James Utting-Webb and Riley Lockett

The relationship between Humans and Animals has been a constant power struggle since the start of their respective existences.

From the beginning, the Human has only been armed with basic intelligence, and limbs to support bipedal movement. The only natural defence mechanisms the Human has had to defend itself against the much bigger, and feared creatures that dominated land, water and the air for thousands of years.

The Animal, however was armed with weapons and physical advantages. Such as; razor sharp teeth, talons or claws; the ability to fly, or breathe underwater; the poison to kill in minutes; or the speed and strength to rip a mere Human to pieces in an instance.

Miraculously, the Human overcame its physical limitations, and succeeded to overthrow the Animal kingdom and conquer the world. Now, the Human sits atop of the food chain, thanks to its evolving development of technology. From the rock to the spear, the spear to the gun, the once feared and worshipped creatures are now the slaves of consumption, in the form of either food, or entertainment.

Even the gun has become outdated, as the monitoring of the Animal can be reduced to data, that of 1s and 0s. The role of the Human is to simply program the computer responsible for autonomously harvesting the Animal. The land, water and air the Animal once ruled has been updated to support the needs of the Human.

Through the collection of data in the form of audio and visual media, we will be representing this timeline, and the balance of power from; Animal > Human to Human > Animal**

The data will be re-animated to create a synthetic ecosystem, to create an audiovisual installation with speakers and a projector.

** > (greater than)  https://www.agdata.com.au/modules/livestock/

Riley Lockett is a sound artist and composer from Melbourne, Australia. His practice recreates memory environments through field recordings in historical sites. Riley also creates sound compositions for contemporary installation, film, performance and theatre. 

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