Countless automated cameras dispersed throughout intercontinental shipping infrastructure continuously generate moving images, enabling planetary-scale computation to extend its perception. How might design research engage with this spatiotemporally expansive bank of films that exceeds human perceptual limits and narrative constraints?

Debris Cinema proposes an alternative filmmaking approach. Through real-time editing and projection of perspectives transmitted from cargo freighters and shorelines, an ever-evolving film influenced by daylight cycles, weather conditions, streaming bitrates, and programmed camera movements probes the nature of planetary-scale machine vision.

“Debris” evokes both the glitching materiality of machine-generated footage and its vast quantity, perceived as a byproduct of automation. Through the lens of Debris Cinema this footage transforms into a poetic panoramic landscape tracing ocean currents in real time.

Tonda Budszus
MA Project
GEO—Design
2024

The film is composed of live-streamed footage from various online accessible cameras, which are listed below. If you are the owner of any of these sources and do not want them to be shown, please contact me.

Dream Land Beach
Big Buddha Beach
St. Felix Beach
Ustronie Morskie
Seacroft North
Dublin Bay
Penzance Bay
Freighter: Bernina
Freighter: Sakura
Freighter: Lauwerszee
Freighter: Sayonara
Freighter: Ariel
Freighter: Mi Vida
Freighter: Zequinsly
Freighter: Furka
Freighter: Yaris
Freighter: Feniks
Freighter: Salamanca
Freighter: Everingen
Freighter: Red Fox
Rotterdam Port: Nieuwe Waterweg
Ter Heijde Beach
Scheveningen West Boulevard
Hotel Huebner
Sassnitz Ruegenfisch
Pier B
Bridge Collapse Clean-up
Two Harbors Depot
Wisconsin Point
Wood Island Tower
Marshall Point Lighthouse
Farallon Islands

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Exposure by Federico Parra Barrios