Brendan Dawes

Year
2019

Medium / Material / Technic
4K animation video excerpt

»The Art of Cybersecurity«, commissioned by McMillan for Trend Micro, is presented as a single-channel video. The work essentially points to how creativity can evolve and flourish in a well-protected network.

Brendan Dawes explains that The Art of Cybersecurity features three main components – the threats (represented by black obelisk-style objects), the threat detection and elimination system (represented by an organic mesh-like structure), and finally the creativity that is allowed to flow because the dangers have been neutralized.

Dawes used an algorithm to create forms for data from various industries, namely the media, banking, government, technology, and retail, giving each a distinctive mesh. Each obelisk is related to a threat metric derived from the data. The flow patterns of the creativity strands are influenced by both metrics in the data and the space carved from the form itself. The aesthetic movement of the threat data and creativity resembles an organic cell surviving threats and flourishing in a safeguarded milieu.   

Depicting a growth of creativity in a protected environment, the video invites the viewer to reflect on the significance of security-conscious data usage in a digitally connected city.