It’s been three years since we left the University of Huddersfield, got our hard earned degrees and set up What Creative. It doesn’t seem that long, but I’m happy to say that we’re still very much in touch with one or two of our favourite tutors.
A couple of months ago the University asked if we were interested in a commission to build an installation for the Digital Media Design and Graphic Design courses’ final year show, and we jumped at the opportunity.
We’re always on the look out for installation commissions - we recently created a piece for the Life Online exhibition at the National Media Museum in Bradford. (A piece that’s been unashamedly copied by EDF for the 2012 Olympics, boo). Ours is going to be there for 10 years though, which is pretty cool.
Anyway, we had little time and little budget for the Uni piece, but we managed to work with the event organiser, Jonny Lindley to create a paper
/light sculpture that reacted to movement in the room. The brief was to create something that drew people into the space, so what better than a giant glowing sculpture that got brighter the closer you got and faster you moved!
Even though it was an evening show we were a little concerned about the brightness of the sun through the windows (considering its the height of summer and there aren’t any blinds on the in the exhibition space… You sort of need it to be dark for a light-based installation to work). But once we got the OK from the Drama department to borrow 4x 700W stage lights we no longer considered it an issue!
The sculpture housed a DJ and also provided the backdrop to a couple of lovely ladies with iPads for faces. They were there to serve drinks and direct visitors between spaces, obviously. It was a bit of an odd setup, but it worked on the night.
Here’s ‘the making of’…
Bizarro Installation from Jonathan Lindley on Vimeo.
All in all the whole thing was definitely a success. The installation caused a stir and was definitely something for people to remember - and we’re dead pleased that we managed to pull it off in such a short space of time.
Or if you’re interested in our other installation work you can check out the original Status 2.0 piece that we adapted for the National Media Museum here.
Shortlink:
By Chris Skelton
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