What Nelson Sees
Designer Paul Cocksedge blends physical materiality with AI in a temporary sculpture for London Design Festival
As a lifelong Londoner, Paul Cocksedge always wondered what the statue of Admiral Nelson could see from his vantage point atop the 50-meter column in one of London's iconic landmarks - Trafalgar Square.
What Nelson Sees by Paul Cocksedge London Design Festival
What Nelson Sees gives the public unprecedented access to the view from atop Nelson’s column, offering a new perspective of this London landmark.
What Nelson Sees by Paul Cocksedge London Design Festival
The sculpture is a striking structure made of intersecting tubes that form unique viewing portals. It’s a blended collaboration of engineering, handcraft and technology.
What Nelson Sees by Paul Cocksedge London Design Festival
Inside each portal, you see the view the view from Nelson’s column. But whilst capturing this, Paul began to reflect on London’s past and possible futures.
What Nelson Sees by Paul Cocksedge London Design Festival
Collaborating with Google Arts & Culture Lab, Cocksedge explored AI as a tool in his practice for the first time. Working with Flow, Google’s AI filmmaking tool, powered by Veo, Cocksedge was able to create moving vignettes that capture the essence of London's relentless transformation. When you click a button in the viewing portals within the sculpture, Google AI generated moving vignettes take you through the past, back to when Nelson’s column first came to be in the 1840s and into imagined futures.
What Nelson Sees by Paul Cocksedge London Design Festival
Travel through London's past, from the swinging '60s to the time of Nelson’s construction in the 1840s, and then fast-forward into possible futures, such as a city with more local food production and streets adapted for a hotter climate, informed through conversations with Ricky Burdett, Director of the Cities Unit at LSE.
For Cocksedge, working with Flow, Google’s AI filmmaking tool, enabled him to realise a layer to the artwork, otherwise impossible for him to achieve.
The creation process was collaborative and iterative. Flow enabled Cocksedge to realise a layer to this design, otherwise impossible, inviting the public to reflect on London’s past and visualise its possible futures.
At its heart, What Nelson Sees is about perspective. At once playful and reflective, it turns one of London’s most familiar monuments into a lens on time and change – connecting the city’s history with the possibilities of its future.
What Nelson Sees by Paul Cocksedge London Design Festival
" This piece combines one of the city’s best-known landmarks with artificial intelligence, merging timelines and bringing history into conversation with contemporary technology. It invites the public to reflect on this significant moment, the point where artificial intelligence and human experience are beginning to converge. To open this conversation within the setting of one of London’s most historic landmarks feels incredibly timely.
” Paul Cocksedge
You are all set!
Your first Culture Weekly will arrive this week.
