Director's Works
Cooper Troxell is a Brooklyn-based director. His latest short film, Heptapus premiered at the Oscar-qualifying River Run Film Festival and made its online debut on Short of the Week. His commercial clients include Bergdorf Goodman. He is the editor of the feature Queen of Glory, which won a directing award at the Tribeca Film Festival and was nominated for the Independent Spirit Awards. He has animated for A24/Showtime's Ziwe.
When a mechanical system breaks down, it should do so in a way that still allows it to operate -- when an elevator breaks, it becomes a staircase. This is known as "cascading failure." I have been fixated recently on the optical telegraph, invented in France in the 1830s, as the birth of a relationship between information technology and the human body. In this system, the message controls the messenger, who simply becomes an appendage to move it along. Perhaps the the flood of information and misinformation in our lives began in the first moments of the Information Age. And perhaps by recognizing the shapes it creates, we can become free. Guided by the symbols used in inventor Claude Chappe's original codebook, we developed a movement system that contorts the body as information moves through it. And in doing so, we re-examine the curve in our necks as we hunch over our phones.