Are materials a remedy to increasing sensitivity to urban stresses?

The Future Laboratory commissioned us to create a film for their Beauty Futures Forum part of a quarterly event series where they provide an overview of the global beauty market and emerging trends throughout 2018.

The trend for the forum was ‘Sensitised Living’ a concept which examines the many reasons
why more and more of the population are becoming more sensitive to different types of skin
aggressors such as pollution, stress and toxins.

Materials are a great communication tool, so we approached the film by using ingredients that could be possible remedies. We created a series of visual experiments which considered how these aggressors might look and feel if we could see them with the naked eye.

The soundtrack for the film was a speculative sonification based on data of the UK's projected air pollution levels between 2015 - 2030. The output was a fluid expression of auditory and visual imagination which invited questions surrounding the shifting position of the beauty industry within society.

Credits: Director of Photography, James Maiki; Art Directors Hannah Robinson and Joanna Zawadzka; Set Assistant, Giulia Tomasello.