Projected onto two sites, Senate House and the adjacent Old School, and the end of Kings College Chapel and the next door Gibbs Building, a combination of PIGI and video projection technologies supplied by E/T/C London were utilised in three separate but related animated shows. These expressed elements of the University's dynamic science and research programmes as art in large format scrolling images.
Ashton was asked back to Cambridge to produce the shows following the success of his work 12 months ago for the Opening Ceremony. This time, the Cambridge 800 Committee decided to expand the scale and scope of the projections and incorporate the Kings College/Gibbs site in addition to Senate House, creating a specially routed walk-through visual extravaganza, which was enjoyed by up to 20,000 visitors over three evenings.
Says Ashton: "I was extremely privileged to return to Cambridge and work on this Finale show, for which my brief was to highlight some of the ongoing ground-breaking ideas, concepts and research being undertaken at Cambridge that will make a huge impact on the future of science, medicine, technology, society and thinking."
The projection content was produced from a combination of University supplied material from numerous academic and scientific sources and that originated by Ashton and his team, which included Paul Chatfield and Richard Porter. They then transformed the images into multi-layered video and PIGI film artwork using PhotoShop, After Effects, OnlyView and other specialist software.
(Jim Evans)
