Abandon Normal Devices specialises in a celebration of live, interactive and outsider cinema. Inviting active redefinition of what cinema can be. This body of research looks at innovations in cinematic tools and developments in film exhibition and distribution and the burgeoning possibilities of networks and the internet.
AND welcomes collaborations with the film industry as well as developers and creative coders who challenge the language of cinema and open up new perspectives, stories and responses from audiences and filmmakers. Looking at everything from real-time experiences, haptic technologies, advances in VR and theoretical responses to the post-cinematic condition.
This research has manifested in exhibitions like the group show Unspooling, which was a major survey show of artists forensically dissecting iconic scenes and critically recycling cinematic history. Plus the AND Hackathon For Your Viewing Pleasure which used data from the film industry to create new platforms and games.
More recent works include Where the City Can’t See by Liam Young, the first fiction film shot entirely through laser scanning technology, We Dwell Below by Ooni Studio, a playful multi-user cave-dwelling virtual reality installation and In the Eyes of the Animal by Marshmallow Laser Feast, a virtual reality (VR) sensory journey, exploring the science of seeing.
In 2021, as part of AND Festival, visitors stepped aboard the iconic Mersey Ferry to inhabit a fantasy-fiction world exploring an evolved reality brought about by climate change, rising sea levels and tropical climates. Using augmented reality (AR), artist Anita Fontaine invited the viewer to leave perceptions of reality ashore, encountering a kaleidoscopic world of psychedelic sculptures exploding from land and water in The Blue Violet River.
Partners have included: Britdoc, British Film Institute, FACT (Foundation for Art and Creative Technology), Forestry Commission.