From Pixels to Drones: Visualising The Nation in the London 2012 and PyeongChang 2018 Olympic opening ceremonies

Thomas Hobbes’s Leviathan (1969) famously features a title page picturing a figure made up of smaller figures, vividly and memorably visualising the relationship between a state and its citizenry. Two recent Olympic opening ceremonies can be seen as also attempting this, by differing means: visualising the UK in 2012 and South Korea in 2018. I will bring together observations on the weird technical elements so heavily present within this micro-genre of large scale performance, alongside a consideration of the offering to both global and local audiences from two image-conscious nations.