Lighting
Enchanted Parks 2009
2009 saw the return of Enchanted Parks and, for the second year, Filament were commissioned to develop an overall lighting design to work alongside the 9 separate artworks spread around the park. Organizers Magnetic Events gave us an open brief to create an atmosphere suitable for the event to tie the works together so that the event became a cohesive experience.
This year none of the artwork chosen was suitable for sighting in the Dene but, as this is such a wonderful area of the park and crucial part of the audience route, Magnetic Events also asked us to come up with a lighting piece which would animate this magical folly.
Enchanted Parks 2009
After a very successful Enchanted Parks 2008 with the event winning a Journal Cultural Award Enchanted Parks was back for another year. Again Filament provide all of the lighting design for the event which stretched over 4 nights in November.
Tyneside Cinema Re-Opening
The Tyneside Cinema is one of Newcastle’s real treasures: it opened in 1937 to show newsreels and has continued as Newcastle’s only full-time independent cinema. By 2006 the cinema was in need of major modernisation, as well as expansion; after securing £7m from various sources the cinema undertook it’s metamorphosis.
When the Cinema was ready to reopen it doors Filament were aproached to come up with some ideas to bring the building to life.
Our attention first focused on the cinema’s main facade: using light and video we animated the windows at night to start people talking and generate excitment. The lighting highlighted the cinema – which is slap bang in the centre of Newcastle – and the video projection eluded to the final preparations that were taking place inside with silhouettes of workers passing by the windows with ladders and painting window frames etc.
The second piece we created was focused on re-capturing peoples memories of classic films: using sound bites and music mixed together into a sound scape which emersed the listener into a world of forgotten memories. linked to lighting strung across the alley, the piece engulfed the audience in an emersive Audio Visual experience.
The final piece was part of a series of works we have done looking at the hidden art of film making - by deconstructing the moving image. It was a video piece in partnership with Daniel Shiffman, a New York based Artist and Lecturer. The piece deconstructs film down to it’s constituent frames and then plays them out as a filmstrip across an massive screen showing 1500 frames of video on screen at once.
Enchanted Parks
The award-winning Enchanted Parks returns to Saltwell Park, Gateshead this winter (Thursday 10th Dec – Sunday 13th Dec). Magnetic Events will also return for the third year as the creative producers and working with commissioned artists will transform the park by atmospheric installations, light, sound and performance into an enchanting seasonal wonderland. The theme to inspire your commissions this year focuses around the“Twelve Days of Christmas” which offers many fantastic opportunities for exciting commissions.
Nominated by popular acclaim for ‘Best Tyneside Event 2008′ at The Journal Culture Awards 2008, Enchanted Parks was successful in winning the 2008 Award. Last year over 10,000 free entry tickets were snapped up by the public to see the winter art trail across 25 landscaped acres of Saltwell Park.
Enchanted Parks is an innovative outdoor arts programme presented by culture10 for NewcastleGateshead Initiative in partnership with Gateshead Council and for 2009 forms part of the Gateshead Winter Festival programme.
The Hadrian Awards
The Hadrian Awards is a Biennial event run by RIBA and Northern Arcitecture to celebrate the best of design in arctitecture within the North of England. In 2007 the awards were hosted in Newcastle Civic Centre, as this iconic builidng was also celebrating its 40th Birthday.
Our brief was to create a lighting design that showed off the building and made people look at it in a new and exciting way. We therefore tried to focus of the wealth of detail all over this extravagant piece of 1960′s design.
The event was a ,huge sucess and even staff who work on events in the Civic Centre thanked us personally saying they had never seen the building looking so good and even they had noticed details in the design they hadn’t seen before.
Glow 07
As part of the Glow 07 winter festival in Newcastle & Gateshead, Steve Holmes worked with artisit Tod Hanson to produce “Gabel Engine”. Gable Engine was a looping animation that interacted with the architectural structure of the gable end of Trinity Chambers on Newcastle’s Quayside. The outdoor projection ran for 2 weeks of December and was part of an artist trail around Newcastle & Gateshead.
Watch the Glow 07 Highlights
Motion Field
Motion Field was an original artwork comission for Lumiere in Durham 2009 by Artichoke.
Exploring the the idea of grass… lit up and changing colour as it moves and sways with a regimented yet organic nature, Motion Field was a huge success and during the event was always full of people ,old and young, with smiles on their faces enjoying the tactile and interactive nature of this exhibit.
Motion Field is now starting a touring program and we are always happy to hear from anyone who would be interetsed in having it as part of their event.
This is part of a series of work we are developing which uses ideas for the the natural world to develop emersive and interactive environments with light and movement.
Motion Field will be exhibited as part of the Jerusalem Festival of Light June 9th – 16th 2010
