MOTHer

We created ‘MOTHer’ as a narrative based project housed in an Augmented Reality app featuring real world components and interventions. It acted as an origin story for our The Hastings Moth Project, 2010, taking influence from folklore and the notion of myth-making in the era of  ‘Fake News’. Commissioned for Coastal Currents 2018, it featured a  specially commissioned narrative entitled ‘It Came From The Sea’, written by Hastings based author and Unoffical Britian founder/ editor Gareth E Rees, which imagined an alternate reality where the Moths landed on the walls of Hastings and St.Leonards from a very different source but with the same intentions. We asked Gareth to create a narrative that revolved around the life cycle of a moth, to compliment the AR, which touched on invasion b-movies, social paranoia and community in the time of Brexit. We worked with award winning 3D artist Gocken Yuksek, whose models have featured on Netflix’s Black Mirror, to create the characters for the AR. The story is told as recounted memories by singer and musician Jessica Banks, in her first role as voice over artist. It was all held together inside an app developed for us by Alister Clarkson from Shape of Sound.

We also designed a series of real world interventions to create a wider story featuring further collaborations with actor/ playwright John Knowles who appeared as a Doomsayer complete with sandwich board proclaiming the end of the world, ethical taxidermist Jazmine Miles-Long collaborated with us in creating an installation on a seafront weather station and Sea Shanty writer/ singer Bob Tipler wrote a shanty about the narrative of the story and performed it with 20 other singers at a monthly sea shanty singing meet up in a Hastings Old Town pub.

The app was available for the duration of the festival for both iOS and Android platforms from the Apple Store and Google Play, non-local residents could experience a table top version by downloading and printing the markers and following at home.

WORK IN PROGRESS IMAGES