The small robot in this film is called a ‘Little Sunfish’. It was developed by the International Research Institute for Nuclear Decommissioning (IRID) & Toshiba to investigate flooded reactor No.3 at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, which continues to leak radioactive material after the tsunami disaster in 2011. Inspired by this inspection device, Michael Candy reconstructed the Little Sunfish ROV (remotely operated vehicle) and built scale sets of the damaged reactor from images and documents found online.

The artist imagines a surreal narrative in which the robot, inadvertently charged with radioactive material, escapes the disaster zone, swims into the greater Pacific Ocean, and travels upstream into Queensland’s freshwater creeks. This Little Sunfish evolves over the course of his adventures and what becomes his life cycle.

The film flips between a distant, observational viewpoint and that of the machine itself. Like a character in a video game, we observe underwater life through his mechanical eyes. Travelling with newfound purpose, Little Sunfish seems to gain the consciousness of a living creature, perhaps with thoughts and feelings similar to our own.