dBS Solutions have been once again employed by visual artists Heinrich and Palmer to bring their Aerial work to life in The Coro, Ulverston. After working with Anna and Leon for their installation at Chester Cathedral, dBS were well aware of the quality and effectiveness of their work and so only the cleanest installation would suffice for this work.
Aerial takes 3D laser scans of fourteen extraordinary migratory birds and transforms them into dancing bodies of light in a breath-taking virtual diorama, set to a specially composed soundtrack. This stunning work shows incredibly detailed scans of birds from all over the planet and was the centrepiece of Ulverston’s ‘Incredible Journeys’ festival.
We were tasked with hanging the voile in a delicate and non-ideal roof space, providing projection and lighting the space. Our project manager for this piece, Gareth, designed a safe and efficient rigging system that worked around the intricacies of The Coro’s roof space, a building that is over 100 years old and not designed for hanging. We used a range of Petzl Industrial equipment that made the job seamless and run smoothly, with safe methods of raising and lowering the voile, supplied by partners J&C Joel.
As the scans from Heinrich and Palmer are so intricately detailed, some of which include CT scans of feathers, we had to ensure the projection was of the highest quality. We used a Panasonic 12k Laser projector to achieve the results we wanted in this space, which made the colours burst and the super sharp images really come to life.
To add ambient effect, we uplit the beautiful space at The Coro with Elumen8 battery uplighters which extended the images beyond the confines of the voile as Lighting Designer Nathan Storm used a ChamSys system to programme the lighting to match the colour palettes of the projections using time code.
It was of uppermost importance for us to not affect the artistic vision of Anna and Leon with our methods of installation, and we believe we achieved this as the work felt seamless within the space and meant that the artwork could be regarded in all its glory.