ARTEFACT

History Films · a series of six

The screening room

Six films, the longest four minutes. Press play on any one, with the sound on.

  1. F-01

    The Long Fire

    2′30″c. 17,000 BCE → 2020

    The whole story of the West in two and a half minutes, each age drawn in its own medium: cave ochre, Egyptian register, Greek black-figure, Roman mosaic, stained glass, blueprint. From one campfire to one connected planet.

    Sources & credits

    Drawn entirely in code; score synthesised. One traced public-domain facsimile (tomb of Rekhmire, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 30.4.81).

  2. F-02

    Ashes to the Moon

    3′00″1934 → 1969

    How a world war became a space race: from the rallies and the Blitz to Sputnik, Gagarin and one small step. Thirty-five years, drawn frame by frame.

    Sources & credits

    A recreation drawn entirely in code. No archive photographs or footage are used.

  3. F-03

    Anunnaki

    1′30″3,200 BCE → 2017

    What the Sumerian tablets actually say about the Anunnaki, what a 1976 bestseller made of them, and where the planet Nibiru really is.

    Sources & credits

    Real objects from The Met's Open Access collection (public domain) and NASA/JPL's Cassini portrait of Jupiter. Everything else drawn in code.

  4. F-04

    Godspeed

    4′00″1926 → 2026

    A hundred years of American spaceflight in NASA's own photographs, film and voices, from Goddard's first liquid-fuel rocket to four people around the far side of the Moon.

    Sources & credits

    Photographs, film and voices: NASA (public domain, US Government work). "Cosmic Cliffs": NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI.

  5. F-05

    The Kubrick Stare

    1′00″1953 → 1999

    One director, one look. Stanley Kubrick's career told through the stare his actors wore, without a single frame from his films.

    Sources & credits

    Photographs: Library of Congress (LOOK Magazine collection) and public-domain publicity stills via Wikimedia Commons. No film frames are used; every film is redrawn in code.

  6. F-06

    The Oldest Light

    1′30″1610 → 2022

    From Galileo's Moon to Webb's first deep field: the oldest photograph, the oldest films, and the oldest light there is.

    Sources & credits

    Public domain: Library of Congress, Harry Ransom Center, Wikimedia Commons (Muybridge, Le Prince, Lumière, Méliès), NASA/JPL, NASA/STScI; Webb's First Deep Field: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI.