Swamp City
2021, one-channel video, color, sound 34’ in loop neon sign, acrylic, LEDs 110 x 20 x 3 cm folded leaflets
Alice Bucknell explores the interconnection between ecology, architecture and artificial intelligence. She designs three-dimensional worlds that have the immersive qualities of real-life video games. Swamp City is a video installation that imagines the Everglades as a luxury eco-tourism retreat that is experiencing severe climate disruption. Located in southern Florida, the Everglades is a vast subtropical ecosystem that once spanned the entire length of the state. Infrastructural development and efforts to drain the swamp over the last 50 years have reduced the Everglades to just one-third of its original size. The Everglades supports a unique ecology not found anywhere else on Earth and protects Florida from rising tides. The work explores the tensions between developers, lifestyle, technology and this dying swamp by featuring both human and non-human protagonists (an anthropomorphic alligator refusing to migrate, an opportunistic celebrity architect, and a 3,500-year-old Bald Cypress Tree, resurrected with the help of artificial intelligence).
Alice Bucknell (London, United Kingdom, 1993) is a media artist and writer whose work explores the interconnection of ecology, architecture, and artificial intelligence. She designs 3D worlds with the immersive qualities of video games that hinge between the present and near future while drawing on real-life scenarios on Earth.