Mail, Maps and Motion in Bristol

 At the weekend I went to a one off event in Bristol combining projections, live music and film curated by Watershed. It was held in the Digby Wyatt Building at Bristol Temple Meads railway station, a big warehouse type space where Brunel's original train platforms are, that is now used as a car park. I really liked the urban location, it was dark inside so the projections looked great, the music was loud and with more than 2,000 people inside the atmosphere was a bit like a club. They rigged four giant screens from the roof of the building forming a rectangle, which meant that you could stand in the middle of the space and watch projections on all sides, (although it was very crowded in the middle so I saw most of it from the edge!)

Black and white archive films were projected illustrating Bristol's industrial heritage, along with some of Brunel’s original drawings and live iPad drawing from Bristol graffiti artist Inkie. The grand finale was a new commission bringing together Joanie Lemercier from AntiVJ (I've mentioned their projection work before on this blog), with Adrian Utley from the band Portishead and a host of other musicians, conducted by Charles Hazlewood.

The event was free as part of London 2012 Festival and See No Evil, an art project that brings together a selection of the world’s best street artists to create a huge outdoor gallery on Nelson Street in Bristol City centre. I'm so glad that I got to see it, it was an amazing experience and reminded me why I love big projections.

antiVJ

I'd really love to work with Bristol based artists antiVJ on the Bath festival of Illumination. They do amazing light projections onto buildings. Here's a film of a piece they did in Brussels in 2008:

AntiVJ & Crea Composite: Nuit Blanche Bruxelles from AntiVJ on Vimeo.