A Short History of Nearly Everything

A Short History of Nearly Everything is an audiovisual artwork about the connections between the river and technological advancements. Part of the artwork is to be aware of the methods being used to produce it, the sustainability of technology-based practices and the potential impact this may have on the environment.

The environmental impact of his practice is an aspect of his work that Roberts has been thinking about for a long time. 3D animation is a notoriously resource-hungry process, which for some artworks and films can require massive render farms that may take many hours or even days to render a single video frame, which can have a massive impact on the energy usage and environment. Similar issues exist for AI, VR, and blockchain technologies.

Roberts makes a conscious choice to only use technology or methods which don’t rely on render farms or outsourcing the work to other companies or people. These include using the livecoding software TidalCycles for the soundtrack, and a combination of Pure Data/GEM, Inkscape and custom scripts for the visuals.

The artwork itself is an audiovisual journey along the Thames Estuary, imagining the river is part of a network that absorbs all that is around it, which includes nature but also man-made materials, such as cables, technology and waste.

A Short History of Nearly Everything was commissioned by Elsa James for the 2021 edition of Estuary Festival.