Dane Sutherland

Dr. Dane Sutherland is Lecturer in Media Practice. Known primarily through the ongoing project, Most Dismal Swamp, Dane is an artist and curator that collaborates directly with many international visual artists, musicians, designers and technologists to produce new media projects and immersive user experiences. He received his PhD qualification from Edinburgh College of Art and his research covers areas such as the philosophy, practices and legacy of The Speculative Turn, mixed reality and CGI media, contemporary subcultures, contemporary art, and hybrid experiences.

https://www.mostdismalswamp.com/

https://www.instagram.com/most_dismal_swamp/

Dane flexibly teaches across the BA Media modules, working mainly in the pathway of Interactive Media/Games. He leads modules devoted to introducing BA students to Practice-Based Research, and to nurturing how integrating theory and practice enriches their projects. A key philosophy for Dane is to enable students to rigorously explore a multitude of creative directions and theoretical frameworks, reflecting the diversity of the BA Media cohort and their emerging aspirations as students.

Scraper is a most recent project by Most Dismal Swamp. It is a 70min film project commissioned by KW Institute, Berlin. Working with a Virtual Production studio to composite live action and dynamic CGI environments, and with other technologies such as NeRFs, MoCap, and game engines, Scraper presents a dense narrative that combines speculative fiction and critical research to explore some of the challenges posed by ubiquitous algorithmic recognition, and algorithmic populism.

https://poeticsofencryption.kw-berlin.de/src/html/DigitalCommissions.html - full film

THIS MACHINE KILLS VIBES is a presentation given at the conference ‘Poetics of Encryption’ hosted by KW Institutute, Berlin. It is made using face-tracking data and MoCap to animate a rigged bespoke CGI model. The presentation outlines a short introduction to Most Dismal Swamp projects, leading up to an introduction to some of the ideas and themes motivating Scraper.

https://poeticsofencryption.kw-berlin.de/src/html/Video.html - full presentation