Birds (2001)

Birds, exhibited at part of the Tate Modern's permanent collection, is a kind of magic act that shows how the trick is done. The film mines pre-digital tools, using archaic film tricks, the contrived staginess of theatre, the old-fashioned pleasures of the 'plastic arts' and the transformative thrill of fashion to create a completely different kind of 'virtual reality'. Fantasy is made tangible through visible seams and holes, and as a result, attention vacillates between the transformation of everyday materials, and that transformation's failure. A soundtrack crafted on the moog synthesizer grounds the gliding world in ironic analog humility.