London Knowledge
(Initiated: 2018)
The ‘Knowledge of London’ is the in-depth study of over 300 London street routes and thousands of places of interest. These must be completely memorized by any aspiring driver who wants a license to operate in London’s black taxi cab profession.
This short film features two interviews with London taxi drivers who recount their experience of ‘doing the Knowledge’. Accompanying these interviews are animated Lidar scans of London. Lidar is a laser-based 3D mapping technology used by self-driving cars to see and navigate.
Knowledge of London creates overlays and contrasts between machine and man-made methods of mapping, parsing, and navigating the experiential complexity of the city’s street network. What knowledge and history will be lost when automated driving takes over London’s streets?
The initial development of the film was supported by the 2018 SPACE ‘Art and Technology’ residency programme.
Presentations
Title slate of London Knowledge being screened as part of Circa x Dazed’s ‘Class of 2022’ on London’s Picadilly Lights.
London Knowledge had its world film festival premiere in 2020 at DOK Leipzig Festival for Documentary and Animation Film.
Installation photograph of London Knowledge being screened at the exhibition ‘Visions in the Nunnery’ at the Nunnery Gallery, London (2020).
The film has been screened and exhibited at the following venues:
2022, Circa x Dazed’s Class of 2022′, London (Piccadilly Lights), Berlin (Limes, Kurfürstendamm), Seoul (COEX K-Pop Square), and Melbourne (Fed Square).
2022, ‘Levels of Life: Photography, Imaging and the Vertical Perspective’, The London College of Communication and the Photographers Gallery London
2020, Visions in the Nunnery, Nunnery Gallery London
2020, DOK Leipzig
2019, Brighton Digital Festival
2018, SPACE Art and Technology Programme Outcome Exhibition in April (2018)
