> Murmurations at Fabrica

motion graphics and installation

created at: Shared Space and Light

 

> Living in Brighton near the sea it's impossible to be unaware of the daily ebb and flow of starlings along the coast. They've roosted in numerous sites along the seafront and I've filmed their murmurations at least 50 times over the years, often in slow motion to capture the full majesty of their manouevres.

So what a pleasure to be able to draw on this resource to make an installation for the art gallery Fabrica here in Brighton - we tested rear projecting onto the 3 tall windows of the converted church that face onto the street - they are frosted so by blasting them with light and tweaking the content we managed to get enough quality for an installation using an RZ970 laser projector from Stage Sound Services.

Content-wise there were several challenges - primarily I wanted to add graphic layers to the flight of the starlings that emphasised their collective motion and flight paths; then I wanted the flocks of starlings to look like they were flying inside the church, and finally the content also needed to respond to the dense gridding of the windows.

Master musician Owen Crouch made a soundtrack that echoes the gently shifting parallax and layering.

The installation ran nightly from November 2020 to January 2021.