Website for Planetary Portals

2025 https://unthinking.photography/projects/planetary-portals/

I worked for artist group Planetary Portals and The Photographers' Gallery to design and develop a website in tandem with Planetary Portals' exhibition, I am in your dreams, but you are not in mine.

I am in your dreams, but you are not in mine  takes archival photographs from British colonialism in South Africa to create a series of single shot films that interrogate the dreams of Artificial Intelligence (AI). The photographs are sourced from the Bodleian Library at the University of Oxford, which holds the papers of Cecil Rhodes (1853-1902), a British mining magnate and imperialist in South Africa who left a violent legacy.

Rather than simply a place to view the films online, the website serves as a space for the abundant research developed by Planetary Portals throughout the making of these films. The "scroll to scrub" interaction encourages visitors to take a close-reading of each film-as-study, paying attention to the biases and histories surfaced. As one scrolls, 'dust' from the film appears on the screen reminding us of the imperfections of so-called AI and it's potential to be read as being part of a historical continuum of analog photography/film. The website also contains red jump links creating an 'internal webring,' cycling between each film/study, highlighting themes that also span across the works.