4m 28s: Lenght
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Burj Babil (Tower of Babel) is an installation work by Tom and Guy Schofield. It consists of two elements; a video projection (dimenstions variable) and a long (5m) strip of paper. The paper is a text print out of the source code used to generate a 3D computer model of the tower shown on the video projection. Throughout the file the text comments (in between the vertex and face information) reveal a story of creation, violent and degenerating into snatches of different languages the further through the document one reads. To create the projected image, the source code file has been subjected to a number of transformation processes which corrupt and destroy the tower in different phases. The processes transform the vertex and face coordinates from the source code file into ascii characters. The results are then fed into language translation services (babelfish.yahoo.com). Most of the file is ignored since the sequence of characters do not correspond to real words. However when chance causes the ascii sequence to form a recognisable word this will cause a corresponding physical translation of that vertex point. The resultant corrupted code is then used to re-make the model causing its eventual collapse.