City of Drones is an interactive digital environment. This film is a recording from on board a virtual drone drifting through the near future city.

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HOW TO USE

Explore the endless city through the eyes of a drone. You can control your drone camera view by moving the mouse around the screen. Select the next city intersection on the HUD by choosing up, down, left or right.

 

A Digital Landscape by
Liam Young + John Cale + FIELD.io


 
Produced by the Barbican
Co-commissioned by The Space
Part of The Barbican Digital Revolution exhibition
Designed + Developed at FIELD.io with an amazing team:

Marcus Wendt - Eduard Prats Molner - Owen Hindley - Pete Wallace - Vera-Maria Glahn - Maran Coates + Box of Toys - Keri Elmsly - Liam Young.

About City of Drones

City of Drones is an interactive digital environment developed by musician John Cale, speculative architect Liam Young and digital artists FIELD. Charting the story of a lost drone drifting through an abstract cityscape, players are invited to pilot a virtual craft and remotely explore this imaginary world. Samples from Cale’s original soundscape compositions echo across the landscape as we see the city through the eyes of the drone, buzzing between the buildings, drifting endlessly, in an ambient audio visual choreography.

Part of
Loop, 60Hz, 2014
John Cale + Liam Young

The City of Drones digital environment accompanies Loop, 60hz, an immersive live music and drone performance.
John Cale, known for experimenting with different industrial sounds in his practice, once tuned his instruments to the hum of refrigerator motors.

Cale in collaboration with Liam Young now explore the soundscape of a new generation, the distant rumble of drone propellers, to be set against the visual spectacle of Young’s choreographed flying machines. Typically associated with militarised applications, each drone is repurposed here as both disembodied instrument and dynamic audio infrastructure.

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