Loop>>60HZ: City of Drones

Loved the drone orchestra? Try driving a drone of your own.

In 2014 The Space commissioned John Cale, Liam Young and creative studio FIELD to create a digital companion piece to Cale and Young’s project Loop>>60Hz: Transmissions from the Drone Orchestra.

The live show was staged at the Barbican, where Cale performed music from across his career, accompanied by Young’s flock of drones flying above the audience.

It imagined the possibilities of the drones as cultural objects. What if they weren’t unseen, travelling on classified flight paths? How might closer contact make us see them differently?

Charting the story of a lost drone drifting through a city, the online experience invites you to pilot a virtual craft and remotely explore an imaginary world, set to samples from Cale’s original music.

See through the eyes of the drone as its machine vision reduces the cityscape to pure geometry, and flight path algorithms plot your course along the narrow streets.

You can also get an exclusive look behind the scenes of Loop>>60Hz: Transmissions from the Drone Orchestra in Bevis Bowden’s documentary, featuring contributions from John Cale and Liam Young.

About this artist

John Cale is a musician, singer, songwriter, producer, film composer and visual artist. Since the 1960s, his hugely influential career has taken him from the Velvet Underground’s noise-bending attack on rock ‘n’ roll through a constantly surprising solo career.

Liam Young is a speculative architect. He set up think tank Tomorrow’s Thoughts Today and research studio Unknown Fields, and created Under Tomorrow’s Sky, a science fiction movie set, and Electronic Countermeasures, a swarm of drones broadcasting a pirate internet and file-sharing hub.

FIELD is a creative studio that creates art for digital platforms, led by co-founders Marcus Wendt and Vera-Maria Glahn. It has made work for galleries, festivals and public installations across the world, and delivers creative and digital projects for brands.