Residency.
Produced with support from FACTLab, video courtesy of BAY TV Liverpool.

Hamlyn’s interactive, living installation explores how social media allows us to live within an alternate reality; one in which we can easily attain a heightened sense of belonging, or a fleeting state of appreciation. The inflating orb aims to emulate the acceptance and self-worth we can feel after receiving ‘likes’ on our posts or pictures online.
Each time the orb is followed, receives a like, or is tagged with #theboostproject it gradually increases in size until it reaches its peak. If ignored, it begins to subtly deflate over time and fade into the background of our lives.
You can view the installation at UKYA Riverlights exhibition, situated next to Derby bus station.
www.theboostproject.biz/

QUAD Café
Emily Simpson
With and Without, video, 2016. 4 Minutes 29 Seconds, Looped.

‘With or Without’ is an animation that plays with connotations. The work focuses around three meandering circles, which loosely form a ‘Venn diagram’, as they drift around a set of interchanging phrases. The diagram’s words are lifted from Google, from the browser’s unfailing helpful ‘suggested search’ results. Unsurprisingly, the thread of language starts to float between sense and nonsense, mirroring the sporadic and asymmetric pattern of online browsing. When placed together we seek coherency, creating strange, comical and familiar associations. Language becomes both placed and displaced, as we make (or perhaps don’t make) meaning in the meaningless.