F5 Talk 01: Simon Robson and Tim Rayner


For those of you who attended F5 last April, you know that our speakers were a diverse and inspiring mix of creative people from a wide spectrum of fields. As promised, we’re sharing those talks with the world, starting with Simon Robson and Tim Rayner’s presentation about their collaborative project, The Coalition of the Willing.

Although Simon and Tim weren’t the first speakers of our two-day event, we’re sharing their talk first for two reasons. 1) We believe in their cause, and 2) They need your support.

I asked Simon to tell us about his experience of F5:

Talking at F5 was a real pleasure. It gave Tim and I the chance to introduce the project we are currently developing, entitled ‘Coalition of The Willing’. It also gave us a deadline for which to prepare enough material to give the audience a good idea of what the project is all about. In short, F5 gave us a shot in the arm.

I won’t go too much into what ‘Coalition’ is about here, Tim does a fantastic job in the presentation of distilling the thinking and ideas behind the project. Suffice it to say that it’s a film that suggests a collaborative, technological way of combating climate change.

The film is also being made in a collaborative way. In the presentation, I talk about artists who became involved prior to F5. Since F5, Loyalkaspar, Parasol Island and World Leaders have all begun creating sections for the film. I’m thrilled and excited by the good will and the caliber of the artists who’ve thrown themselves into this project.

We plan to give the film a staggered online release, starting by publishing the written argument online and then fleshing this out with shots as and when they are completed. It’s an idea that Tim and I have been developing with Chris O’Reilly from Nexus Productions.


We hope that people will engage with the argument and then respond to the way ideas are visualised as the shots are published. It’s all about keeping the argument current and alive. To this end, we will be making the film the ‘core’ of a site that will evolve as people post comment and invited writers post articles on issues that branch off from topics introduced in the film.

We’ve been inspired by online data visualisation by artists like Manuel Lima, and we’re currently looking for an online partner to help us develop our online aspirations for this project.

So finally I’ll just echo the last thing I said at F5: If you’re a great moving-image maker or a creative interaction designer and you’d like to get involved with Coalition of The Willing, then please get in touch with me at simon@knife-party.net.

I hope you enjoy the talk.

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