Portfolio | Alia Sheikh | Tortoise Butler Art Collective
ORPHEA

A "Visually decadent cinematic VR film that follows a modern-day Eurydice in London's clubland underworld".

Experimental film investigating narrative story telling in immersive environments. 2016 - 2018.

Download the paper

Ars Electronica collab. with Angela MacArthur, Sonic Artist

NEPTUNE'S GACHAPON

A phantom egg hunt in Neptune's undersea fairground. A hoard of electronic baby krakens, every one unique.

Find them. Look after them. Treasure them.

An electronics project turned immersive location based game of twinned and alternate realities at EMF Hacker Camp in 2022.

More about this project

OVERWRITE

A horror-heist thriller, packed full of paranoia and terrifying impossibilities. OVERWRITE follows a desperate attempt to claw back control of a disintegrating reality.

Shown at Aesthetica Film Festival 2022.

Watch the film

Go behind the scenes

Meet the crew

BAARISH ME AANSOO

A futuristic British Asian film set in a world dominated by synthetic implants and the Cyber Wars of the old Empires and the new. Pursued by the state and criminal gangs, haunted by new visions, hoping to make it back home alive.

Concept material shot at EMF hacker festival 2018.

Watch the teaser

SCIENCE, MAGIC

Lost in a decadent underworld party, can you find your way home?

An early test shoot that informed Orphea. 2016.

Watch the music video

Cat cam

Technology hacks to reveal "The Secret Life of the Cat".

A joint project with the BBC's Horizon documentary team to reveal the world from a cat's perspective by creative repurposing of technology. 2013.

Learn about the tech

Horizon: The Secret Life of the Cat

BBC News: How to build a 'cat camera'

NEURAL RADIANCE FIELDS

The problem with building the universe using Neural Radiance Fields is that when the walls get thin ... things get in.

The first narrative fiction film made entirely using Neural Radiance Field technology to capture and reconstruct environments. An immersive fly through of an imaginary landscape. 2023.

Watch to learn more

BBC RADIO NERFS

Frozen moments ... a journey through music.

Eye-catching videos on social media to promote BBC radio 6music's annual T-shirt Day event. An application of cutting edge neural network technology. 2023.

More about this project (BBC R&D)

LITTLE SUN

Visitors moments created works of art ... all captured and uploaded to the online Sunlight Graffiti sphere.

An interactive sunlight graffiti installation at London's Tate Modern in 2012 for Studio Olafur Eliasson.

Experience littlesun.com

More about the project

BBC News article

FLADBURY MILL

Immigrants from different realities, each with a different musical motif, drifting through liminal space, trying to understand one another. Beautiful, strange, perhaps unsettling, a feeling of curiosity and discovery.

A proposed immersive spatial light and sound experience in collaboration with Fladbury Mill, Evesham. 2025.