lucy ellis


2024

Digital animation, VHS transfer
PIXELA-ZZZ centres on the breakdown of the video frame through the use of encoding and compression artefacts. Drawing on the Latin meaning of error as “wandering” or “straying”, the work follows silhouettes walking forward as the camera pans away. This push and pull mirrors VHS, where attempts to get closer to a moment result in its deterioration through accumulated traces of viewing.

Through repeated acts of walking, the film builds from a minimalist scene into a dense “colourful bath of pixels”. As error accumulates, the image drifts from clarity, positioning this distortion as a form of drifting where attempts to move closer to the image result in its loss.
 
Screenings: 

The Darkroom Festival 2025 
Peckham Digitals Festival of Creative Computing 
Dream Sequence SET Social Peckham
Featured in Labocine Primary Colours Issue 2025
G.G’s X EXIT Film Screening 
On Memory, Time and Liminality, Frieze Week Film Night
Phreaking Film Night