Restore to Factory Settings

Blue is the colour of the screen when it is unable to transmit information; it is a miscommunication, an error report, a simulation or substitution. It is the print of future planning yet it is also failure, already redundant. Restore to Factory Settings mourns for a forgotten industry; industrial relics become urban follies, shrouded as they lie precariously between construction and deconstruction, archaic and futuristic. I have carefully adopted the blue-print in the methodology for making these images, referring to the blue of construction, the blue of a new beginning; the blue of the factory settings. The project is deliberately allegorical, describing our modern condition in the West, navigating the convergence of built environments with less tangible but arguably no less real technological and ‘virtual’ spaces. It stems from years of watching and documenting the urban terrain transform around me, with a particular focus on the factory area of East London where my family once worked. These factories which were once producers of power, have now become a product of it. This work therefore stands for both progression and error, and its relationship with urban temporality.