Film about plastics made with UCL ISH features in New York Film Festival

About the film

PHX [X is for Xylonite] by artist Frances Scott was developed as part of the Raw Materials: Plastics project led by ISH researcher Dr Katherine Curran. The project is a collaboration with Bow Arts Trust in east London, the Institute of Making, the Slade School of Fine Art and the UCL Department of Art History. 

The film includes animated 3D models of objects from ISH’s Historic Plastic Reference Collection, made using photogrammetry and laser scanning techniques, and hand-processed 16mm film footage of data collected from some of our laboratory equipment. It also features our technician, Dr Miriam Wright, reading extracts from Roland Barthes’ 1957 essay ‘Plastics’ as well as colour experiments listed in a British Xylonite Company laboratory formula book (c.1888).

About 'Projections'

Part of the 57th New York Film Festival, 'Projections' presents an international selection of film and video work that expands our notions of what the moving image can do and be.

Drawing on a broad range of innovative modes and techniques, including experimental narratives, avant-garde poetics, crossovers into documentary realms and contemporary art practices, 'Projections' brings together a diverse offering of short, medium, and feature-length work by some of today’s most essential and groundbreaking filmmakers and artists.

Projections is presented with support from MUBI.

More information

• Visit the 57th New York Film Festival web page for PHX [X is for Xylonite]   
• Find out more about the Bow Arts Raw Materials: Plastics project
• Find out more about the work of Frances Scott

Raw Materials: Plastics was funded by the UCL Knowledge Exchange and Innovation Fund, from Research England’s Higher Education Innovation Fund, with generous support from the National Lottery Heritage Fund.

Image credit: Frances Scott, PHX [X is for Xylonite] (2019), film still