XL Video supply projection and control equipment for Cape Farewell project

XL Video have supplied projection and control for video artist and photographer David Buckland’s recent inventive installation work in Somerset House, which is part of his wider Cape Farewell Arctic exploration project.
The technical elements were co-ordinated by Sam Collins, who has worked with XL Video on several other arts projects, and XL’s arts and theatre specialist Malcolm Mellows project managed.
Two Barco G5 projectors were located in a specially built shed, just 13m away from the building, complete with super wide angle .8 lenses. This produced a 17m wide throw across the ornate pillars and stonework of the Seaman’s Hall.
The source material was stored on two Doremi hard drives, run in two loops – one seven minutes long and the other three minutes long, with the two images overlaid creating random combinations of the two sets of footage.
The longer loop contained a video essay, shot on Betacam, of glaciers, seas, snow, etc shot during Cape Farewell’s most recent Arctic expedition in September – this formed the ‘background’ of the projection. The shorter loop contained a series of texts, made from Hasselblad still photographs, of original video projections onto huge glacier walls in the Arctic. The messages included "The Cold Library of Ice". “Sadness Melts”, “Ice-Force”, etc. Together they formed a moving, powerful abstract reflection on the effect of global warming on the planet.
The different depths and highly textured nature of the building surface was important in defining the final look of the video material. It was a completely different surface to the original glacier walls used for the text projection, and produced some unexpected results. Buckland explains that during the set up on site, they worked organically, using issues like the perspective distortion created by the short throw angle and integrating it into the final look of the work.
XL’s Malcolm Mellows said: "It is always most enjoyable working with Sam Collins, who brings an eclectic mix of exciting and important arts projects to XL Video. In particular, the issues raised by the research for this educational exhibit will affect us all. Working together, Cape Farewell, Sam and XL Video have devised a powerful visual means by which the viewer cannot help but take note”.
Cape Farewell draws together artists, scientists and educationalists in the project that to collectively addresses and raises awareness of global warming.
The projections were beamed onto the Seaman’s Hall facade of the majestic main courtyard at Somerset House, at the end of the venue’s famous winter ice rink, which attracted nearly 120,000 members of the skating public this season.
Primarily an experimental R&D exercise, the installation ran from dusk until 10pm every night for 10 days and was designed to illustrate how this specific type of building projection will potentially translate into a much larger integrated Cape Farewell Festival event, planned for Somerset House in 2006.
(SP)