Behind a Facade of Order
Installation and Live Performance

Audiovisual studies into strange loops, inspired by the book Godel, Escher Bach by Douglas Hofstadter. Commission by the Barbican, London UK.

“It turns out that an eerie type of chaos can lurk just behind a facade of order - and yet, deep inside the chaos lurks an even eerier type of order.” - Douglas Hofstadter

In response to the seemingly impossible worlds of M C Escher, Behind a Facade of Order is an algorithmic, responsive installation that creates a series of feedbacka loops throughout the Barbican.


M C Escher’s illustrations used geometric transformation to build spatial impossibilities and alternative perspectives on reality. In Douglas Hofstadter’s book Godel, Escher, Bach, these drawings are used as representations of strange loops - mechanisms underlying human consciousness.

Using the architecture of the Barbican as an input, Behind a Facade of Order deconstructs how we see the world into a sequence of inter-connected, thin slices. These slices are rendered as sound, light and shadow to create a granular notation for these narrow windows of experience.

The installation consists of three works, each presenting a different scale and perspective. Quantised, recursive structures are transformed in response to human movement, building a tangled hierarchy between human, machine and architecture.