Pixelsumo is a blog about interaction, with an emphasis on play, installation, video game culture, playgrounds and toys. Written by Chris O'Shea.
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Posted November 27th 2006 under AudioVisual, Friday Late, Installations, Light, Sound
[updated] here is a video
(photos above by John Adrian)
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.
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.
Here are some gorgeous behind the scenes photos…
Related post: UVA at Transvision
Comments
(November 28th 2006)
Cool! Hope to see it with sound soon!
It reminds me a little bit my project called Ombea { http:www.ombea.net } even if the goal is different. UVA are masters of light I wish I’d see that live.,.
(November 29th 2006)
thanks for the writeup - I should point out that you won’t have to wait in line - we put a queue in for the opening night because there were so many people - in normal operation, you can just walk on in there…
ash
(December 7th 2006)
volume is amazing, really stunning, i could have spent hours there! it was like a happiness therapy, it will leave you smiling and your heart singing. really magical, i can’t recommend it enough. i will be back again soon! p.s. check out the images on flickr of uva’s awesome monolith installation that was at the v+a back in february as part of onedotzero_transvision, sadly for one night only, there is a video on our myspace too http://www.myspace.com/onedotzero
(December 7th 2006)
Thanks Donna, I have already written about that project on Pixelsumo, see releated post at the bottom.
(January 18th 2007)
In this blog I discovered the coincidence: in the MALBA (Latinamerican Art Museum of Buenos Aires) there is also, at this time, a called work “Volume” (spanish word for volume), and is a giant vumeter urban that translates the sounds of the environment in light. Although it has other characteristics, the similarity and the simultaneidad is amazing..
If it interests, there is images and information to them in blog that I am making:
http://urbanvolume.blogspot.com/2006/11/presentation.html
http://urbanvolume.blogspot.com/
I like much your blog, greetings, Erika.