digital zoetrope, troika

A onedotzero commissioned installation representing the first onedotzero_adventures in motion festival at the BFI

As part of onedotzero's live multi-sensory identity for the first festival at BFI Southbank in London, Troika were commissioned to create an installation that represented onedotzero_adventures in motion and the festival theme 'citystates'.

Taking the form of a modern digital zoetrope, this cylindrical drum carefully crafted from lacquered wood, lamda print, custom electronics and LEDs displayed a multitude of audiovisual outputs to stunning effect.

Digital Zoetrope is a spinning poetry device that displays, one after another, text-based narratives of five individuals living in the city. It functions as a collective network of relations in which their lives seem to coincide, but never intersect.

Troika’s Zoetrope starts from an abstract pattern, a deconstruction of the onedotzero font, that magically starts to form these texts when it is lit and set in motion; and deconstructed letters and texts show how disparate elements perceived at different speeds come together to form a whole.

The Digital Zoetrope subsequently exhibited at the Decode: Digital Design Sensations exhibition co-curated by the V&A and onedotzero at the V&A London, Garage Moscow and the Holon Design Museum Israel. It also appeared at The Stedelijk Museum Netherlands to celebrate the prolific career of the Dutch graphic designer Wim Crouwel.

Inspired by Crouwel's innovative use of grid-based layouts and typographic systems, Troika deconstructed the onedotzero font, which is a version of 'Gridnik' for the Digital Zoetrope.