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Atomised Being — skin & circuitry

Jill Patel

Jill Patel is an architect with experience in residential architecture and interior design. Through the course, she has cultivated a passion for writing and ficitonalising reality to tell stories. Her interests span the observation of urban environments and the lives within it. Through her work, she aims to shape future environments that create fluid dialogues between the built and the living.

Jill Patel is an architect with experience in residential architecture and interior design. Throu...

Atomised Being is a short film featured in the Spaces in Motion traveling film festival, which showcases moving image works exploring themes of mobility, urban environments, the human body in the city, and surveillance. 

Atomised Being offers a perspective on the relationship between the body and the city, unpacking the dialogue between the two. The word cinema originates from the Greek words kinema and grapho, which roughly translates to records of mobility. This aligns seamlessly with the project's exploration of mobility and surveillance—tracking and tracing all forms of activity, including detailed observation and inspection of the body. It underscores that through observation, reality is created.

Additionally, the film explores the inversion of spaces and spatial behavior, a phenomenon driven by the use of smartphone. This inversion of privacy results in new forms of mobility and access to spaces, people, and information. 

Understanding these dynamics is essential in addressing the broader implications of technology and surveillance on mobility and everyday life in the city. Through world building and visual storytelling, the project invites viewers to reflect on their own experiences of mobility and surveillance and invites them to ponder over their role in city-making. 

Collaborators:

Zoe Vanezis, 3D Modelling and Animation

Ziad Nagy, Video Editing and Effects

Rhiannon Raw-Rees, Planning and Production

Final work

Atomised Being

The video essay cuts through a world similar to the city, blending animated scenes with real videos, photographs, and phone screen recordings. The narration structured as a prose poem, poses questions about the modern city.

Diagram similar to an atomic model. Contains text.

Narrative Diagram

Using an atomic model to illustrate the model of the city. The narrative spaces and objects that make up both London and the city within are placed within an atomic model. This model is then spatialised to form an inverse panopticon like model of the city.

collage of spaces from the film including bedroom, phone, hands, surveillance camera, signs, 'beehive city', etc.

Beehive City Collage

Close-up shots of spaces and objects dramatised in the film. The collage depicts different elements that make up the narrative world. To name the elements:

The hands are dramatised as if reaching out for more, the bed and office and placed in never ending series of spaces, the common elements of the city that give direction, to the 'beehive city', the smart phone as a container of identity.

contains buildings, a giant CCTV camera and cell towers.

Beehive City

This view of the city depicts the formation of spaces generated through sensing technology of the city. For instance, the bubbles are created through cell towers. This city shows an alternate map of the city which follows a hexagonal pattern. Often known as one of the most-surveilled cities in the world, the camera that hovers above, represents both the public and private CCTVs in London.

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Atomised Being — skin & circuitry

Atomised Being is a short film featured in the Spaces in Motion traveling film festival, which showcases moving image works exploring themes of mobility, urban environments, the human body in the city, and surveillance. Atomised Being offers a perspective on the re...

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