Revolution

‘Revolution’ is an animated film script complete with written camera directions, music cues, character descriptions and dialogue, rendered in courier, a font synonymous with film and television scripts. It describes two art critic’s experiences as they take multiple journeys across London, separately and together, to see a public artwork sited on the top of multiple bus tops across the city.

Revolution was originally screened across London’s bus network as an Arts Council England Cultural Olympiad commission. Each day a new part of the text animated, as if type written live, across ten bespoke LED bus-top screens on top of Bus shelters. These episodes were self-contained, describing often prosaic and occasionally dramatic fictional events.

Top deck views give the passenger the ultimate vantage point for an imagined narrative, connecting the unfolding mini dramas in and outside the bus. Simultaneously, images of the ebb and flow of passengers are continuously captured via security cameras, potential material for later inclusion in another constructed narrative. The script’s episodes operated as potential insertions or digressions to the many stories that are evolving daily on the buses.