CARBON 2 is the second film in my immersive short-film series that presents post-collapse landscapes. In CARBON 2, we traverse through a densely layered, multi-temporal landscape that reveals the entanglements between technology, ecology, and the global economy.
The two-and-a-half-minute film opens with molting feathers falling toward a polluted body of water. Underwater, datacenters and dendrite-like mycelial hyphae fade in and out of view. Starting from a bird’s-eye view, the viewer slowly soars into increasingly pixelated noise, and toward the sickly water surface sparkling with wildfire-filtered sunlight.
Using the overlapping temporalities afforded by filmic collage, CARBON 2 critically examines historical, current, and speculative ecological outcomes resulting variously from war, surveillance, and the extraction of precious ecological resources and human data. In Media Hot and Cold, Nicole Starosielski writes, “Data and networks, like the people they connect, will be ever more fragile. Too hot or too cold, and the platforms will collapse. Digital infrastructures, data centers, network exchanges, and fiber optic cables will drain the planet’s energy in order to create a stable environment—not for people, but for information.”
The short film blends past, present, and future through a variety of organic and synthetic markers of time, such as renatured barns, rusted industrial machinery, clouds of endangered fireflies, and a blinking, broken neon “accept all permissions” sign. Much of this landscape appears submerged, suggesting global flooding and human surrender. The viewer's sagging flight terminates at a snow globe filled with static noise on a polluted shoreline. The soundscape, equally layered, amplifies the disorienting visuals, part animal, part machine, part human.
Artist: Nancy Baker Cahill
Director: Nancy Baker Cahill
VFX: Nancy Baker Cahill and Local Formations
Sound Design: Anna Luisa Petrisko
