Human - Delia Derbyshire Day 2023

In 2023 Alexis Maxwell and Joel Foster combined their art and music to celebrate 60 years of Doctor Who and the show's iconic theme tune produced by electronic music pioneer Delia Derbyshire.

‘Human’ combines sound and animation inspired by Derbyshire’s notes from the Delia Derbyshire Archive, Classic Doctor Who imagery and people’s perception of what it means to be human.

“We were really interested in the existential questions of what it means to be human because we felt like Doctor Who reflects a lot on that in its themes and explores it through this fantastical lens.”

Alexis Maxwell

The Art

Derbyshire’s use of graphic scores were a central point of inspiration for Alexis. While these sequences were intended to be a visual representation of sound, Alexis began to wonder how they might translate to imagery. This led to the creation of a range of landscapes and alien lifeforms, generated from the shapes found in the archive. The illustrations used are sketch-like and textured, to reflect the scrawled notes Derbyshire left on the back of letters and scrap paper.

The Music

Joel was particularly inspired by Derbyshire’s working notes to explore new methods of generating musical material. For example, many of the sounds heard throughout the track, and the rhythm of the main Doctor Who-esque melody, are a musical manifestation of the spelling of Delia’s name in morse code.

Meet the artists

Credits

Commissioned in partnership by Delia Derbyshire Day and Brighter Sound. Funded by the National Lottery Heritage Fund as part of DD Day 2023 Doctor Who 60th anniversary heritage project.