More Than Us

(sonic version) 2023

A live data-driven digital artwork
by Julie Freeman

Commissioned by Hiscox

About More Than Us

(sonic version)

Exploring climate prediction as a game of both chance and skill, More Than Us is a live data-driven artwork, which offers a glimpse into the astronomically huge dataspace that exists around us. A live composition of animation and sound, it draws on vast sets of historical, real-time and predictive climate catastrophe data. Colourful geometric shapes congregate, ebb and flow in dynamic communities, which are inspired by and drawn from abstract Suprematist paintings. Splintered lines of light intensify and recede in response to real-time global events reflected in Hiscox’s insurance business transactions. Through the live interaction between artificial intelligence and artificial life algorithms, More Than Us reflects our complex relationship with sophisticated data systems, and with knowledge, prediction, chance and risk. It encourages us to think in a more-than-human way about our collective fate.

The online edition of the work is a soundscape of audio samples composed by the data-driven system. The visuals are a modified version of the original work installed at Hiscox HQ in London.

About the artist

Julie Freeman works with natural systems and emergent technologies. She is a pioneer of large-scale and online art that uses real-time data as a living, malleable, critical art material.

Find out more

More Than Us has been created using a blend of creative and technological tools and media.

DATA: A combination of datasets are at the heart of the work including historical data, real-time data from the Hiscox business, and predictive data from recent climate catastrophe models.

ALGORITHMS: Both artificial life and artificial intelligence algorithms use the combined and processed data to generate the animation and accompanying sound composition.

VISUALS: The shapes and colour palettes are directly influenced by works from early twentieth century Suprematist artists including Luybov Popova, Kazimir Malevich, Ivan Kliun, Olga Rozenova, Lazar Khidekel and Nikolai Suetin. Suprematism was described by one of its founders, Malevich, as the first movement of ‘pure abstraction and pure feeling’. Freeman sees parallels between the global uncertainty at its inception and our current times. She has been inspired by Suprematism's powerful sense of dynamism, play, and freedom from existing ideas and structures.

SOUND: The audio is a combination of organic sounds representing climate catastrophes and man-made sounds evocative of betting scenarios. Earthquake, wildfire, storms, flooding, cyclones and hurricanes meet cards, dice, roulette and slot machines. They represent the sense of skill and chance that is woven together throughout the work. The sounds are data-driven - each is triggered and filtered by the outputs from the processed data, creating an unpredictable digital ‘musique concrète’.

The work is best experienced on a laptop with headphones, as the sound processing is not optimal on mobile devices, especially Firefox on an Android OS.

Credits

Translating Nature team:
Julie Freeman - Artist
Jons Jones-Morris - Programmer
Hannah Redler-Hawes - Curatorial advisor
Holly Slingsby - Producer
Stephen Wolff - Programmer, audio developer

With thanks to:
Jon Kosak
Jon Scott
Oliver Marlow (Studio Tilt)
Fiona Parry
Artists from Freesound

And thanks to the Hiscox team:
Kylie O’Connor
Whitney Hintz
Laura Pemberton
Andy Bugg
Adam Mitchell
Alex Parsons
Chris Evans
Peter Moss
Thomas Wilkins

Data kindly supplied by:
Hiscox business transactions
Catastrophe modelling data from Hiscox partners: RMS + Verisk
International Disaster Database 1900 - 2022
Sunrise and sunset calculations

View the work

More Than Us is a permanent installation. Visiting the work and other artworks in the Hiscox Collection is possible by appointment. Please email Laura Pemberton. Address: Hiscox headquarters, 22 Bishopsgate, London, EC2N 4BQ, UK

View installation images

Contact

For press and other enquires please contact studio@translatingnature.org

For more work by Julie Freeman see translatingnature.org