We’ve Been Here Before, 2021
Single channel 4K video
6 mins 34 sec
Commissioned by The Bass x Daata
We’ve Been Here Before is a new CGI film by Bob Bicknell-Knight, concerning the boundaries between public and private space, forgotten histories, simulated worlds and apocalyptic futures. The work presents a series of digital replicas of real-life, physical spaces, virtually duplicated in architectural simulation software, alongside several 3D models of contemporary technologies that have been heavily eroded.
The three locations explored in the film are the headquarters of GCHQ, a government organisation responsible for digitally surveilling people in the UK and abroad; the headquarters of the social media website Facebook in Menlo Park, California and Fisher Island, Miami, a barrier island which has the highest per capita income of any place in the United States, and will be one of the first locations in the US to be swallowed by rising sea levels.
These visual elements are accompanied by an ominous computer-generated voiceover speaking about a fictionalised future where the coming climate crisis has forced the global oceans to rise, with human beings escaping into mountainous regions and digital worlds.
The work is available to purchase from Daata here - daata.art/art/bob-bicknell-knight-we-ve-been-here-before
