December 07, 2006
Volume
Sculpture that Reacts to Presence
On Friday night I went to the opening of Volume at the V&A Museum, part of the Playstation Season of Culture. Here are my photos.
UVA have now posted a video (waiting for new video)
Created by United Visual Artists and one point six (production company set up by Robert Del Naja [alias 3D] of Massive Attack and Neil Davidge) for the John Madejski Garden.
This is an immersive light and sound sculpture that reacts to presence. Interaction is based on proximity, so without any participants it lies dormant, waiting to be awoken.
Each column contains a matrix of multicoloured LEDs and a speaker. UVA use custom written camera tracking software to watch people moving through the space. As this photo explains, infrared lights are used to illuminate the area, whilst a high mounted camera looks down from above. I counted around 6 different scenes, each with a distinctive style (the video and photos show a few). The sound fitted perfectly, sometimes subtle, othertimes responding to your movements past each column. The garden is fantastic location for work like this, the water puddles creating reflection, shadows around the architecture changing and sounds travelling around the space. The colour gradient fades are beautiful, and the nicest part was the interlude between scenes. The lights slowly die down, then pulsate with white light and sound in anticipation for the next visitors.
On show until 28th Jan 2007. When visiting be prepared to wait in line, particular at peak hours, as only a certain number of people are able to experience the project at once (that was only the opening night).
Here are some gorgeous behind the scenes photos…
Related post: UVA at Transvision [posted by Chris OShea on Pixelsumo]
Posted by jo at December 7, 2006 08:15 AM
