Doubling Forbidden Planet

Doubling Forbidden Planet is a feature length reedit of the 1956 science fiction film Forbidden Planet. This re-edit was produced in 2003 using a DIY apparatus of sequenced analog security system switchers, circuits and VHS players captured into a computer. The semi rhythmic and overlapping cuts produced by the switchers generated fragmented movement, dialogue, and soundtrack. Forbidden Planet’s soundtrack was made by Bebe and Louise Baron. Their extraordinary electronic film score made up of sounds generated from the noises of DYI electronic circuits made often in the moment of malfunction and failure were recorded and then processed in a sound studio. Forbidden Planet tells the story of a long extinct race whose last technological achievement was the construction of a massive machine that enabled the user to manifest their conscious and unconscious desires. Re-edited with a machine’s logic, Doubling Forbidden Planet is a hallucinatory animation of that story. Oscillating between semi-coherent and incoherent, anthrocentric ideologies and cinematic portrayals become distant and comic leaving one with the pleasures of the machine.