Beta Forty Five

BETA45 is not a person but a project. A version number born at university as software that never existed: beta version 4.5, never finished, never released, but already in use. What remains is a running program.

BETA45 combines photography, print, painting and augmented reality into large-format collages built from layers upon layers. The motifs show how growth becomes visible: high-rises, tangled cables, concrete overpasses, stilt houses, harbour cranes – structures between order and chaos, often found in the less photogenic corners of cities.

Every work has a second layer that reveals what the first one conceals: facts about sinking cities, overfished lakes, ghost nets in the ocean, or heat trapped between glass and concrete. An AR app makes these layers visible. The works are beautiful, loud and uncomfortable at once. They ask what human civilisation leaves behind.

Designer, Art School and Film Academy