It’s like building sandcastles on the beach

On 3rd July 2014 the Barbican is going to be opening its doors to a Digital Revolution, an immersive exhibition of art, design, film, music and videogames. Deep in the heart of the revolution, down in the Barbican’s darkened Pit Theatre visitors will leave their belief at the door as they enter a blackened room filled with three-dimensional light fields, to shape, manipulate, wrapping themselves in blankets of light creating delicate 3D luminous forms in space accompanied and encouraged by sound, which follows each gentle move.  This is Assemblance…

Assemblance is the first indoor interactive art installation from artists Usman Haque and Dot Samsen from Umbrellium, usually celebrated for their large-scale mass participatory interactive outdoor events. Like building sand castles on the beach, Assemblance explores how to structure participation in order to build trust between people who must sometimes suspend disbelief in order to cooperate and co-exist. The space, at times magical, at times slightly sinister, creates deep emotional engagement by blurring arbitrary distinctions between physical and virtual.

Assemblance will sit alongside new commissions including Google's DevArt, an installation by global music artist and entrepreneur will.i.am and artist Yuri Suzuki and works by Universal Everything, Seeper and Susan Kare (Mac Paint designer). Visitors will also see work by Oscar-winning VFX Supervisor Paul Franklin and his team at Double Negative for Christopher Nolan’s groundbreaking film Inception; artists and performers including Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, Chris Milk, Aaron Koblin, Fred Deakin & Company, Amon Tobin and Philip Glass and game developers such as Harmonix Music Systems (Dance Central).

I for one will be heading down to the lesser-known depths of the Barbican to enter the darkness and wrap myself in some light.

 http://www.barbican.org.uk/bie/upcoming-digital-revolution

http://www.umbrellium.co.uk

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